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My Uncle owns a get away home in West/Central Illinois. It is way out in no man’s land nothing but corn fields in every direction. In fact there isn’t a decent sized town for about an hour in every direction.
It’s on a private set of lakes and the amount of people that live there is pretty limited. One thing thing that is for sure is that the fishing is superb there. The lakes are creek fed but are also old strip mines. Doubly good. The fishery is managed and regularly stocked. They adore their Bass, Bluegill and Crappie fishing there.
There is also Huge channel cats in there. There is regular catches of 15-20lbers. I say huge as a relative term. I know other places have bigger.
So the “Situation” is this. I guess the powers that be at this community Hate the Channel Cats. Because they Say the cats ruin the panfish fishery by gobbling them all up. By the way, the days we fished at these lakes we were easily catching over 100 panfish a day and they were all big. There was no shortage what so ever.
So they say the cats are hurting there panfish fishery. So what have they done? They put out a freaking Kill order on them. They said eat them, and if you don’t eat them, then just thrown them on the shore to die! 😳😳😳
Please give me some good input here guys. This does not seem like a healthy way to manage a lake. If anything I would assume the channel cats would bring, and probably already do bring a healthy balance to the lakes. There is so much cover on these lakes the panfish have tons of places to hide. Plus we had no problems catching them. I just don’t see the thought process behind this idea. This would also ruin a great angling opportunity for the catfish.I
It’s on a private set of lakes and the amount of people that live there is pretty limited. One thing thing that is for sure is that the fishing is superb there. The lakes are creek fed but are also old strip mines. Doubly good. The fishery is managed and regularly stocked. They adore their Bass, Bluegill and Crappie fishing there.
There is also Huge channel cats in there. There is regular catches of 15-20lbers. I say huge as a relative term. I know other places have bigger.
So the “Situation” is this. I guess the powers that be at this community Hate the Channel Cats. Because they Say the cats ruin the panfish fishery by gobbling them all up. By the way, the days we fished at these lakes we were easily catching over 100 panfish a day and they were all big. There was no shortage what so ever.
So they say the cats are hurting there panfish fishery. So what have they done? They put out a freaking Kill order on them. They said eat them, and if you don’t eat them, then just thrown them on the shore to die! 😳😳😳
Please give me some good input here guys. This does not seem like a healthy way to manage a lake. If anything I would assume the channel cats would bring, and probably already do bring a healthy balance to the lakes. There is so much cover on these lakes the panfish have tons of places to hide. Plus we had no problems catching them. I just don’t see the thought process behind this idea. This would also ruin a great angling opportunity for the catfish.I