EWC,
Shocking only goes to 8 feet under the optimum conditions, at least off a boat boom. I have been in my fair share of shocking boats, both before and after I was in college. It was HIGHLY effective on Crab Orchard lake, a eutrophic shallow and murky water lake with most depths being 5-8 feet. It was far LESS effective on Kinkaid Lake where the depths of such fish were condiserably deeper, the desired quarry in many cases, muskellunge, were not as affected by the current and could usually dart before being stunned or would make it far enough from being stunned that they would elude the net. Muskies had ot be netted in fact to be surveyed correctly, and only during the spawning season. Still somehow, they always kept placing their nets during the week of a large consistent cold front, and their numbers were dwindling from when they would plant them later when they first began.
The statement that weather and water conditions directly effect the relevancy of information taken by shocking in water where they do not exist at a point in time? Can't shock fish that aren't there. Look...I've been in the boat with biologists. Alot of them ARE anglers and know quite well what they are doing. Props. There are more than a few though, that do almost assanine things...placing nets along an island that has a 100 yard shallow flat running out from it before spilling into the abyss and wondering "Why that net doesn't produce?" for starters...when any angler worth their salt could tell you that the fish in that area aren't even aware that island exists because their shallow water was 100 yards out from it. The fisheries biologists who ARE astute anglers and knowledgeable in the area of interacting with fish on that level are credits to their field and what we need more of. There are then folks that for some odd reason choose the field who don't even know how to cast the rod, and then try to plug a fishery that can only be logically assessed from the standpoint of recreational angling into a math formula, and consider that gospel. I think you missed what I said. EVEN if shocking and formulas therein calculate accurately the number of fish in an given area...that DOES NOT MATTER> What matters, in the case of nearly ALL TN species AND FISHERIES is how many are being caught! It wouldn't matter how many trout were IN the Caney Fork, if they weren't being caught, they wouldnt generate revenue and they couldn't be stocked and then biologists would start losing their jobs. Does that make sense?
The only census that really ULTIMATELY matters inthese fisheries are what is CAUGHT. As for that, I remember reading the TU informational kiosk at the Happy Hollow ramp and while it provides good info on release and limits and the species themselves, it prints AS GOSPEL that according to SHOCKING there are only a couple fish right above 20" if that in a given mile of that river. Funny...my own creel has shown much higher than that, and judging by the nature of that...that I'm not even coming close to catching all the fish in a given section...there are FAR more than that in there. One SPECIFIC SPOT on the river produced a fish over 23.5" for me 5 trips consecutively, and lost a GIANT.
We used to fish behind the biologists up in Illinois, pulling bass off the channel breaklines on Newton Lake, a powerplant lake. One of them Illinois biologists had a tracking bug in one of them and we happened to pull it up, so he came over. We had a nice conversation and the kid finally said "What's out there? All my fish keep heading out there!"
...my dad and I both looked at each other and kinda grinned...
It was the creek channel, num-nuts. The fish were living in deep water and these guys still thought they were supposed to be crouched under some lily pad or brushpile in 5 feet of water. One time they got lucky, I hear, and spiked a school of bass that had come up to an 8 foot breakline by the boat dock and they flushed up like a covey of quail. The guys had never seen that, but of course, a good angler would know that those bass were schooled up most of the time and they just lucked out and hit the needle in the haystack when they moved up during optimal conditions [warm summer muggy day, almost always the best fishing].
Gil,
You never got it. I was never against flyfishing as a tactic. Does it have limitations that never get discussed? Yes. Does it get put on a pedestal? OOOOH yes. But any method in the right hands can be effective and catch fish. I just don't consider it the best way to target the largest trout under most circumstances. The only thing I have against it is...THE CULT. FLYFISHING ONLY! Where they turn a method into a MADNESS that pretty much says "You believe what we believe, do as we do, or you don't get to play..." and that sadly is what alot of waters are turning into or trying to. I don't mind people doing what they do, but the day they try to impose those methods and beliefs onto others is ridiculous. What they tried to do on the Clinch is a good show of that. I've told you what I think of the regs. If you want to throw something that imitates the larger prey of most of these predators on a big pixie stick, go for it. That's your deal. I fished regularly with a flyfishing GUIDE from East TN and then the saltwater fisheries of Port St. Jo....want a number and a ref? He had a 140 foot cast, and was just as good with a spey. But he would harvest fish more mercilessly than I did, and honestly was WAY more in your face that I'd ever have the gumption to be.
I really haven't fished that river that long, and I admit that. But it was always ASTOUNDING to me how things I had heard preached as GOSPEL were dispelled on almost a trip-by-trip basis. "Can't catch fish under two gens...and its dangerous" Well, knock that one off. "Can't catch trout under murky water..." Check...
"The Caney CAN'T GROW TROUT OVER 14 POUNDS BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF MACROINVERTEBRATES [FROM THE MOUTH OF A FLYFISHING GUIDE I KID YOU NOT, SPEAKING ON BROWN TROUT...this is your JOB, and you don't even know what your fish are EATING?!?! Know how many browns' stomach's I've seen? KNOW HOW MANY HELLGRAMITES OR INSECTS I FOUND IN FISH OVER 20"? NONE! ALL THREADFINS AND SCULPINS].
Look, you can't fault me for thinking what I think. It's based on nothing but first hand and second hand on the water experience. You want a good measure of just how many big fish are in that river? Go down to the gen cut and throw a big stick bait and watch how many 28" + fish turn on it. There is at least one brown down there I saw routinely that looked like a razorback boar [hence my using that term thereafter] that had to be 20 pounds. You think if muskies over 36" in a still water environment, a 12 pound fish were eluding shocking regularly, that a 20 pound brown in the current wouldn't have a problem getting away? Not saying it CAN'T happen, but not likely.
Wanna talk about biologists EWC? I think TN's programs are SUPERB, but Illinois? Trained biologists are stocking MUSKELLUNGE into lakes under 200 acres with a maximum depth of 12 feet, only in a few spots with no forage base other than bluegills and bass [not really forage, but they eat what's there...] with no interest in the species in that area, and risking the collapse of already established and desirable bass and panfish populations in an environment MADE for them, with NO stunted populations...I'd like to see how they're justifying that...what FORMULA they're using....