Lake Everett (Fort Wayne, Indiana) fishing
Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 10:06 pm
I really, really wanted this small lake (42 acres) to be fun, since most decent fishing is a minimum of 45min to an hour from Fort Wayne. Lake Everett is just a few minutes NW, so having something close enough for after-work hours sounded great. It's pretty enough -- surrounded by woods and a handful of simple cottages/homes.
https://goo.gl/maps/jiUiA
Supposedly it used to be a panfish haven, but now it's absolutely terrible. I've given it a fair shake over the last couple of years (a dozen or so trips at various points in the season) and have given up. The few bass I've caught were 12-14" and the panfish were consistently tiny.
That's all thanks to being completely overrun by shad. Years ago, the DNR stocked it with musky to help combat the shad populations, which only helped minimally. In 2005 or so, they resorted to a large scale fish kill-off from which the lake apparently hasn't recovered. And the shad returned anyway...
https://goo.gl/maps/jiUiA
Supposedly it used to be a panfish haven, but now it's absolutely terrible. I've given it a fair shake over the last couple of years (a dozen or so trips at various points in the season) and have given up. The few bass I've caught were 12-14" and the panfish were consistently tiny.
That's all thanks to being completely overrun by shad. Years ago, the DNR stocked it with musky to help combat the shad populations, which only helped minimally. In 2005 or so, they resorted to a large scale fish kill-off from which the lake apparently hasn't recovered. And the shad returned anyway...