Again, my thanks to Brian Schoenung, Southern Fisheries Supervisor and Dan Carnahan, District 7 Fisheries Biologist for forwarding the following Patoka L. historical graphs to me to share. Click on the thumbnail pics to enlarge each graph for easier viewing.
Fig. 6 is the actual and maximum weight of the total pounds of largemouth bass weighed-in at Patoka Lake tournaments. Average poundage is trending up, about as much as I would have expect since you have to take into account the doubling of tourneys and anglers reporting starting around 2000-2001. Maximum weight on the other hand has had a much healthier spike consistant with a growing and healthy bass population.
Fig. 7 is CPUE (catch per unit effort in #/hr) of legal largemouth bass weighed-in at Patoka Lake bass tournaments. This figure has nearly tripled, suggesting a lot less time to catch a keeper bass in a tourney at Patoka now as compared to the "rough" days back in the early 90's. I'm guessing stats from the 88-92 might have even been worse as that seemed to be the toughest years that I recall.
Fig. 8 is the total hours to catch one legal largemouth bass at Patoka Lake tournaments. As expected and in a mirror reverse from the previous chart, there has been a 3-fold decrease here. In another words, where it used to take around 30 hours or tourney angling (on average over the entire field) before you'd catch a keeper bass, it now is down to 10 or less hours.
Fig. 9 is CPUE (#/hr) of largemouth bass greater than or equal to 18 inches weighed in at Patoka Lake tournaments. Interestingly enough, this stat is also about a triple increase similar to the "keeper" statistics above. This suggests that growth of bass across the board is consistant and that larger fish continue to be maintained and recruited into the population.
Fig. 10 is the total hours to catch one largemouth bass greater than or equal to 18 inches in Patoka Lake tourneys. Again, we've gone from about 125 hours on average to catch an 18" or larger bass in a tourney down to around 50 hours.
It will be interesting to see how these statistics trend over the next 5-6 years from their current positions. From previous state surveys, it was looking like bass recruitment was starting to suffer as exemplified by the PSD (Proportional Stock Density) number exceeding 60 a couple years ago. The 2006 (I believe) survey showed this PSD number to decrease back into the healthy range (40-60) thanks to a recent crop of small bass that started showing up in the most recent surveys. Will that year class be enough to sustain the good fishing at Patoka Lake? Was that the start of some favorable reproductive years and we'll see more little bass continue to be recruited into the population? We'll have to just wait and see.
The New Phone Book is Here!
So that got me pulling out my 2007 Master catalog and doing a little comparison, and I was intrigued by what I found. This years catalog is actually nearly 8% "thinnner" than last years, which was a whopping 790 pages. So I looked at sections for differences and found increases/decreases in the following categories:
Then I started doing some price comparisons since I have an order with BPS "in transit" as we speak. The good news is that reels and electronics have basically stayed put with no increase in prices from 2007. However, it will cost you more to buy lures this year with an average increase between 2-5% per bait. The interesting exception to this being that most all BPS/XPS brand baits have not increased in price at all (coincidence? I think not). Rod prices have increased an average of 10-20% from last year, along with a 6% increase in the cost of tackle boxes and tackle management systems. The biggie turns out to be "metals", or lead and hooks. Here increases typically range between 10-95% more than last year. Most will be obvious if you compare item to item, but some will fool you if you don't look close. For instance, many sinkers look like they've actually dropped by a dime per package, that is until you look at the weight counts per bag. In some cases the price has dropped a dime, but the count you get has been halved!
I went through my own small order item by item. There are only 15 items and they are all terminal tackle like weights, hooks, and swivels. I just ordered on Christmas Day online and got 2007 prices which are good through Dec. 31 of this year. Had I waited until next week to order, that exact same order (not including shipping which has stayed constant) would have cost me 10.6% more than I just paid.
Most people remember the "Tech Bubble" and the stock market crash from several years back. Currently we're now seeing the "Housing Bubble" burst as the sub-prime mortgage debacle continues. I have to wonder if we aren't seeing the start of an "angling bubble", that while maybe not bursting, is definitely starting to lose air. Tourney participation around here has been down considerably this past year, and circuits have raised entry fees in many cases to offset some of the loss while maintaining historical payoffs. The angling population in general has taken a significant hit recently, as documented in several news articles such as the one in the link. THE Catalog of all fishing catalogs is considerably thinner, but the prices continue to rise. Is this the beginning of the end?
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