http://www.bassfan.com/opinion_article.asp?ID=1407#.WBI1W9IrIY0

Excellent article by Joe Balog on the decline of fish populations in Lake Guntersville. I think the decline in giant fish at Fork can also be attributed to this unreasonable "pressure". May also be part of the reason we'll never see a 20+ pound bass out of the more popular tournament lakes in Texas.

I was just there two weeks ago, fished 4 days with a buddy of mine who grew up on the lake and we absolutely killed them ripping square bills in the grass. Lots of average sized and several fish over 6#'s ... one of them went close to 8+

Not saying it can't happen, especially on a small and/or new reservoir but I just do not buy into fishing pressure as the root cause of a decline in fishing especially on larger established reservoirs like Gunterville. Especially lakes that have already weathered steady/heavy fishing pressure. Through time all lakes "cycle" through good times & bad(or less than great) times. We have seen Falcon, Fork, Toledo Bend....go through these "cycles". Sometimes the big "recovery" or resurgence will go with a long term drawdown or low water conditions followed by a big rise in the water level. Essentially creating a "new" lake, at least around the edges. Sometimes you can't even put your finger on the reason for the fishing getting better. I just believe that nature goes through cycles and those reasons outweigh fishing pressure. IMHO.

Fishing pressure may not kill lakes, but it definitely hurts catch rates for the anglers who go to them. Fish can only be caught by spinnerbaits or off the same dock or brush pile so many times before they wise up. Or, worse yet, get taken home to the grease.

That's why most of us can catch a lot more fish in private ponds than at Fork or Lake Tyler.

I completely agree with fishing pressure being a direct correlation to catch rates (educated bass) but not so much with population declines that was mentioned.

I read another article several months ago where the author had been tracking catch rates for different tournaments. The overall size of the winning stringers are down, but there are still good ones coming in. And there is no doubt fishing pressure affects the overall catch rate. The best thing for Guntersville was for T-bend to take it out of the limelight for the last 2 yrs.

Cycles for sure along with the more experienced fish.

the key word here comes right after the forward slash that is just after .com in the URL string that starts with http://www.bassfan.com/" "...

You only burn yourself on the stove so many times before you smarten up. Maybe that's why the "new" lures catch em good while the "older" lures slow down. The cycle of baits could also be part of the "low" numbers of fish caught.

You also have the old warts that catch em better than the new warts. Why?? They have a different wiggle then the new ones??

Guntersville is fine. The sky isn't falling.

Take some time and check out the latest data.

http://www.bassmaster.com/conservation-news/slideshow/guntersville-study

Agree with Mark Jones

The entire tennessee river system is messed up this year due to TVA not generating like they use to or like past couple years. Those fish are use to current and they just don't position themselves like everyone is use to on Guntersville. Those grass mats are huge and they have alot of places to hide.

I agree, esp about the human pressure preventing a 20plus in many Texas lakes.
It's not just fishing but contamination and destruction of optimum environments.

You could probably make this statement on many lakes. Toledo Bend really got on a good cycle the last few years. Rayburn has its ups and downs, heck when the water first came up fishing was tough. Tell we all adjusted and re discovered where the fish were.

The best shot in the arm for T-bend was to be 10 ft. low for over a year. This dried up the bottom muck, allow new shore line vegetation to get started, and overall improved the fertility of the lake. Hard, clean, sandy bottoms make for great spawns and emergent vegetation provides for optimum fry survival. The lake will only get better for the next 2-3 yrs.

I think it is all a cycle.
Too much pressure, low or high water, bad spawns whatever causes the fishing to get tough. People quit coming to that lake and go to another and the lake recovers.
Look at Falcon, same thing there. Was incredible, then due to low water and fishing pressure it got real hard to catch those big ones and numbers. The droves of people quit going for a few years, few tournaments and the lake came up and provided some decent spawning cover. Now they are starting to catch some real good numbers and size.
All a vicious cycle that isn't going to end. Luckily there are a lot of lakes.