2023 Proposed Fishing Regulations

Here is a summary of the QSI (Quality Sunfish Initiative) as presented last night at the meeting by Joe Stewig. It was well presented and very informative. There was a video presented explaining the science behind the idea and how the program objective is intended to work. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G0xQftQJoQ

Also, Joe wanted to answer a few additional questions from last night.

One of the questions had to do with the population size and that years of observations have seen a decline in crappie and sunfish abundance over the last 40 years or so. While we have not conducted any true mark/recapture population estimates, looking at previous creel surveys we have seen a dramatic decline in the number crappie and sunfish caught per acre (see table) in these surveys. Similarly, we saw a large drop in our crappie gill net catches from 1980 – 1991, but catches have since been relatively stable. Bluegill abundance in trap nets has stayed more consistent over time as well with a spike in 1991 (see graph; dashed line are the upper and lower levels that we would expect to see for similar lakes).

	# caught/acre summer creel surveys
	2022	2005	1984
Crappie	2.1	4.9	22.2
Sunfish	10.8	43.6	54.1

	Average harvested size
	2022	2005	1984
Crappie	10.6” (0.7 lbs)	9.6” (0.5 lbs)	8.7” (0.5 lbs)
Sunfish	7.4” (0.33 lbs)	7.2” (0.3 lbs)	7.1” (0.4 lbs)

There was a question about what percentage of the sunfish catch was bluegill? Bluegill made up 70% of the catch in spring 2022 followed by pumpkinseed (25%) and hybrids (5%). I’ve also added the length frequency graph here as well.

Another question was why not implement size limits like we do on other species. The reason that these were not considered was that our human dimension surveys showed lack of support by our anglers for measuring panfish. Also, since bluegill don’t get very big (compared to other species) the slot would have to be very narrow and it was hard to determine what increment made sense (inch, half inch, less). There were also Enforcement issues as officers often allow a little wiggle room on slot fish and with a species that only grows to 10 inches allowing any wiggle room could negate the effectiveness of the regulation. I believe as we gather more information on these lakes with reduced bag limits, we may start looking at incorporating something like X number over 8 inches.

There was a question on bullhead numbers, black bullheads were abundant in the 80’s but dropped precipitously in the 90’s and have been at low ever since. Yellow bullheads are relatively abundant, but have been that way since the mid-80’s.

Finally, there was a question about has substrate changed over time and has that effected spawning habitat for sunfish and crappie over time. From observations that many mentioned last night, I think it is obvious that in some area’s substrates have changed over time at least in the NW part of the lake. While we don’t have any historical substrate data, based on the number of fish that we are seeing in our nets spawning habitat does not seen to be limiting. We have conducted some emergent plant mapping in 2005 and 2019 and we have seen some species change between mappings (maps attached). As you see we do not differentiate between the cattail species. Clearwater Lake has a very diverse emergent and submersed aquatic plant community. The last major plant survey conducted in 2005 found 55 different species of aquatic plants found in the lake.

Proposed Regulations

QSI Brochure

Clearwater Lake Input Form