IDNR Black Bass Summit

I just remembered that I meant to post some cliff notes from the Summit...

Even though it was called the Black Bass Summit, most of the discussion was about smallmouth bass.

SMB are really in pretty good shape here in Indiana. The first presenter, a fish biologist from the DNR, showed some slides comparing age and class of fish by a few different streams. They are starting to collect data on a more regular basis. She said overall that the SMB fishing in Indiana is better than that in Missouri, so that kind of defeats the idea of milder weather leading to better fish growth. Last year they collected a fish that they aged at thirteen years old.

Manchester University has a group doing some interesting work related to improving watershed quality at the headwaters of the Eel River to see if it has any impact on fish populations downstream. The professor talked about silt and sediment and how it affects fry as well as adult fish. In one drainage ditch, after just a year of work, they counted fourteen species of fish.

2012 was a banner year for the SMB spawn, so anglers will be seeing those fish reaching adult stage over the next few years.

One issue discussed was the new slot limit for black bass. The gentleman doing the regulations part of the presentation said that one frustration they have is lack of angler harvest. It was said this is more of an issues on lakes/reservoirs than it is on rivers/streams. The catch and release mentality is apparently causing stunted fish in some areas.

The biologist also talked about the tagging program they started last year and that she had a tag reported within a day of the fish being tagged.

I think that covers most of the day's talk. As a side, there were two older gentleman in the middle of the room that made the presentation last longer than it should have. They were interrupting the presenters with questions that would have been answered later had they kept their mouths shut. They were the typical folks at such an event that wanted to let everyone in the room know how much knowledge they have on the subject.

I've grown up fishing Shakamak's lakes and it's had a 12-15" slot limit for as long as I can remember. As far as I'm concerned, it's been a huge failure. I'd guess that 90% of the bass caught there are in that 12-15" range that can't be kept.
No idea how they came up with that 12-15" slot range, but a more sensible protected range to me would be 14-17" slot and then only allow one bass kept over 20".