HORSESHOE LAKE STATUS REPORT SUMMARY

Horseshoe Lake presents many challenges to active fishery management. The lake is a large, shallow, fertile, flood plain lake. The lake connects with the Mississippi River via drainage ditches with high water. This allows for uncontrolled fish introduction and escapement. The lake supports high numbers of rough fish including common carp, buffalo, drum, yellow bass, and bighead carp. These fish undoubtedly compete with, and negatively impact reproduction and recruitment of the sport fish. The sediment in the lake contains high levels of toxins including heavy metals. There is little or no aquatic plant growth in the main body of the lake. Despite these limitations the lake continues to support a decent sport fishery for bluegill, crappie, and largemouth bass. The largemouth bass population is currently the best it has been in recent years. The number of bass over 15 inches is very impressive. The bass collected are always in very good body condition. A fish habitat improvement project (Christmas trees) was completed in March of 2004. This project will likely not improve the fishery overall but was well received by local anglers and is currently the best, realistic option to improve sport fishing at Horseshoe Lake.

Largemouth bass CPUE continues to improve with 56 per hour collected in the 2004 survey. This is a dramatic increase from the 6 per hour collected in the 1996 survey. The size structure of the fish collected in the 2004 survey looks very good. The fish are well distributed in several size classes. There is a very impressive number of large fish with RSD- 15 and RSD-18 both exceeding our goals. Reproduction and recruitment appears adequate to support this quality bass population into the coming years. The condition of the bass looks great with an average Wr of 112 in 2004. I am pleasantly surprised by the current numbers and quality of the bass in this lake, considering the high numbers of carp, buffalo, and yellow bass in the lake. This high number of rough fish is likely the major factor influencing the largemouth bass population of this lake.

The bluegill population appears consistent over the last few years. CPUE is up to 305 per hour in the 2004 survey. This is quite an increase from 24 per hour in 1996. PSD continues to meet our goals and RSD-7 remains somewhat low. The condition of the fish collected in the 2004 survey was great with an average Wr of 112. Lower gizzard shad numbers in recent years is likely responsible for the improving bluegill population in this lake.

Crappie are a very important sport fish at Horseshoe Lake. Although the number of crappie collected in the fall electrofishing surveys is low I feel it is worthwhile to present in this status report. CPUE has more than doubled for both white and black crappie from the previous survey. The white crappie collected show a very high percentage of large fish and the black crappie collected show a high percentage of smaller fish. Wr values suggest good growth and condition for both white and black crappie.

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