By Louie Stout

It’s no secret that Juno Lake near Edwardsburg is a good fishing lake. Bluegill and bass fishermen love it.

The Michigan DNR paid a visit there last month to see just how good it is.

“We hadn’t been there for several years, so we wanted to get a good look at it,” said Scott Hanshue, fisheries management biologist.

The fisheries crew set large and small nets to capture young of the year bluegill, forage, non-game fish and whatever they might encounter.

They also ran a shocker boat around the shallows at night. The shocker boat has long electrodes to put out enough juice in the water to stun fish to the surface where they can be netted, measured, scale samples taken and released.

The survey included connecting waters of Christiana and Painter lakes.

The data and scale samples will be analyzed over the winter and plugged into a computer program. The information will allow biologists to compare data with the last time they surveyed the lake.

Although the current results are preliminary, Hanshue says the lake looks in pretty good shape.

“We saw some really nice pike, mostly in Juno, ranging from 21 to 40 inches,” he said. “We captured a lot of bluegill that were age 1 up to nine inches.”

The bulk of the bass population they gathered was around 13 inches although they did turn up some in the 18-inch range.

“We also found perch 2 to 10 inches long and got some really nice crappie up to 13 inches,” Hanshue added.

In addition, they trapped two walleye that were fish planted by the local lake association a few years ago. Other fish included pumpkinseed, rock bass, one smallmouth bass, gar and several species of minnows.

“The rock bass were pretty big compared to what we see in some lakes,” he said.

The crew also encountered a lot of big snapping turtles, including one huge one that took biologists 25 minutes to get out of their nets.

Keep in mind that these surveys tend to be very subjective and results often are dependent on weather conditions. The crew was there during a cool period last month and the lake was a little dirty from heavy rains.

Despite that, biologists will still garner some valuable information to give them a snapshot of the lakes’ fisheries.

We’ll offer a complete analysis after the biologists prepare their final report.