Another (June) Sucker is born every day...

[cat_man]

Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 12:00 AM [url "http://www.harktheherald.com/print.php?sid=49471"][/url] | [url "http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Recommend_Us&file=index&req=FriendSend&sid=49471"][/url]

'05 budget a boon for June sucker

Caleb Warnock DAILY HERALD


June sucker experts say this year's $1.8 million budget toward saving the endangered fish is the most ambitious ever.
The money will allow crews to begin rehabilitation of the lower section of Hobble Creek, have a 10-day contest of sorts to remove carp from the lake, expand a fishery and find a new food for June sucker babies, called fry, among other things, said Ralph [url "http://heraldextra.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=display_ads&file=index&func=display_ad&ad=00256199"][/url][url "http://adserver.harktheherald.com/adclick.php?n=a1d19a67"][/url] Swanson of the Department of Interior.
All told, the money will fund more than 30 projects during the next year, he said. The money comes from the budgets of several federal, state and local agencies.
"We have good reason to think Hobble Creek was historically used by the June sucker, and we hope to use the mouth and main stem of the stream up past I-15 to establish an improved spawning site," he said.
June sucker are federally protected because only about 400 exist in Utah Lake, their only native habitat.
Central Utah Project water will also be used to increase the flow of the river closer to historic levels, he said, noting that CUP water will not be available for several more years.
Getting rid of carp from the lake will be essential to saving the fish, said Ron Johnston of the Department of Interior in a statement.
"Removal or suppression of the carp population could be the single most important action to improve June sucker habitat in Utah Lake and improve the lake as a public resource," he said. "Carp removal efforts at other lakes have been successful, however we have a huge population of carp in Utah Lake, and it is a big lake."
Officials of the June Sucker Recovery Implementation Program asked for proposals to get rid of the carp last summer, Swanson said. This year, a local company that has been harvesting carp on the lake for decades will go head to head with a Nevada company during a 10-day trial to see who can remove the most carp using different methods.
"They are going to be assigned random locations in the lake to make at least six or eight hauls of carp a day, and the fish they get will be weighed, and we will compare the two techniques they are using," he said of the contest between the two companies.
If the removal contest is successful, and the carp estimate not impossibly large, a long-term carp removal contract could be awarded to a private company in the future.
A fishery in Logan will be expanded to produce more June sucker fry, he said.
"We will expand the existing site with a new building and installation of a new water system that taps into groundwater to support the fish," Swanson said
About 35,000 June sucker have been raised and released from the fishery during the past 15 years, he said. None have survived to adulthood in Utah Lake because the habitat at the lake is so poor.
"We hope to produce about 6,000 pounds of June sucker each year and put them into Utah Lake each year," he said.
That equates to about 18,000 8-inch-long, year-and-a-half-old June sucker, he said. The expanded facility will go into full production in 2006.
Existing food for the fish has not worked well, he said, and the Fish and Wildlife Service in Bozeman, Mont., has been given money to find a better feed.
"It will have special vitamins and minerals to help them grow better," he said. "The fish have not responded well to the commercial feed we have been using."
Utah State University will also continue to track adult June sucker that have been fitted with radio tags, he said. Researchers are hoping the effort will yield information about their movement patterns in the lake.
For information on the June sucker effort, visit www.junesuckerrecovery.org. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C1.
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[fish4fish]

Although its just a stinken sucker fish it is getting lots and lots of federal money, adn if they could get the carp under control, it would improve the overall fishery, you would see more and healthier bass walleyes cats, and i think that the crappie would pick up also.

I got a question though, these commercial fishermen who target the carp, what do they do if they catch a game fish species, does it die and get turned into dog food like all of the carp? or is it (hopefully) released?
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[cat_man]

There is already one commercial fisherman company that has been harvesting carp from the lake for years now, and they are allowed a certain amount of leeway as far as how many pounds of other species (read "gamefish") that they can accidentally take along with the carp (any that accidentally get into their nets along with the carp). I'm not sure exactly what the limit is, but I'm fairly certain that they make no attempt to return any of them to the water.
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[doggonefishin]

Good read, thank you for posting this. This "carp catching contest" almost has a comical aspect to it. I wonder if they lose "points" when a walleye or a LMB shows up in the nets. I just hope it works out. I do feel the habitat enhancement will improve the fishing for all of the species, whether it saves the suckers or not.
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[fuzzyfisher]

all i can say to them is this: GOOD LUCK ON KILLING ALL THEM CARP!!..
can say i will not shed a tear for even one of them stinking carp in that lake..
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[utfisherman333]

Any attempt to remove carp from that lake is okay by me. My cousin lives on the Provo river just below I-15, and we used to fish in his back yard all the time. A couple years ago the carp all swam up the river at once and just choked the river. I couldn't beleive how many of those ugly things there were out there... Anyway, they ended up shocking most of them to death (and most of the browns) to get rid of them. Unfortunately, since then the river still has very high numbers of carp and I have been unable to see any trout. I've seen that company harvesting carp, but I don't think the method they use now would get them a ton of fish. I could be wrong, but they're gonna have to think of something better than a fish pen and a conveyor belt to put a dent in the carp population.

[Theekillerbee]

Thanks for posting the story cat_man. I hope they can put a dent in the population out there. It is a huge lake, and will require some serious effort to get the numbers down. I personally hope they kill them all, but that is just me. Of course we could just get someone down there to "talk" to them, and maybe they could convince them to just leave the other fishies alone[]
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[sliverslinger]

I'm down with a carp bow fishing tourny!! Is it legal down there? The spawn is coming quick and that would be a great way to thin a FEW out, buy hey, everyone helps. Jake
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[Out4Trout]

[cool]Thanks for the great article, catman. Sounds like the carp contest will be a good thing. I think I know who the carp company from Nevada is. There is a company in Fallon, Nevada that harvests the Carp and Blackfish from Lake Lahontan and then they truck it over the mountains to Chinatown in San Francisco, and make good money doing it. They always would throw the gamefish back into the lake out of their nets, but it sounds like the company at Utah Lake doesn't have to, eh? The company in Nevada would tell stories of huge 50 pound Stripers that they'd get in their nets back in the 80's when I was growing up. I guess sometime back in the 70's or so they stalked a few Stripers in there, and they'd get pretty huge. The'd also get some huge Channel Cats and Walleye in their nets. I knew the owners of the company back then.
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[Troll]

A contest sounds stupid to me. Just hire both companies and any other company that wants the stinkin carp to get them. One company with a long term contract just sounds like a sustained subsidised carp fishery to me. Converge on UT lake with all they have and keep it up till the catch rates are so low we have won the lake back.

I would actually rather see a bounty on them like they did for the squaw fish in the Snake river a few years back, but I doubt this would be effective against the carp.
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[SkinnyLynnie]

IMHO, here's the real problem with trying to eliminate carp from Utah Lake or any other body of water: eggs! Have you ever seen how many eggs one carp has in it? As long as the habitat is favorable to their growth, one carp left behind can lay its eggs, and they will turn into thousands of new carp pretty quickly. Harvesting more carp may just make more space for the new little ones to grow up in. They will probably appreciate the extra space. This is why it's pointless to catch a lot of carp from a lake or river and just throw them on the shore. All it results in is a stinky mess for the next fishermen to endure. In the long run, I don't think it really results in fewer carp.
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[UTBASS]

3 TONS Of Carp are taken out of the lake every year by LOYs. The don't even scratch the surface. They make a killing on them big nasty things. If we can get a couple of companies out there, it would maybe make some sort of a dent.

CARP are the reason Utah Lake has no grass. They up-root everything. If we could get rid of the carp, It would be absolutely un-real. I think the lake would be a much better place if we cut down on the carp populations.
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[cat_man]

I totally agree. If it weren't for the carp, the fry of bass, walleye,catfish, etc would have better cover so they could grow bigger. Other baitfish might even survive. We need to get rid of the carp.
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[svpdgcar]

Not to be too politically incorrect here *cough cough* and I hope I don't get flamed into oblivion by my fellow BFT members, but has the Federal/State Government ever considered that maybe God wants the June Sucker to die?

From everything I have read it sounds like it's a huge expensive pain to keep alive. With how hard it is to keep alive I'm surprised it's not sexually attracted to fire on top of everything else that seems fatally wrong with the species. Also does it have any real value? 1.8 million could do wonders for some other fisheries.

Hell let's poison Utah Lake and start fresh. It will take a few years for the game fish to recover but in the long run I think it would be worth it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-enviroment, but it seems like a huge expense to keep a fading species with little real value alive. It's a case of survial of the fittest and the June Sucker seems to be a weezing old 97 year old man with a walker on oxygen trying to climb six flights of stairs.

Ok gentlemen (and ladies) now I've vented my political incorrectness I should be ok for another 10 mintues or so.
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[Kent]

[size 1]"Hell let's poison Utah Lake and start fresh. It will take a few years for the game fish to recover but in the long run I think it would be worth it."[/size]
[size 1][/size]
[size 1]Utah Lake is far too large for this even to be a remote possibility. And assuming that they were able to get a 100% kill of all carp in the lake there are thousands, if not millions of them in the multitude of streams, and small ponds that flow into Utah Lake that would quickly move downstream and take their place. [/size]
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[iconoclasticPaul]

Getting rid of Carp in Utah lake sounds like a hundred of recurring bad dreams... where you are running away from something, and you seem to can't get rid of it no matter if you can run very fast or fly like the supersonic jet, it seems to always rear its ugly head at every turn.

Now you get the idea of carp population in a nutshell.

Heck, right now I see hundreds of carp slathering upstream near Battlecreek stream about 1/4 to 1/2 mile from Utah lake proper...
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[doggonefishin]

"It seems like a huge expense to keep a fading species with little real value alive"....... Look on the "up" side, If (big if) they are able to pull it off and the grassy structure grows back that the carp have destroyed, Utah lake may be the best fishery in the state. You might have one of the top LMB, walleye, crappie, and catfish producers in the west. They may even put Bonneville cutts back in there. Since it is in my backyard, these possibilities get me kind of excited. This potential makes the money they are spending now worthwhile in my opinion. Because of the Endangered Species Act, congress is going to spend it anyway, but in this instance, I can forsee a direct benefit to us sportsmen.
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[cat_man]

I doubt that Cutts will ever make their way back into Utah Lake. It doesn't matter how much vegetation is in that lake, it won't change the fact that it is shallow and that the summertime temperatures skyrocket and would kill any trout. Occasionally they head out into the lake during the cooler months, at least near the river mouths, but in the middle of summer forget it.

As for the money being spent, look at it this way -- this will benefit other species as well as the June Sucker. I personally don't really care all that much for the June Sucker either, but if it's an excuse to get some federal dollars to try and help clean up Utah Lake a bit, improve the habitat, and kill some carp while they're at it, then great.

The June Sucker has value because you can consider it an indicator species, much like the canary in a coal mine. The disappearance of the June Sucker is just a symptom of a bigger problem, and that is that the habitat is damaged and changed, and other species won't be far behind if we don't change things.
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[doggonefishin]

"I doubt that Cutts will ever make their way back into Utah lake"....... Not so fast there. Mr. Kelleher, the lead biologist on the project, told me at last years public meeting that his personal view and goal was to have the water and ecosystem cleaned up enough that the cutts would be reintroduced as the top predator of the june suckers. He said that this would especially be likely if the dike proposal were to happen. Remember, Utah lake was as just as shallow in pioneer times and it was just as hot back then, but the cutts thrived.
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[cat_man]

I respectfully disagree with both Mr. Kelleher and you. The lake was deeper back then, it did not have as much silt fill the bottom of it from agricultural runoff over the last 100 or so years. Obviously it was still shallow, but a lot deeper than it is now, especially after repeated years of drought and water that would've gone into Utah Lake sitting in Jordanelle and Deer Creek and municipal irrigation catchbasins.

It's an admirable goal to clean it up enough for the cutts, and it would be awesome if they could get it to that point, but frankly I don't see that happening at least not with any measurable amount of success. If Mr. Kelleher has more information than I do (which he probably does) and thinks he can do it, then fantastic and good luck to him!
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