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+--- Thread: M-ville over the weekend (/showthread.php?tid=1099204)
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RE: M-ville over the weekend - Big Sky - 10-18-2021
Well the debate of Minersville's future is always interesting, but according to the latest reports from the National Weather Service La Nina has settled in over the ocean, and Utah along with the other south western states are expected to have another dry/warmer than normal winter. If this plays out to be true, it doesn't matter what is going on with the fish in Minersville as there won't be any water in it by the end of next summer. I'd love to see a miracle, but it's not looking very good so far...
RE: M-ville over the weekend - PBH - 10-18-2021
Anglers are funny.
One management tool fisheries managers have available to them is stocking. Wipers fall into that. The great thing with wipers is that they are sterile. The don't reproduce. So, through stocking, we can completely control wiper populations. If you get too many wipers, you cut back on stocking. If you don't have enough, you add more through stocking.
Remember, the goal at Minersville is to keep chub populations at a point that they do not negatively affect the trout populations. How do you do that? Wipers. You add wipers to keep chubs in check -- you do NOT add wipers just to try to grow big wipers. Wipers are a beneficial, fun, awesome, fish that are the result of managing Minersville as a trout fishery. They are a great side effect.
So, if chubs truly are present in alarming numbers like has been suggested in this thread, then adding the 4k wipers in 2021, 3k in 2020, and 3k in 2017 through stocking was the right move by the DWR, and they are ahead of the game already. Sure, they didn't get any in '18 & '19, but they are still adding them.
The key isn't how many wipers anglers are catching (or losing!) - but rather, where are the chubs? If the answer is "up the river", then I'm just going to go out on a limb and say "great!".
FWIW -- Minersville has a conservation pool. We still worry, and have problems with low water at Minersville, but we do have a c-pool.