By Louie Stout

The once-famed redear sunfish population at Lake George appears to be diminishing, but the bass and pike population seem to be doing fine.

That’s the assessment of Indiana District Fisheries Biologist Matt Horsley who was there for a quick look at the fish population last June.

Lake George is in northeast Indiana and straddles the Indiana Michigan border. The public access is in Michigan, therefore Michigan regulations must be followed by boating anglers who use that access.

The survey included a look at the redear population which was so good two decades ago that Michigan used it to collect brood stock for stockings in other lakes.

Horsley said his crew collected considerably fewer redears than they did when they surveyed the lake in 2001.

“We didn’t see many large ones, either,” he said. “In 2001, 21 percent of the fish we captured were 10 inches or longer and several were up to 12 inches. This time, our biggest was only 9 inches.

“It could have been a timing thing due to when we were there, so we may have missed the bigger fish.”

Bluegill numbers were high and similar to what biologists saw there in 2001. However, growth was slow for the one- and two-year olds but they grow into the state average when they get older.

Although the brief survey didn’t specifically target bass, Horsley said the lake, which was the first in Indiana to suffer from the largemouth bass virus (2000), is a good largemouth fishery based up angler reports and a 2017 survey.

“When we looked at the lake in 2017, the bass had rebounded well,” he said. “Of the fish we captured, 20 percent were over 14 inches and we got them up to 18.2 inches. There are a few smallmouth in the lake, but we didn’t see any when we surveyed it.”

Northern pike have flourished. Horsley said his crew captured 32 pike in nets last summer and most were over the 24-inch mark. The largest was 36 inches.

One big concern, he noted, is the invasion of the starry stonewart, a nasty exotic algae that grows on the bottom and gets as thick as a Brillo Pad. It’s a plant that is difficult to eradicate and one that fish don’t like to use as cover habitat.

“I pulled out a section off the bottom and it had small fish stuck in it,” noted Horsley. “We’ve seen it grow to 25 feet and become so dense that chemicals don’t always kill all of it, and it grows at an alarming rate.”

The survey did turn up a few walleyes that are stocked about 2,500 annually by the lake association. Last fall, the DNR added 3,000 extra walleyes it raised that averaged about 7 inches when they were planted.