We were out on Lake Powell this last weekend and spotted this fish swimming upside down... The pictures dont really do it justice but it was like a football from its back to its belly would have fit my whole hand... What is it?
[signature]
Looks like a gizzard shad.
[signature]
Yeah thats kind of what i was leaning towards, but i wasnt sure because i was expecting to see that black dot behind the gills, but apparently that fades and sometimes vanishes with old age. Well if that was a gizzard shad then that thing was pushing the state record.
[signature]
I believe the lake record for Powell is close to 2 feet, think it's on waynesword.com(couldn't find anything in proclamation). Crazy how big they are. Have caught a couple trolling cranks, one bit a 14 deep huskyjerk. Anyways they are good fighters. Thought I for sure had a record but it was only about 22".
[signature]
According to the state record i seen the record is 2.8lbs and 20 inches long.
[signature]
I call it oversized trash fish if it doesn't fit inside a wiper....[fishin]
[signature]
Interesting, because those are the one's that produce the little ones, that the wipers & stripers eat. They are ugly & smelly, but that is what is saving Powell & Willard. There may not be wipers that can eat one that big, but there are stripers in Powell that can !!!
+1 on that. I grew up in the south catching a lot of wipers (we called them hybrids) and stripers. Those big shad were definitely the bait of choice if you could keep them alive longer than 5 minutes (very temperature and oxygen sensitive). I've caught everything from crappie to gar with some size variation of shad. Even dead, they were prime bait for catfish... and worth a pretty penny. I used to catch them in a throw net and sell them to bait shops for $20/5 gallon bucket. We don't have anywhere close to the shad population in Utah as other places, but I wouldn't call them trash. They are fillet mignon with fins... everything's favorite food.
[signature]
According to Wayne Gustaveson the lake record is 21" 3.4 lbs. Guess I should have took that bugger to the marina. It was kind of hard to measure with it flippin and floppin around plus being slimy and nothing to grab a hold of. Although I'm pretty sure I've heard of bigger ones.
[signature]
The DWR has planted several species of Shad in Lake Powell. They were hoping that the Gizzard Shad's size would help balance out the Threadfin Shad's cycles. The lake level fluctuates so much its hard to keep any kind of decent forage fish to survive.
I hope the Gizzard shad take off personally. Should help things in LP quite a bit. I think with the amount of predators and especially stripers, that eat anything and i mean anything (caught one with a ROCK in its guts). The big stripers have no problems eating 2-3 smallies
[signature]
Your fish in the net is a gizzard shad. I assisted Wayne Gustaveson and his crew with the gill netting at Lake Powell for the last several years. In the upper lake around Red Canyon and Blue Notch, the gizzard shad were the most frequently caught fish during the annual fall sampling. Adult gizzard shad are often over 2 pounds in weight and over 18 inches in length. Young of the year gizzard shad reach about five inches in length and by the next spring are larger than most of the lake's predators can eat. During their first year in Lake Powell the gizzard shad provide a tremendous forage resource for the lake's predatory fish. Only the largest of the lake's adult and mature stripers can eat an adult gizzard shad. Hopefully with the added forage provided by the gizzard shad, we'll have more of those monster stripers to catch in the years ahead.
Mike
[signature]
[quote rippnlips]The DWR has planted several species of Shad in Lake Powell. They were hoping that the Gizzard Shad's size would help balance out the Threadfin Shad's cycles.[/quote]
I was not aware that the Utah DWR had taken credit for the Gizzard Shad. They were accidentally introduced via the San Juan River.
[signature]