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Fish Weight Formula and Biomass Balance
| Dear Pro Staff,
I took a friend to a local State Lake about three weeks ago, just hours after a steady rain. The stained water had quit rising and was on it's way down but there was an overflow pipe on the Northwest end of the dam that had plenty of current. I threw a spinner bait and found that more fish were actually feeding on the dam side and away from the shallow grass. After catching a few of the overly aggressive (if that is possible) fish, I tied on a Bubble-gum Senko (9S-10-229) and began to wear them out. We caught so many fish by throwing onto the rocks and sliding it into the water, it was unreal. It was nearly a fish every cast on the first two passes. Keeper-sized fish had been uncommon in Maple Leaf Lake, but there we’d caught seven fish over 18
inches during just 1½ hours of fishing.
The bigger fish have been coming from Lake Drury (private). It is a 15-acre lake featuring, creeks, sunken timber, standing timber, riprap and 37 feet of water in the deep areas. It is nine years old, and contains black bass, hybrid bluegill, perch and channel cats. We let the lake stand the first year, only adding the hybrid bluegills to the billions of tadpoles and crawdads. The next fall we put in the black bass: 535 bass weighing between 6.8 and 1/2lbs with 35 of those weighing over 5 pounds.
The catfish spawn in this creek and spring-fed lake. It is healthy! Last year I caught three fish that were 22 to 23 inches in length. I guessed them to be 7.5+lbs. Do you think that weight’s about right? That is a horse out here in Missouri. Hopefully there will be a 10+ caught there someday. What do you think about adding different species of fish i.e.; shad & crappie?
Rick Drury,
Avid Missouri bass fisherman |
Jerry "Bubba" Puckett says:
Congratulations on the awesome fish, on both lakes. As for the weight question, I've seen a number of formulas for weight computations and they were all compromises. Here's a link to a website that has a fish weight calculator program:
http://www.adp.unc.edu/~longlegs/js_fish_calc.html.
I ran your fish through their formula and came up with a weight of just under 8 pounds. Sounds just about right to me. I ran a 22x17 through (a fish I actually caught) and it came back at 7.9, which is about a quarter pound more than the actual weight on certified scales. But, I ran a 24x24 (a Mexican monster) through and it returned 17+, which is a couple of pounds more than actual. It appears that this particular program's accuracy breaks down on the monster side but holds pretty close on non-mutant sized fish.
Wayne Gustaveson says:
I suggest that you proceed with caution on the private lake. First off, it’s obviously not broken so be careful to not over "fix" it. Crappie need a food source such as shad in order to grow to a usable size. Absent a correct balance of prey, they could stunt and negatively impact the plankton availability for the other forage fish. Without more information, I think the safest route would be to add forage and postpone the crappie plant. If you have a contact there with the Missouri Fisheries Department, you might consider soliciting their input on this issue.
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