A few years ago, I was fishing for smallmouth bass with Steve Quinn, a fisheries biologist and editor of In-Fisherman. We had caught plenty of fish throughout the sunny day. In the middle of the afternoon, we began fishing a bank that was partly shaded. I could easily see large rocks and boulders 5 feet deep in the clear water. […]
Recruitment of young fish is essential to sustained fishing. Despite the amount and intensity of management directed at largemouth bass, America’s most-popular gamefish, the relationship between the abundance of adults and their offspring has not been clearly established. Pond studies from the University of Florida shed light on this critical question.
The population of non-native zebra mussels has recently expanded in the Pickwick Lake and other Tennessee River impoundments. Although we will have to contend with this unwanted invader for a long time to come, some new information suggests zebra mussels may benefit fisheries as well as harm them.
Mississippi’s flood-control reservoirs — Arkabutla, Enid, Grenada and Sardis — are regarded by many anglers as the best in the country for big white crappies. […]
Table Rock Lake is a 43,100-acre impoundment on the White River in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri that was built in 1958. […]
Larger bass may be harder to catch than smaller bass because they are fewer in number and have had more time to learn to avoid anglers. […]
Good crappie fishing often depends on a strong year-class: an abundance of fish produced in a given year. When those fish grow to a size of interest to anglers — what biologists call “recruit to the fishery” — the result is fast action, filled limits and full coolers. Fast growth and limited harvest often equates to super slabs for the next several years. […]
Reservoir crappie populations are notoriously cyclic. A strong year-class is produced once every few years and is usually followed by one or more weak year-classes. […]
The Mississippi waters of the Mississippi River are home to pallid sturgeon and shovelnose sturgeon. Unlike many other sturgeon in North America and worldwide that migrate between the ocean and freshwater to complete their life cycle, the pallid and shovelnose sturgeon complete their life cycles entirely in rivers. […]
The vulnerability of fish to hook-and-line capture has become a hot topic among fisheries scientists. […]
The adoption of catch-and-release benefited black bass fisheries, but now many fisheries managers wish it would go away — or that at least a few anglers would harvest some bass. […]
Fish growth rate is also essential to predicting the effect of harvest restrictions, like length limits and creel limits. […]
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