Largemouth Bass and Other Fishes in Ridge Lake, Illinois, 1941-1963

Abstract

Ridge Lake was stocked with 335 yearling largemouth bass and 100 adults in 1941, 129 bluegills in 1944, 138 warmouths in 1949, and varying numbers of channel catfish in 1951, 1952, and 1957. After an attempt to remove all bluegills by draining the lake and leaving the lake basin emptv over the winter of 1959-1960, 585 lake chubsuckers and 4,500 hybrid sunfishes were stocked in the spring of 1960. Since the beginning of this study in 1941, 29,700 largemouth bass, 390.000 bluegills, and about 10,000 warmouths have been permanently removed from the lake. The lake now (1968) contains adequate numbers of all species stocked except channel catfish, which did not reproduce successfully in standing water.  A complete creel census has been conducted at Ridge Lake each summer except in 1941 and 1943, when the lake was closed to public fishing. In addition, the lake was drained and the fishes were censused in the springs of 1943, 1945, 1947, 1949, 1951, 1953, 1956, 1959 (fall), and 1963, and selected kinds, sizes, and numbers of fish were held alive and restocked (Tables 1-4). One of the more important aspects of the Ridge Lake study is that, because it is a long-term investigation, it demonstrates the variability of a fairly simple population of common fishes, not only in numbers and total weight, but also in the yield obtainable from angling.