Hey everyone,
I provided my annual Lake Pepin/Pool 4 update to the Walleye Searchers Club in Rochester back in February. As usual I am posting a copy of the presentation here with a few minor changes to address questions that came up in the group and further processing of the data. I have tried to include text with each slide that conveys the meaning of each figure in an easy to understand way. If there are questions feel free to contact me using the information on the signature line of this post or on the last slide of the attached PDF.
Most notable among the results was a general drop in catch per unit effort across the board. Some of this is likely due to very rough weather during netting in the beginning of October, but we have seen lower recruitment in the walleye in particular related to lower spring water levels in April and likely the very high abundance of adults in the system. Since much of our net catch is composed of Age-1 and Age-2 walleye low numbers in those categories are very obvious in the figures.
The other major observation was a substantial decrease in growth (1″-2″) for our Age 1-2 walleyes and Age 1-3 sauger. We think this is related to a late shad spawn we observed in 2024. The cold temperatures in June was likely the primary driver of the delay, but the result seems to be that fish that were too small to continue feeding on the previous years shad (that survived very well due to the mild 2023-2024 winter) were separated from easy access to the energy dense young of year shad they prefer to prey on. This would explain why we did not see reductions in growth for older walleyes and sauger that were not gape limited (their mouth was big enough to eat the shad from the previous year).
Further discussion is in the notes section of the attached slides, but folks can feel free to reach out to me directly with questions as well.
Thanks,
Nick
