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Pro Staff,
My favorite bass lake, at 900 acres is being stocked with northern pike. What do you think the impact will be? There aren't all that many shad available, but there are a lot of small crappie. Will the pike eat the crappie? They tried musky stocking a few years back, and the musky ate the bass, it's just now getting good again. I caught a 14 inch pike last week so they are growing fast. I guess I'm not really pleased with this addition to our lake, but will wait for the results. The DNR also stocked hundreds of two to three pound hybrid wiper, these, I don't see as a threat. Any comments on pike? Thanks. Johnnie

The wipers may be a bigger threat than you think, if there is little forage in the lake as you stated, then the wipers will be competing with the bass for shad.
As far as the northern's, the department of fisheries must beleive there is a surplus of small crappie for them to stock such a predator, this may prove to be good for the fishery. Thsoe smaller crappie compete with young of the year bass for forage, weed out those smaller crappie and you may see better year classes of bass in the future, as well as better crappie and pike fishing. Sounds like that could be the lake to fish in a few years.

Eric, Thanks for the reply. I hope you're right about the pike. There are an awful lot of small crappie in the lake, it's not uncommon to catch 20 or more before you get a true keeper. Luckily, a lot of the anglers will keep the paper thin crappie. It takes about forty crappie to weigh 15 pounds. I've also noticed that the bluegill don't get very large eather, they seem healthy, just on the small side. I really look for MacBride to improve over the next few years, but was worried about the pike. I know for a fact that the musky loved to eat the bass, I've seen large musky carrying keeper bass crossways in their mouth and just swimming around, a little salt in the wound I guess. Thanks again, Johnnie

Johnnie,

It sounds like the lake is over populated with small forage fish (crappies and bream). It sounds like adding the pike may help control that "over population" problem. I think that the bass may be in for a little trouble later on because they are preditors just like the muskies. Let me know how the fishing gets later on this summer.