Fishing Forum

i know a few of you will probably hammer me for this post, but it is just a thought and wanted to know what the UL experts think.

I am all for keeping some fish to eat, and if you stay in the limits of the law, you have every right to haul home what you catch.

My concern and question from you guys who have fished UL most of your life, can the lake support all these fish that are being taken out? i have seen groups of people hauling away 5 gallon buckets full of fish. And from what i understand it isn't just a Saturday morning catch, they are doing it 4-5 days a week. yes most of the pan fish species are prolific breeders. If this is the norm for years, then i guess the lake can handle the pressure?

Seen a thread about license being checked, that's good to hear. a few weeks ago, a friend caught a decent LMB, we didn't measure it, but was prob over 12". the group that was fishing next to us got very upset we through it back. so upset that they left and fished on another dock. wish i understood that jibber jabber so i could have heard all the nasty things they said about us. yet another concern, do they understand limits and laws?

i personally didn't catch a perch in UL till this summer, nor did i hear of many people. but i see a few being taken. I caught 3-4 this summer my self. We let ours go back, though they are my favorite eating fish. has UL ever supported a good perch population? should we consider letting them go in hopes of a better population in a few years?

not bitching, just wanted sone historic info to understand if this is the norm.
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These are just my opinions, as, although I studued fish and wildlife management in college, I have never studued UL and am no expert on UL.
First, UL is very big for a natural desert lake, it is also eutrophic, meaning very furtile in microbiotic life that is the beginning of the food chain. It has a vast shoreline that for the most part consists of shallow vegetation which makes for very good nurseries for most warm waer fish species. UL lake also has numerous underwater springs that feed fresh pure watr into it, not just the Provo, Spanish Fork and other east side streams. All of these things are very good for a desert body of water.
Currently the majority of the biomass is occupied by carp, in UL. Also currently efforts are underway to reduce the carp drasticly. This should free up much of the microbiotic life to be fed upon by young fish of other species.
As far as people not following the current harvest rules concerning adult bass, this will most likely not harm the lake over all, but would more than likely make it less desireable for "sport" fishing for these species. From a biological standpoint it is probably not harmful to the lake. If throwing back a big bass will make others fishing near me move away, I will most likely make a big production of doing so, for the privacy and the laugh.
I have never caught a perch from UL. I have caught many Bass, Bluegill, White bass, Catfish and scads of Crappie.
To summerise, I don't think the panfish being removed at the rate they are is hurting the lake overall and that the removal of millions of pounds of carp will make the lake even more likely to take that pressure.
Just my opinion.
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Bluegills, White Bass and Crappie won't be hurt by over harvest. Perch have never really been a target species in Utah Lake, but may do well the next couple years if the water level stays high. During the last year of the drought, some of the biggest white bass anyone had ever seen were caught. Some may argue that they finally started getting big because they were harvested so heavily during the years of low water. People were taking them out by the truckload and they were very easy to catch.
I caught my first Crappie out of Utah Lake in 1981. Ice fishing. A game officer stopped to chat and told me that he had never seen a Crappie caught. They had been planted many times but he had never actually seen one come back.Now they are very common.
I hate seeing hundreds of tiny fish taken out. I think people get too greedy and probably waste a lot of fish, especially the Crappie. They don't have enough meat on them to be worth taking unless they are nine inch or bigger. But I really don't think taking them out hurts the fishery, I would just like to see more Crappie and less White Bass.Thats only because I would rather eat a dead crow than a White Bass. My opinion. But I do love the Crappie and gills.
The carp removal program should just make Utah Lake better and better. The real good days of the lake may be just around the corner. Plenty of fishies for everybody and a great diversity of species for everyone. Lets hope.

Bob
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I can share your frustration on this issue. The good thing is that it is generally small areas that get hammered like you are seeing. As big as Utah Lake is, it has relatively few easy access points. These places- the harbors, Knolls, pumphouse, Camelot, airport road, Lincoln Beach, get fished hard. I think it's a telling fact that people can return to the same places and catch buckets of fish. Imagine how many fish are spread around the other 98% of the lake that is not so easily accessible. Definitely call the fish cops if you see people not following the rules. They may not help immediately, but if enough calls come in they start to come around more often. One guy was saying he's been checked twice at the pumphouse this year- that's got to be some kind of record. Utah Lake is an incredible fishery. I can't wait to see the effects of the carp removal program.
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Are you talking about the famous Timpanogos Lake? There is over 96,000 acres of water. There is over 24 different species of fish that have been introduced in this lake. So what I am saying is that is a lot of lake and a lot of pan fish. There has been people illegally taking big catch rates out of that lake for a long time. Just an example the walleye snagging used to be tremendous at the bubble up, the provo river, the spanish fork river, and stinking beach. The walleye are still there and in big numbers. It is my belief that Timpanogos Lake can produce many more bucket fulls of Pan Fish and still be excellant fishing. Just a tidbit of my favorite trivia. So go rip some lips LOL
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The truth is with a fertile lake like UL, the crappie and gills are going to get out of hand if the water stays up and they aren't routinely harvested. Then you will catch nothing but runts. Mature female crappie can produce as many as 250,000 eggs in a single spawn. Take that times a one percent survival rate and you get 2500 new fish per female. Mature white bass can deposit over a half-million eggs and bluegill produce about a third as many as crappie. Gills stick to cover and hide around rocks which gives the population a foothold despite predation. Perch are slower to sustain a population because they deposit egg strands of around 20,000 on submerged vegetation and the gills have caviar with their crackers. I don't believe, with the incredible amount of forage in that lake, that it is necessary to release perch, but I think it is a good practice until they are more well established. After all, this is high desert and droughts aren't uncommon. That makes the perch population particularly susceptible to spawning habitat loss. White bass roam open water most of the year and can be hard to pinpoint at times. That lake is so overrun with them that it is hard to catch any over 10 inches most of the year, so I show people how to bust the snot out of them whenever I get on to a good location. When panfish are found in wintering areas and during the spawn they can be very easy to catch, but there aren't many people that know where to find them with consistency throughout the year. Choosing the right baits, lures, and presentations also eludes most. That's why I give detailed posts on how to catch them. Surprisingly few people have applied what I have passed along and I am clawing at the keyboard when I read posts that say things like" We used worms 4-6 feet and caught a few but it was pretty slow." Aaaaargh! I caught almost 200 today and kept a limit of crappie... and, i'm not picking dried worm entrails from under my fingernails. Dinner was oh soooo delicious. Anyway, like I was saying... Walleye are abundant there too but they have so much to eat that trying to get one to take a lure is like dangling a carrot in front of me at a Chinese buffet. The largemouth are really getting esablished and I have seen more this year then I can recall previously. My big gripe about bucket mouths is everyone else's. There are way too many people keeping LMB over the size limit. Seriously folks, I encourage all of you to pass the word that largemouth taste like garbage compared to my beloved crappie and that is one more reason to let them go. That and none of us would mind having some tournament quality pig fishing close to home.[]
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Im all ears. I catch white bass and bliuegill on kind of a hit and miss bassis. I guess the days when everybody catches them I do. But I would love to know how to catch white bass consistently. So send any info as to where, what and how. thanks
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I have to agree with fishguru on what he said about the gills and crappie. In my experience, I've seen crappie overpopulate and stunt extremely quickly in small bodies of water. In larger bodies of water, this can happen if the balance of predator fish and bait fish is off. However, in a lake the size of UL, it is really hard to put a dent in them. I would imagine that most people target gills and crappie during the spawn and through the ice. There are still lots of places for them to hide other parts of the year in places that aren't as easily accessible from the shore or ice. Based on the reports that I've read here, I don't imagine too many of yall with boats are targeting crappie or gills. I would if I had one but I'm kinda strange that way. Nothing seems to get me more excited than catching an 8 inch or better gill. I know there has to be some knee-bream in UL somewhere. I love crappie. Black crappie, white crappie, hybrid crappie, the blacknose crappie...yeah, crappie. I keep hoping that taking limits of crappie home will produce some in the 14-18 inch range one day but it may be that the growing season in UL is too short for them to get that big. I can still dream about those big slabs though...[]
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sorry guys, i posted this and had to leave on a week trip to the east coast. nope, no time to fish, all business.
thanks for all the responses. and dang good ones, too.

Ok, i won't worry too much about the buckets'o fish leaving the lake.

i return all LMB and all the perch. i slay my fair share of white bass all year, and eat a lot of them. and some mighty fine tasting gills. all but a few walleye have snuck past me. but there is allways this year. i generally don't keep many crappie. don't get me wrong, i love to eat them, but am spoiled by Brownlee resivoir, and preffer to clean them 12-14" crappie over these little guys...

my quest this year is a new state record catfish, or at least UL record catfish. ok, i'll settle for my own personal UL record.

i am in the pontoon boat appropriatley name "clothing optional" can't wait for this stinking cold white crap to leave...
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Brownlee will sure spoil you for sure. It's that drive in from Cambridge that used to get to me, or was it Cambridge?

I have caught more and bigger Crappie this year than ever before, maybe I'm geting better, maybe the're getting bigger. Hard sayin, not knowin.
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