January-February 2025 • Nebraskaland 49
conditions persist and the lake remains
more than 10 feet below normal, when
trees and other vegetation that have
sprouted from the dry lakebed are
fl ooded, habitat conditions will be as
good as they can get for fi sh.
Wagon Train will be the best test
of how the slot limit works on new
or renovated lakes. "We have a really
good idea of how the bass populations
are going to develop over the fi rst
four to fi ve years under a 21-inch
minimum," Blank said. "If we can
reduce those densities in those early
years, we might be able to produce and
sustain even more large bass in the fi ve
years post-renovation."
Prairie View, near Bennington,
was completed and stocked in 2000.
Electrofi shing surveys in 2022 showed
the lake had a robust bass population,
yet while 60 percent of the fi sh were 12
to 15 inches in length, just 8 percent
topped 15 inches. Harvest of bass there
will hinge on the success of upcoming
eff orts to control curly-leaf pondweed,
a non-native invasive aquatic plant,
that covers the lake by early spring
and basically shuts down the lake to
fi shing.
Prairie Queen and Duck Creek, near
Peru, on the other hand, are just about
a decade old.
At Prairie Queen, bass densities
increased substantially for the fi rst
four years. While sampling catch
rates declined after 2017, the bass size
structure remained fairly constant
until 2024, when the number of fi sh
sampled 15 inches or longer jumped
from 10 percent to 25 percent. One
third of the bass sampled in 2024 were
8 to 12 inches.
Duck Creek also has seen sampling
catch rates decline, but not as much.
Marty Hughes of Aurora lands a largemouth bass from a kayak at Duck Creek Recreation Area in Nemaha County.
ERIC FOWLER, NEBRASKALAND