Posted by Doug on May 16, 2008 at 10:24:17:
I received this response to a post on another site and thought it may be of interest to Striper fishermen:
"...We have a situation now here at Lake Murray with SCE&G renewing their license to operate for the next 30-50 years and wondering how they are going to manage the flow at the towers to improve water quality and increase oxygen levels in the lake. I think SCE&G should be responsible for initiating a study on the copepod infestation here but SCE&G has "declined". They say their operations aren't a factor in all this. Their dam certainly effects the population of blueback herring and migration/spawning in the river system. The copepods are indigenous to the lake but something has caused the population to explode. My first thought is that its a predator/prey relationship that is out of whack. The baitfish that feed on the copepods may be on decline but DNR hasn't done any kind of baitfish assessment in years. A DNR biologist agreed that I "may be on to something" when I made comments at a recent public hearing on the copepods but it apparently wasn't enough to compel SCE&G to do the study. Their mentality has been, if the 2-5 year old stripers are fat and healthy, then there must be plenty for them to eat. This lake is the toughest lake I've ever been on to try and catch Gizzard shad. You very rarely see them flipping and I can throw to lighted docks at night for hours and maybe get 5 or 6. The last time any Rotenone cove studies to assess Gizzard shad or blueback herring population densities was in 1991, but we've stocked about 15 million Striper fingerlings since then and who knows how many of them shad eating Cormorants we have around here. If we had significant levels of blueback herring, the bait sellers, would catch their bait here instead of driving to Lake Russell."
Woody, Columbia, SC