Echo Perch Jerkin' 8-4-20

[TubeDude]

Me and Lee assaulted Echo this morning.  Launched about 6:30 and headed south to the brushy point about a quarter mile from the ramp.   Air temp was a lovely 53 and water temps a comfy 72.

Didn't see much on sonar moving in and out on the way to our chosen spot.  But when we got to the flooded brush the sonar lit up and so did the perch.  Pretty much a non-stop perchfest until we both had all the fun we could stand and had more perch than we wanted to clean.

The first biters were kinda tentative and would really take only very small jigs with a small piece of crawler.  But as the sun got higher the fish got more active  and I upgraded to larger jigs and a piece of perch meat.  That, and fishing in slightly deeper water, got me fewer but larger perch.  The six and seven inchers swarmed us in 8-10 feet of water.  But the bigger fish seemed to be about 12-14 feet.  I kept only a few 7 inchers, a bunch of 8 inchers and plenty of 9-10 inchers that gave up decent fillets.  The smaller models were our original targets...as bait for tipping fligs in a couple of other waters.  But we were happy to bring in some table sized fish too.  In fact, I lost several at the tube that might have been legitimate footlongs.  Either inexperienced and did not know how to hang on...or they had paid attention in school and learned how to give back anglers' jigs effectively.

At any rate, the lake was flat glass most of the morning...with one 15 minute minor ripple from the south.  Boat traffic was light until we were departing about 11.  Then it started getting noisy.  Why do boaters need to scream everything...just for the benefit of us quiet tuber types?  Loud engine noises must adversely affect their hearing.

Ended up with a nice pile of skinless, boneless fillets for the table...and a good sized bag of scaled, skin-on fillets from the smaller fish to package and freeze for many future fliggin' trips.

A couple of notes:  The lake is down a bit from where it was last year at this time.  Not many places where shoreline brush comes down into the lake.  That's the stuff that is holding the young-of-the-year perchlets...upon which larger perch and a lot of smallmouth bass are chowing down.  Also noticed the remnants of a crawdad in the gullet of one of the smallies who intercepted a perch jig.
 

[albinotrout]

Impressive. Very impressive. One day I will visit echo.

[ELM 71]

Not much to add. I did manage 1 good small mouth to the net and lost another one. I released a bunch of very small perch.
Thanks for the small jigs Pat. They were great.

[wiperhunter2]

Nice haul Pat, hopefully we continue to see those bigger perch, might just be worth a trip up there to check things out. When I drove by there on Monday, I notice a bunch of the willows still in the water on the freeway side of the lake, might have to head over there to check it out, when I get up there. 
By the way, I got that leader in the mail today, thanks.

[Cowboypirate]

I know that bushy area. It has been perch friendly to me this summer too. No walleye? I know the DWNR planted some sterile ones a while back to help reduce the successful breeding of the illegally introduced ones - wonder how that is working?.

[TubeDude]

I know that bushy area. It has been perch friendly to me this summer too. No walleye? I know the DWNR planted some sterile ones a while back to help reduce the successful breeding of the illegally introduced ones - wonder how that is working?.

The good thing about this time of year on Echo is that the baby perch use the sparse flooded brush as shelter...and that concentrates them.  That, in turn, concentrates the bigger perch and other predators near the groceries...the young perch.  But as soon as the water level drops below the remaining brush the young perch disperse or go deeper to escape the predators and the predators spread out throughout the lake.  Right now you can have some fast catching.  In a month...not so much.  And under the ice you usually have to drill a lot of holes while searching for perch.

As I was vertical jigging for those perch, I was wondering if that might be a known venue for you.  Easy access off the highway and plenty of good fishing within a few feet of the cobble shoreline.  Some of my better fish came within 20 feet or so of the bank.  But that won't last much longer, with the water levels falling fast during the warm part of summer.

Walleyes.  No info on the overall affect of the sterile walleye plantings on the population or spawning of resident non-sterile walleyes.  But there are walleyes in the lake and anglers in the right place at the right time DO catch them.  There are a few Echo walleye specialists that have them figured.  Heard a reliable report of a 12 pounder that came on a big crank bait fished close to the bank after dark last year.  Also have a reliable report of some GOBs (good ol' boys) catching the heck out of 20 inch walleyes while soaking worms off the bank for trout or perch...during the May post spawn period.

On this trip I made some cruises out over deeper water and watched the sonar for "evidence".  I found two areas in 30 feet of water with multiple suspicious looking marks right off the bottom.  But...as is typical of walleyes...they did not vote for any of the silly stuff I presented to them.  Probably full of small perch snarfed up during the full moon of the night before.

If inquiring minds wanna know, I will make some indiscreet inquiries to see if there are any "official" findings on the walleyes in that pond.

[Cowboypirate]

I would be curious what your "contacts" think of their expirement in walleye breeding controls. Seems the Walleye are not giving a press release so maybe the humans will update us instead.

[TubeDude]

As promised, I checked in with Chris Penne of DWR.  As usual, he provided some good info.  Thanks, Chris.

We do not have an answer yet on the effectiveness of the sterile walleyes at Echo.  About four years ago we funded a project with a fisheries scientist and his graduate student at Utah State University where one of the indirect pieces of information we were to obtain was what percentage of walleye sampled in Echo were stocked (sterile) versus naturally reproduced.  That project was never fully completed for various reasons and we never got the info we wanted regarding the proportion of stocked versus naturally reproduced fish.  From here on out, we will be obtaining that information on our own, but it may take a few more years to get as it is not currently a high priority and Echo is not on our sampling schedule until next year at the earliest.  We don't have a hard population estimate for how many walleye our in Echo as those are rarely done due to cost and time constraints, but we have been collecting standard trend data on numbers of walleye in our nets. The data show that while walleye numbers are slowly increasing, they are still not very abundant in the reservoir.  The catch data we collected  in 2019 shows evidence of at least three year classes of fish and the oldest year class, which was initially documented in 2016, had individuals as long as 25 inches as of last year, so some of the fish getting quite large.  Just based on what we are seeing, I think it's likely the walleye in Echo will ultimately operate similar to those in Deer Creek where they are abundant enough for anglers who know what they are doing to catch, but not so abundant that they create difficulties managing the other species.  If I'm wrong, there will probably be more walleye going home with ice fishermen and the boat and kayak/tube crowd.  One of the things I've learned managing fisheries along the densely populated Wasatch Front is that when a sport fish species gets abundant and hungry, our large population of anglers is pretty quick to harvest those fish and knock their numbers back in line.

 As always, feel free to post and I'm happy to take any other questions that can't easily be answered. 
 
Chris

[SilverSlimer]

TubeDude, you inspired me to take my boys out last night to get on some perch. I have been wanting to get them on some perch and trip to Fish Lake was in the mix, but decided an evening trip was doable. We found some of them on the freeway side in about 10-12 fow. We caught 30-40 and kept a few of the bigger ones. Even caught some very decent smallmouth, that was fun to watch them land. Appreciate your report, my boys had a great time!

[TubeDude]

TubeDude, you inspired me to take my boys out last night to get on some perch. I have been wanting to get them on some perch and trip to Fish Lake was in the mix, but decided an evening trip was doable. We found some of them on the freeway side in about 10-12 fow. We caught 30-40 and kept a few of the bigger ones. Even caught some very decent smallmouth, that was fun to watch them land. Appreciate your report, my boys had a great time!

Glad you were able to get the boys into some tugs.  That's what it's all about.  At least it should be.

[Cowboypirate]

As promised, I checked in with Chris Penne of DWR.  As usual, he provided some good info.  Thanks, Chris.

We do not have an answer yet on the effectiveness of the sterile walleyes at Echo.  About four years ago we funded a project with a fisheries scientist and his graduate student at Utah State University where one of the indirect pieces of information we were to obtain was what percentage of walleye sampled in Echo were stocked (sterile) versus naturally reproduced.  That project was never fully completed for various reasons and we never got the info we wanted regarding the proportion of stocked versus naturally reproduced fish.  From here on out, we will be obtaining that information on our own, but it may take a few more years to get as it is not currently a high priority and Echo is not on our sampling schedule until next year at the earliest.  We don't have a hard population estimate for how many walleye our in Echo as those are rarely done due to cost and time constraints, but we have been collecting standard trend data on numbers of walleye in our nets. The data show that while walleye numbers are slowly increasing, they are still not very abundant in the reservoir.  The catch data we collected  in 2019 shows evidence of at least three year classes of fish and the oldest year class, which was initially documented in 2016, had individuals as long as 25 inches as of last year, so some of the fish getting quite large.  Just based on what we are seeing, I think it's likely the walleye in Echo will ultimately operate similar to those in Deer Creek where they are abundant enough for anglers who know what they are doing to catch, but not so abundant that they create difficulties managing the other species.  If I'm wrong, there will probably be more walleye going home with ice fishermen and the boat and kayak/tube crowd.  One of the things I've learned managing fisheries along the densely populated Wasatch Front is that when a sport fish species gets abundant and hungry, our large population of anglers is pretty quick to harvest those fish and knock their numbers back in line.

 As always, feel free to post and I'm happy to take any other questions that can't easily be answered. 
 
Chris

That is good info. I appreciate what they do, even if they won't plant sturgen in our farm pond.

[TubeDude]

That is good info. I appreciate what they do, even if they won't plant sturgen in our farm pond.

Looks like spell check changed your spelling of sturgeon.  Or did you mean surgeons?  At any rate, whatever they put in there is not likely to survive well if Cookie gets a shot at them.

[JArner]

Thanks for the report and info from DWR. We had some good success through the ice last winter for the bigger perch.

[Cowboypirate]

That is good info. I appreciate what they do, even if they won't plant sturgen in our farm pond.

Looks like spell check changed your spelling of sturgeon.  Or did you mean surgeons?  At any rate, whatever they put in there is not likely to survive well if Cookie gets a shot at them.

Not sure what I meant Pat, but they wont plant either and you are right Cookie would just catch them and brag about it, so best not encourage that bad behavior anymore than necessary.