Delw
Member
Apache Lake AZ gill netting survey 4-20-06
What a blast with some great news and some not so great news.
Game and fish employees
Jim W
Rich W
Kurt (didn’t get your last name sorry)
AzWalleye Club members
Jerry N AKA AZwalleye)
Darryl (just met today, and his cousin?)
AzBassZone and AzBass Federation Member
Del W AKA ME
The general Idea was to find out what fish are where and what species, primarily looking for walleye and the seemed to be vanished Small Mouth bass.
The night before 13 gill nets, approx. 150 feet long and 6-8 feet wide with varying mesh sizes were dropped in 13 different areas. To be picked up the following morning by the above individuals. Fish were to be counted, measured and weighed.
Rich, Kurt Jerry and I took one boat and headed south of the marina where 4 nets were places and 2 more just north of the marina, Jim , Darryl and his cousin took the other boat and went north around turtle island and above after 7 nets.
The 4 nets south of the marina where places that always held small mouth bass in the years my daughter and I fished for them, so I was sure we were going to get a few, so sure I had a side bet with jerry.
As usual I was pretty excited about this, because I always wanted to know what could be pulled up from the bottom, hey you just never know, what and how big something is under water.
The 4 nets south of the marina towards the dam Produced HUGE quantities of Yellow bass, shad and some really nice Flat heads, the 2 nets north of the marina produced a few yellows (about a 1/2 per net than farther south) a lot of shad.
Of those 2 nets north of the marina the last one in a cove on the east side was our lowest amount of fish in the net. Only having less than 25 yellows and about 30 shad.
Fish Caught, were 2 blue gills, hundreds and hundreds of shad, Hundreds of yellow Bass( some really giant ones) a few carp, 1 buffalo fish, a few Large mouth bass, quite a Few Walleye's , a few carp, one giant crawdad, One Giant Buffalo fish
(I will try to get the actual numbers of fish from Rich, if they don’t mind. it will show weights and lengths and numbers.
My take on the fish
Largemouth bass:
For the Large mouth Bass, They all looked healthy one was about 3lbs one was about 2 lbs.
The electro fishing survey in OCT produced a lot more
Small Mouth Bass
Gill netting produced Nothing, the Oct, electrofishing survey produced Nothing. Myself I always thought they were still in there until today. now I beleive they are not there.
Walleye:
The walleye are HUGE in that lake, and some of the ones we caught were carry overs from a few years past (which was one point of this survey, since the AZwalleye Club does a lot of restocking of walleyes in our AZ lakes). Up to 5-6lbs.
The electro fishing survey in OCT produced one about 6 inches.
Shad:
A very good population of shad and the sizes were around 3-4 inches
Some of the shad in the nets were so thick we just had too approx the count on them.
The electro fishing survey in OCT produced about the same amount as gill nets.
Carp
They are there, not many in the nets. But I am betting Jim W was happy
The electro fishing survey in OCT produced a bunch of them. And some very big ones.
Buffalo fish
Just one and he was huge, the scale topped out at 30lbs and he easily topped that maybe 40-45lbs?
The electro fishing survey in OCT produced a bunch of them and some very very big ones.
Bluegill
We only caught 2 in the nets, unlike the Oct, electro fishing adventure I was on where we zapped a bunch of sunfish and bluegills
I saved the best for the last.
YELLOW BASS:
Unbelievable, if you ever been to lake pleasant when the white Bass were being caught, it’s about like that Just hundreds of fish in the nets. Some of them were pretty close to the 2lb range; Jims Boat said they have a few that would have broken the state record.
The electro fishing survey in OCT I don’t think produced many yellow bass. (It’s mainly a deep water Fish. so this might be why)
