Fishing Forum

seriously? I'm not much for slimers but catching those big fat bows at starvation is pretty fun. Wish the berry had those quality bows, it would save me a little bit of gas.
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They do! Just have to find them, plus they stock way more into Strawberry/SC so your trying to get through more of the smaller ones.
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yeah there are good bows at the berry just so few and far between, seems like starvy has an amazing age class of fat bows right now.
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the bows in the berry are better i did get one bow at starvation that was close to 23 or 24 inches but not as fat as these here are a few from the berry in the past few weeks tie dye has the picture of the one from starvation
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duckdog you are the man, nice fish! but you guys know what I mean, for the average rainbow and average catch, starvation kills the berry hands down! Strawberry should have that sort of quality/quantity scenario with rainbows.
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It's a numbers game. Too many fishermen and too few rainbows at Strawberry. Too far to drive for most of the Wasatch Front fishermen to go to Starvation. If Starvation was as close as Strawberry, it would get enough pressure that the bows would be much smaller.
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[cool][#0000ff]I recently made a couple of inquiries to DWR folks about the Starvy bow program. In addition to suggestions that the fish in Starvy were a slightly different strain than the ones in Strawberry, I got this response:[/#0000ff]
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We received an email from our Central Region aquatics staff in which you were asking questions about the rainbow stocking program in Starvation Reservoir. Here are some basic details:

Started: 2006 with about 19,000 6" rainbows from Whiterocks Hatchery.

In 2007, Whiterocks continued to stock this water for us with 58,000 6" fish.

Not stocked in 2008.

Nice rainbows started showing up in the creel in 2009, according to the old regional manager (Roger Schneidervin). He pushed to make this happen and was the first angler to report (to my knowledge) great rainbow fishing over there.

Since 2009, Jones Hole National Fish Hatchery took over stocking this water with a 10" fish in October. They stock about 50,000 of them each year and we have them on the schedule to continue this through at least 2013. Given how popular it has become, I'd like to keep it on the stocking request indefinitely.

As far as future plans, we have a creel scheduled there for 2015 or 2016 (which really isn't that far away), but that will help us evaluate the popularity of this water and how much people are harvesting. In the meantime, we did attempt creel cards at Starvation this summer, but ran into some difficulty with that. We did have a few responses and those responses do not support what we are hearing through the grapevine. The responses showed some harvest per angling group, but not folks taking their limits. On the other hand, we have heard that folks are harvesting a lot (don't get me wrong this is good, we just need to evaluate whether our stocking program is adequate given the popular fishery Roger and his staff at the time created).

Finally, there may be some concern that this additional fishery will impact the fisheries already there in Starvation. Our netting data isn't supporting that. We see no differences in species assemblage, size of target species (especially walleye) than normal environmental variation causes, not to this point at least. It is an interesting fishery and has been very successful for us. Thus, unless our creel suggests otherwise, we will likely continue to manage it similarly into the future.

If this is not enough, let me know. I can try to dig up some more info, but hope this helps a little.

Trina

Trina Hedrick
NE Region Aquatics Manager
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
318 N. Vernal Ave.
Vernal, UT 84078
435-247-1554 (ph)
435-789-8343 (fax)
435-790-2283 (cell)
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[quote Fishrmn]It's a numbers game. Too many fishermen and too few rainbows at Strawberry. Too far to drive for most of the Wasatch Front fishermen to go to Starvation. If Starvation was as close as Strawberry, it would get enough pressure that the bows would be much smaller.[/quote]

+1
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so are they a different strain?
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Duckdog,
Do you answer PMs?
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Sounds like they are planting bigger bows than what Strawberry get. Plus with the no regs on size for Strawberry on Rainbow and as in Ducks picture, people KEEP all they catch.
I like the answer about closer too. I am sure Strawberry gets more pressure.
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[quote Fishrmn]It's a numbers game. Too many fishermen and too few rainbows at Strawberry. Too far to drive for most of the Wasatch Front fishermen to go to Starvation. If Starvation was as close as Strawberry, it would get enough pressure that the bows would be much smaller.[/quote]

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Fish don't get big by magic. Quality water, forage and time to grow. A fish can't grow big sitting in the bottom of a bucket. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against legal harvest but I personally would rather catch several larger 18"+ trout (and let them go again) than a bunch of little 12-14" trout. I'm glad the Basin waters take some effort to get to and that Strawberry skims off a lot of the pressure. I'm also glad I live in the Basin[cool]
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I'd argue that plenty of bows get harvested at starvation. everyone I saw had stringers full of bows. can't imagine how many get taken out of there. Guess stock larger and more at the berry if we want to see a quality bow fishery instead of a sluggish cutt fishery. Oh the possibilities the berry could have. Guess I'll spend the extra bucks to drive past that place.
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i have kept more rainbows this year then i ever do but the kids like them smoked the thing you dont see in the pictures is that we have gotten 20 plus bows over 23 inches some off the bigger ones have been 6 plus pound fish and in most trips i do not do reports unless i keep fish for picture
ive been it starvation 3 time in the last 12 days only one bow and one brown that was even close to and the didnt have the weight the berry fish have but this is the first year i have fished starvation and am just figuring it out it may take a year or two before i can put a finger on the big one all the time
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Dunno what you are talking about. We catch 17-19" bows with regularity at Strawberry. In fact I rarely catch one smaller than 15" where we fish.

This fall has definitely been more of a Cutthroat haul though.
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I fish strawberry quite a bit, not nearly as much as others. I know some have it dialed down and I compare it to duck hunting, people complain about certain wma's and I scratch my head cause I can hunt the same wma's and slay them, so I understand the part about figuring areas out. but the majority of the bows aren't nearly as healthy and big and fat like starvation on average. There are some that have it dialed in and can catch bigguns like duckdog and others in areas but I'm talking just in general if I took 50 regular fisherman and averaged their rainbow catches compared to 50 fisherman at the berry. than starvation would have much bigger averages. Starvy has a much greater quality/quantity ratio.
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[quote utahgolf]so are they a different strain?[/quote]

[cool][#0000ff]I tried to find one of the email communications I had with the folks in Vernal but couldn't locate it. But, as I recall, they mentioned that there were a couple of strains of rainbows from the Jones Hole hatchery and they were slightly different than the ones from the hatcheries that supply most other Utah waters.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Minor differences in strains can help in matters of disease resistance, etc. But the determining factors for growth rate and ultimate size attained are more along the lines of available food sources, growing season, population density, etc. In other words, any given water will only produce so many pounds of fish per year. Fewer fish...bigger fish.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The bows in the Berry have proven to reach weights well over 10 pounds. I have not heard of any from Starvation bigger than about 26 inches and maybe 8 pounds. They have been in there long enough to see some bigger if the lake can truly produce them. They DO grow fast...from the 10 to 13 inch sizes planted...the same as Strawberry. But something in the food chain slows them down after they pass 20 inches. I suspect that the declining population of chubs in Starvation might have some influence.[/#0000ff]
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i think this over abundant food source has something to do with the berry size have seen nearly as many in starvation
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I agree Utahgolf.
Yesterday I had 4 rainbows all over 18inches at Starvation by 10am. I could never do that from shore at the berry.
Problem was, it took a 197 mile round trip drive to get them.
There wasn't much fight in them though, Not like Deer Creek Bows.
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[quote utahgolf]I'd argue that plenty of bows get harvested at starvation. everyone I saw had stringers full of bows.... Oh the possibilities the berry could have.[/quote]

I don't have actual stats but I know for a fact the Berry gets many thousands more angler hours than Starvation. I'm certain the percentage of harvest isn't anywhere near what Strawberry's is. However as mentioned in other posts the Berry deffinately has a better potential for trophy size fish due to an incredible forage base of invertabrates, minnows and crayfish. Starvation is just more remote and has lots of space with fair forage. They both produce great fish.
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