On another thread, we were having a discussion on all of the small wipers being caught...and the reasons for them being so abundant.  I promised to address our questions to Chris Penne, of DWR, and to provide his response.  Here 'tis.   And thanks, Chris

But first, for those not familiar with the two different wipers available...the "sunshine" and the "palmetto"...here is a brief explanation.  The sunshine is a cross between a female white bass and a male striper.  The palmetto is just the opposite...a male white bass and a female striper.  Most fisheries management agencies seem to prefer the sunshine for being hardier and having a higher survival rate.  Some favor the palmetto for producing a larger fry and resulting larger adult due to starting with a larger egg.  But in the long run there have been no definitive studies showing a notable difference in one over the other. 

FROM CHRIS:

Good to hear from you, Pat.  Yeah, I've been pleased to see the reports of all those smaller wipers being caught.  It's definitely that we were able to stock more fish and not the difference in wiper crosses.  While we have been stocking some of the palmetto bass strain, so far we've been putting in such small numbers of them, we think it's unlikely they are a major contributor to all the young fish we are seeing.   There have been two recent stocking events that led to all those juvenile wipers.  First, we tried something new last year and stocked 1,000,000 wiper fry in early June.  These were the sunshine cross (white bass female x striped bass male) that we've historically stocked.  I had some concerns that going from the low water levels of the drought to the high water after runoff in 2023 was going to lead a strong increase in shad numbers as they can spawn up to four times in a season and fill that extra space much quicker than the sport fish can.  This would have been great for the fish, but would have tanked the fishing as the predator fish like wiper and walleye would have a surplus of forage and wouldn't be very interested in taking lures.
 

Historically, we haven't had great success with stocking wiper fry, but we wanted to get as many predators in there last year as we could to keep on top of the juvenile shad numbers, so fry were the best way to stock a lot of fish fast.  What was different was the timing of our stocking - traditionally we've stocked fry in mid May since that is when DWR receives all the wiper fry that we send down to Wahweap Hatchery to be raised to fingerlings.  That's great timing for Wahweap, but it's always seemed a bit early for Willard Bay.  We'd just been taking advantage of some extra 250K fry that were surplus to what we needed for Wahweap all these years and so it wasn't a big deal if we didn't get great survival on those fish - basically it was one of those purchases where it was cheaper to buy 1 million fry than to just get the 750,000 needed for Wahweap.  So this time targeted early June for stocking those fish since that is consistent with when the wipers in Willard generally come in shore and do their spawning runs and we bumped the number up to 1 million just for Willard Bay.  Well, that seemed to have worked well, at least in 2023, and we ended up seeing good survival of those fish, which were being caught last fall at around 4-6" long and then are probably a good portion of the juvenile fish folks are catching now.  That could have just been a lucky break, which happens from time to time, so we tried it again this year and will have a better idea of whether if it succeeded again this fall when we do our netting.  Until then though - if folks start catching a lot of 4-6" wipers again, let me know as that would an early sign of success for this year's fry stocking and that size of fish doesn't often show up in our survey nets.  We also were able to stock about 4,000 9-inch wipers this May and had reports from several folks that were catching those right after they were stocked.  I'm thinking both stockings of fish are about the same size right now, so it's difficult to tell which is which.  Either way, we're pleased to see we've got a strong year class of wipers added to the population.  Feel free to reach out if you or others on BFT have additional questions.


Chris

Ya, it would not be a normal summer if I did not post at least one trip to Whitney. 

The main road into Whitney was closed early this summer for 3-4 weeks. ( it is open now) for timber management. We went up the old county road out of Coalville. Very senic drive if you have never did it but rough. The video shows some good shots of it.

Wildflowers are amazing. A bit smoky from fires somewhere you can see that in the later drone footage. Fishing was good for stocked bows and tigers. Standard gear. Silver bling and powerbait.

Differnt look in many places as the lumber companies tried to clear a lot of the beatle kill.

Fun little video

https://youtu.be/O3MrqRd5hJY?si=kzmGe8nvdZso0j5B

Really got into some monster tigers this past weekend at Panguitch. The monsoon storms really turned them on in the evening, and the bite was just as good the next morning. Funnest part was many of them were caught on terrestrials in shallow water, with most of them coming on a dropper below. Incredible fights! Heading back up this weekend with my oldest daughter, can't wait! 

I knew where the rainbows were from Monday's trip, but again, we started out a bit further and deeper, hoping for a koke..didn't happen again, and this trip, with my granddaughter, I wanted to get her into fish...we did...back to the rainbow zone..nice limit of feisty 'bows by 0930, and I think I had her pretty worn out reeling 6 of them..we both missed 2 or 3 other hook ups, so plenty of action..and good to get out of there early, cuz the trash boats were getting hot and heavy..If anyone of you wants to get into decent 'bows, or has someone you want to take to get into fish, PM me, and I do believe I can direct you..Guluk..

We have been out a lot this summer. Mostly short close trips - lots of fun, but I am getting behind on reports ...

This was over a week ago. Ran up early in the AM to see about getting a few grayling. Lots of surface action when we got there but most of them were small. Fished fly and a bubble. Small bead nymph, elkhair caddis, Beatles and mosquito. They all had takes but due to size not so many hook ups. Did get a few decent ones. Greast way to escape the heat dome for a while. Surface bite shut down pretty quick when the sun popped over the mts.

Video link

https://youtu.be/tw5Ns2b3H-E

Willard Bay is picking up these last couple weeks.  Wiper boils are happening as the Gizzard Shad are schooling in what is called "bait balls". Look for these and cast or troll nearby with a shad pattern.  I caught a nice 5lb 1oz wiper last Friday and a couple of 3lbers.  Good luck.

I really need another spool but if all you have is the reel I will consider that as well.  The spool part number if you need it is G11-7201.

Well, not the rip-roaring, 'police come getcha' activity others posted about....actually some fishy activity...Lines in water 0645, hoping for some kokanee action, but it never happened for us..I may have had 2 koke taps deep, early 33' down, and later 46' down, but nothing else for us deep...about 1030 we gave up the deep, and just trolled higher, 18 to 23', and that's where all our action was for a fast and furious 75 minutes before calling it a day...No kokes, all rainbows...boated 7, self release 6 more, and several other light hits in that time..just average size 'bows, but great fighters.. first trash boats started at 0730, churnin' and burnin'...Guluk..

Fished Rockport today, arrived at 6:15 to a cool 48 degrees. Started fishing at 6:30 and headed south from the marina. There were a couple of boats already on the water and they were trolling in the middle of the lake and were using planer boars. 

Started using small tube jigs tipped with a worm close to shore around rocky areas. I would get a bite almost every cast. The perch can take a worm off so fast that I was constantly rebaiting. Anyway, I brought home 7 perch and two good sized bass. The north wind started quite early, so I headed back to the boat launch and the power boats all started arriving, so I decided to call it a day. The fish cleaning station worked really well.

I took my wife and some neighbors to strawberry on Saturday morning on the tritoon. Left about 6:30am, on the water by 8 am.  The marina parking lot was pretty full already, as was suspected, it ended up being a heavy boat day with lots of people out pulling lines.  Saw lots of wakeboarders too.  We motored over to the narrows and trolled with dodgers, hoochies and wedding rings. Caught a couple 14" bows right away but not much else. worked over to the SC side with not many bites but fought lots of big waves from the millions of boats cruising through.   fished around SC and saw lots of marks around 40-50 feet deep but no takers.  Decided to go hit some coves and cast tube jigs and rapalas.  Caught a few bows, and I had a nice cutt follow my rapala right to the boat and half  heartedly nip at it right at the surface but didnt connect.   it looked lethargic and Im sure the 71 degree water didnt help much.   Ended up connecting on a nice 20+ cutty that flipped overboard before the wife could snap a pic.   It was hot and with the all the boats, and high pressure system, it probably shut down a lot of the bite.  Still beats being at home doing yard work.