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I was very pleased to get a first look at the data collected from shoreline seining this year from Cedar Bluff. Cedar Bluff received a stocking of our early spawn largemouth bass. On June 1, 2011 CDBR was stocked with 115,450 1-2 inch early spawned largemouth bass fingerlings. About 15,000 of these fish were marked with OTC, a chemical mark that can be used to determine if a fish was stocked or wild spawned.
The bass sampled during June 2011 could be divided into distinct length groups. There was one bass 1 1\4 inches long, one 1 1\2 inches long, eleven 2 inches long, and three over 3 inches in length. The smallest fish were likely wild spawn, while the largest fish were yearlings from the 2010 hatch (we don't know if they were wild or stocked as we didn't get any marked last year). The 11 mid-sized fish appear to be from those stocked on June 1 based on the OTC marks.
The July 2011 seining sample showed the stocked fish had already exceeded 3 inches in length. The fish were growing at about 1 inch per month, so the hope is these stocked fish will exceed five inches going into the winter. That larger size is important to overwinter survival. They are on a pace that should meet or exceed that.
This information is subject to review and may be amended, but I thought you would be interested in knowing what we know right now. It will be helpful to collect yearling largemouth bass during spring electrofishing samples in 2012 to see how the stocked fish fared their first winter.
Excerpts in this text were from Tom Mosher's draft report.
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