...Every once in a while, I’ll find a crawfish in one, and very rarely I’ll find what appears to be a minnow of some kind, but they mostly look like threadfin shad.
Another thing I have found when I determine the sex of the skinny fish is that 90 percent of the ones that look malnourished are females. I’m not a fisheries biologist, but I can tell you it is easy to determine the sex of a striped bass.
My thought is with there being so many skinny females, it is possible that the stress of the spawn is causing these fish to look like they do.
Another case in point: This year at Stripe-R-Rama, the largest overnight striper fishing tournament that was held in early June out of South Cove on Lake Mead, not only were the weights of the top six teams down from previous years, but the largest striper out of over 1,000 fish that were brought in didn’t even weigh 3 pounds.
I decided to call the local fish biologist and ask for his opinion on what is happening at Lake Mead this year.
I spoke with Matt Chmiel, who is the fisheries program manager at Region 3. Chmiel had some thoughts on what he believes may be the cause of the skinny fish.
First of all, Matt said that this phenomenon is nothing new for Lake Mead. He noted that this happens almost every year. And he believes the issue may be related to the water temperature.
“Younger fish are more thermal tolerant,” he said. “It is an age class thing.”
Chmiel noted that the younger fish are generally in better health as they are able to forage in higher water temperatures, and the older age class fish are OK, as they can eat just about anything they find. It is just the fish that are in the middle-age class that are skinny, as they have trouble finding enough to eat....
Read thre rest: https://kdminer.com/news/2018/jul/03/la ... ns-stress/
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