Whats happening to Lakies?

[FishWhisperer]

I had a quick look at the stats from the WPFFA stillwater trials held at Lakies over the past 3 years and it shows an interesting result!

2010		Ave Fish Size	36.33
		Total Fish	123
		Ave # Fish Per Angler	9.59
2011		Ave Fish Size	36.17
		Tot Fish	71
		Ave # Fish Per Angler	5.92
2012		Ave Size Fish	41.28
		Total Fish	25
		Ave # Fish Per Angler	2.5

Has the stocking policy changed? Where are all the small fish?

[Umhlangarox]

I would say its fishing a lot better, who wants to catch small fish?

IMHO I will always take quality over quantity, even if it means 1 good fish over a wknd as opposed to 10 stockies. . .

[gkieser]

I imagine it has to do with the dam filling up recently. The fish grew fantastically last time the dam filled up (until the numbers stocked into the dam were increased cos the dam was full and then the avg size of fish caught started dropping...)

[ArcherFish]

I had a quick look at the stats from the WPFFA stillwater trials held at Lakies over the past 3 years and it shows an interesting result!

The result being that the WP team are fishing poorer than before? :-)

[gkieser]

Craig you may be right.

I have heard it said that the reason that we cannot use the data of fish caught at competitions at lakies to determine the state of the fishery, is because competition anglers are trained to catch smaller fish and thus the records kept by WP in the past have not been acceptable.

Therefore, you are quite right in saying that WP are on a hiding to nothing this year, with them catching such big fish! :biggrin:

[ArcherFish]

I personally prefer bigger and fewer fish, but on the other hand it's also nice to catch lots sometimes.

[Korrie]

In 2010, if my memory serves me right, we fished over 2 weekends.
The guys in the first weekend got up to 15 fish in a session, with the second weekend, we did about 3 or 4 fish a session on the Saturday, the Sunday was a bit better.
If we fished over 2 or 3 weekends it will be interesting to see what comes up.
We also had a changing weather pattern, with pressure dropping, if you believe that, plus the water level rose dramatically, with lots of inflow etc, that could also have affected the fishing over the weekend. What was interesing, the average size of the fish increased a lot.
Previous years we got a lot in the mid 20's, now most were much bigger, with a couple of 50cm bows, and brownie of 48cm.
I am sure that there must be a couple 60cm plus fish cruising along in Lakensvlei. All the 50cm fish were fat and in good condition. When you catch a fish and it is nearing the end of its lifespan, the condition is going down, the fish is thin etc. The 50cm fish were fat and round.
We were not getting last year's stockies, which would have been mid 20cm. You hit a pod or 2 of those fish, and the numbers are up and the average size of the fish would have been down.

[nico]

Hi Korrie
I wouldn't be surprised if there are no more fish as your figures say AVE # Fish per angler 2010, 9.59
and 2012 is at 2.5. The hut is fully booked and if every one is helping themselves to their two fish per angler
as it says in the hut, alowed, well 6 people x 2 fish per day or weekend, it is self explanatory why you getting 2.5 fish per
angler if u lucky. Also the stockies are so small they are probably getting eaten by everything else.


Nico

[FishWhisperer]

When was the last time it was stocked? I highly doubt there are a lot of small fish in that system otherwise we would have found them. The smallest fish that was caught was 33cm! If it had been stocked, surely we would be seeing plenty in the low 20s?

[KevinC]

Sounds like Lakies is finally becoming a decent fishery again! (I hear that there are some concrete ponds in Franschoek for the guys who wish to go and catch a ton of small little wrigglers!:wink

Surely not too much can be read into a single weekend's results?

Either way it is nice to hear of some 50cm class fish being caught again. But ja Maddy- it's usually not too difficult to find the small fry in Lakies... maybe the shoals were cruising around the weedbeds on the dam wall side over the weekend in question...