This is to my "...interested fishing buddies of mine from Missouri to Texas who are concerned as well about the future of their favorite species, the muskie and striper. The subject of introducing supplement forage bases for their particular specie with the long-term hope of developing a trophy fishery has long been a question in all of our minds.
What do you know about blueback herring? We know they are in the Alosid family with alewife, hickory and American shad. I also know they have been accidentally introduced into some southern tier reservoirs with good, measurable results on certain species and not so good on others.
We're in a off and on again debate here in Texas about bringing Lake Texoma (approx. 90,000 surface acres of water) back to trophy (striper) status and what it would take to get it there and maintain it. As you may already know, stripers spawn successfully in Texoma due to the high salinity in the Red River.
Consequently, there are several kazillion small stripers and no minimum length limit. However, there is an upper length limit of 20"; that is of the 10-fish per person per day limit, only two of those fish can be 20" or over. Their main forage are threadfin and gizzard shad.
We were hoping to find someone like yourself from the eastern U.S. who might have had some exposure to studies that have been done using Alosids as forage and the pluses/minuses associated with it. We know they are not only plankton eaters but fish egg eaters as well but their spawning cycle is at a different time than the esox (muskellunge) and striper (morone?), so that may not present a problem like occurs with the northern pike and muskellunge spawning cycles being so close together.
Texoma does have a population of largemouth bass and the smallmouth fishery is coming of age. Blue catfish and white bass are abundant as well. Walleyes were stocked many, many years ago but never really established themselves. I was curious to get an eastern opinion on the blueback specifically. Studies that I've read concerning the trophy striper fishery on the Colorado River (Lake Mohave) indicate their main forage is carp (high protein) and ideal 53-58 degree water temps. Those kind of temps are hard to find on Texoma during the months of July thru September. We were curious and since I had your e-mail address anyway, I thought I'd ask. I don't know if Bernie Dowler might shed some light or not or if maybe you might have a good contact in the Maryland to South Carolina corridor or not.
Thanks for any assistance you can provide in that direction.
Best Regards, Jim"
Anyone who has comments, I will forward on to Jim.