5/14/21 Truman Lake Fisheries Biologist update
We had quite a bit going on at Truman Lake this week. Thanks to the work of the staff at Blind Pony and Lost Valley Hatcheries, we had a great year for walleye! I don’t have the final numbers yet, but about 150,000 walleye were stocked near Osage Bluff earlier this week. These fish were about 1-2″ long. Between stocking and natural recruitment, I believe we should have 3 good year classes of walleye in a row now. Truman isn’t going to suddenly turn into a top notch walleye fishery, but I’m hopeful there may be an uptick in the quality of fishing over the next few years.
We also got out and did some electrofishing for black bass. Unfortunately, our bass catch rates were pretty low. The numbers of small, one year old fish were decent, but we weren’t seeing a lot of big fish. I’ve heard a lot of good fishing reports on bass over the last couple years and I could try to explain away the low numbers with some extenuating factors, but I can’t help but question if we are regressing back after a few good years.
I also threw in a photo to show the variety of colorful sunfish in Truman Lake. The photo includes green sunfish, longear sunfish and warmouth.
