Shad

[NJ219bands]

Went fishing 🎣 in 40 degrees Carnegie Lake this evening on a cool, sunny day with a strong west wind. Caught nothing with worms 🪱. Caught and released a gizzard shad while ultralight jigging. When I threw it back into the lake, a gull caught, then swallowed it. One of the eight other fishermen snagged shad. Looks like the lake is fished out. Took photos. Cormorants caught then swallowed shad. A great blue heron tried to steal shad from the cormorants but was unsuccessful. A bald eagle 🦅, Canada geese and mallards flew nearby.

[bulletbob]

I'm pretty sure the lake isn't " fished out".. The lake temp was 40 degrees.. Not many warm water species are very active in open water lakes at those temps...

[Jigman13]

It's usually lock and load with panfish just about yr round there. With the surge of non natives pounding that spot daily, I'd lean towards that specific area being fished out. It's utterly disgusting the volume of take that comes from that spot. Guys filling coolers and bags with black and white crappie...short and legal, and over limit, yellow perch, micro white perch, etc. Not to mention how polluted it is... maybe all the people keeping fish from there will get deathly ill from carcinogens and die off?

It's a shame, though. I used to bring my son there bc it was steady, diverse action with the occasional impressive fish. Now it looks like Home Depot at 630 AM. And we released everything we caught.

[NJ219bands]

Last year I caught > 1,000 fish 🐟 in that spot in January and February. This year 50. Probably less next year.

[bulletbob]

I imagine if the area gets that kind of pressure daily, and everything goes into white buckets, not to mention those accursed cormorants, that are worse than any bucket brigade, than yes it could certainly get "fished out".