Nebraskaland

Jan-Feb 2025 Nebraskaland

NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.

Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1531661

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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

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