By Louie Stout

Surveys Reveal Good Panfish LakesHoosier panfishermen who haven’t spent much time on Pleasant and Riddles lakes in southern St. Joseph County, or Bass Lake in Starke County, might want to put them on their radar.

District fisheries biologist Tom Bacula has spent the past month conducting surveys of those lakes and says they’re looking good for bluegills and crappies.

Pleasant Lake (29 acres) lies in Lakeville along U.S. 31 and Riddles Lake (77 acres) is connected to it via a channel on the south east end of the lake.

“We saw a lot of nice bluegills in both of those lakes and some nice redear,” said Bacula. “We actually saw more bluegills than we’ve seen in previous surveys at Riddles and we saw some pretty nice pumpkinseeds, too.”

Riddles is especially noted for its crappie, and while the DNR crew found quite a few there, nearly half of its catch with shocking gear and gill nets was comprised of bluegill.

They didn’t get many bass, but Bacula says that could be due to the time of year.

“We were out there this spring doing some work and saw some quality bass,” he added. “Our survey showed more legal bass in the lake, but not as many bass as far as total numbers.”

The biologist said that one drawback to the lake is that it has a lot of big shad that were put there illegally. Shad compete with native fish and have no value as table fare.

“The good news is we didn’t see as many as we have in years’ past,” he added.

Bass Lake is a misnomer, since largemouth bass fishing in the 1,345-acre lake near Knox, Ind. really isn’t that good. However, it’s producing good crappie, white bass and catfish and the walleye fishing isn’t bad, either.

“We had a creel survey going there and anglers had an incredible spring for crappie fishing,” said Bacula. “The lake has a good year class of 9 to 10 inchers.”

Crappie fishing was so good, in fact, that conservation officers wrote several violations to people who exceeded the daily bag limit of 25 fish.

The channel catfishing also is exceptional at Bass Lake. Bacula turned up several, including fish in the 5- to 6-pound class.

“There appears to be more ‘cats than we saw in a 2010 survey,” he offered.

Walleye fishing is fair on the lake. It wasn’t stocked in 2012 but remnants of a 2011 stocking were apparent. Bacula said those walleyes stocked two years ago measured from 13 to 14.5 inches long.

Bass Lake also has an abundance of white bass that measure 11 to 12.5 inches.

Bass, Indiana’s fourth largest natural lake, is relatively shallow with large shallow flats and very little weed growth or habitat for fish like largemouth bass.