Hey guys quick question for all of you in the know. Ive been periodically checking the fish stocking reports and i have not seen any catfish being stocked in the community ponds, the latest entries are all rainbow trout. in past years catfish are usually stocked late april or early june. anybody know whats up?
[signature]
i have no idea, i can't remember the last time i've caught anything at one of those places i kinda gave, eventually i'll be break and give one a go about once a month and won't catch anything
[signature]
I think the reason for this is they spawn every year and dont need to be restocked. Same goes for Bass and pan fish.
[signature]
[#0000FF]Seriously?
The radioactive half life of a stocked catfish in most ponds is less than a week. Virtually zero reproduction.
That is part of the frustration of DWR with their youth fishing program. Ponds are stocked early in the week and then the "families" descend to harvest as many as they can before the kids show up later in the week. Tough to even get the kids into any fish on some ponds.
[/#0000FF]
[signature]
no i have definitely seen catfish being stocked every year at least twice, once in late may or early june and once in late july or early august, i live right next to the cove community pond and i see it happen most of the time. if you check the fish stocking reports on the dwr page and look up previous years you can see that i speak the truth.
[signature]
Tubedude i agree, if you want any action whatsoever you need to make it to the pond a day or two after they stock it, after that its practically dead with the occasional cat every now and then.
[signature]
I live by a "community pond" (Spring Lake in south Ut. co.) and the key to knowing when the lake has been planted is to watch for the cormorants. They follow the fish stocking trucks from the hatchery and then spread the word immediately to other cormorants and the pelicans -- couple of days later most of the stocking is gone. Kids catch some of what is left. Now if they would just allow us to shoot the cormorants.....
I have seen catfish planted in "my" pond.
BLK
[signature]
That is pretty interesting about the pelican and cormorants. A friend of mine in Idaho has a pond on his property that he would stock with rainbows each year, feed them and then harvest them in the late fall. He stopped doing it because a family of ospreys were catching most of the fish.
We tried some community ponds with our kids and it just discouraged them more, since there was nothing to catch.
[signature]
I fish for food. I only get $15 food stamps, and barely $50 of my own money for the whole month. Needless to say, I don't get fancy stuff like steak and salmon. My only way to get meat is to fish (or be really nice to hunters for their leftovers! LOL).
I used to throw away carp, but I think next time I catch one, I'll keep it. If only to have free bait supply to keep fishing (for some reason, my yard doesn't have very many worms... got lots of grub worms, though! Maybe I'll try them for bass?)
I don't have gas money to be going to the big waters (Willard, Pineview) often, so I stick to the local ponds. I have decided that if I go once or twice a week on my days off, and stay for as long as possible, maybe I'll actually get some 'free' lunch! LOL
Last night a kid caught a catfish (decent size for me, to him it was "Wow, that's HUGE!") at Jensen/Syracuse pond. So I guess some places have 'em.
[signature]
Are the Heron's and whatever other bird it is eating the fish right after it is planted where they act kind of loopy or are the ponds just so shallow the birds can always get them? I always wondered why they made ponds so shallow. Most are shallow and have hardly any flow making them virtually stagnant and probably not having much oxygen during the hot summer.
[signature]
Cormorants are much faster than fish and they dive after fish. It doesn't matter how deep a pond or lake is, they will out swim the fish. Pelicans are limited to scooping on the surface but trout love to be right at surface level. Likely 3/4 of the spring community pond trout stocking ends up bird food. Counted 50 cormorants at willow one spring day and 15 pelicans patrolling the water. But yes the community ponds are warm water, all trout die in july if not eaten or caught by anglers.
[signature]
Some people complain about snags and fishing access but maybe they should start giving the ponds more structure so that fish have a place to hide from these birds and don't get overfished. Recently South Jordan City removed all the vegetation around midas and kidney pond so now it's going to get fished out quicker. Like I also said, they should also deepen the ponds. At least make the middle deeper. Then everyone can have more fun/use them.
[signature]
They are stocking them -- they are just a little late on reporting it for some reason.
[signature]