Boone Lake - Electrofishing 2010
Sampling date: April 15 – 20, 2010
Species collected in survey (14 runs, 3.4 hrs total effort):
Black Crappie = 31
Blacknose Crappie = 2
Largemouth Bass = 338
Smallmouth Bass = 100
Spotted Bass = 2
White Crappie = 9
For the third year in a row, largemouth bass densities in Boone Reservoir were well above average. The population structure of quality size largemouth bass has been almost identical over the last three years also, where about 30% of the stock size (> 8-inches) fish each year have been over 15-inches. The big group of largemouth below 10-inches that were present last year are now between 10 to 15-inches. These fish should grow bigger in 2010 and hopefully boost the percentage of fish over 15-inches for 2011 and 2012.
Smallmouth bass catch rates were well above average for 2010. However we saw a big decrease in the percent of smallmouth over 15-inches. This is mostly due to a big group of smallmouth that were present between 7and 12-inches which made up about 65% of the smallmouth collected. Hopefully these fish will grow into the larger size classes the next couple of years, but most likely there will be some cropping off of the larger fish due to the small 15-inch minimum size limit.
We did not collect as many black crappie this year as last year and the overall black crappie catch rate for 2010 was a little below average. We did, however, see good percentages of crappie over 10-inches.
