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After reading TubeDude's adventure at Blue Lake, me and my boys decided to give it a go and headed out "West". We wanted to see what all the hype was about and wanted to see if there were really Tilapia out there. Nobody believed that we were going fishing. We arrived at around 8:30 am thinking we'd be the only ones fishing, but we were wrong. Not paying any attention to the Blue Lake "carp" or the awful smell of the surrounding areas, we threw in our lines and had a pretty fun day. Caught about 20 Tilapia, (6 were about 1 lb each, and the rest were about 6 inches), 3 small bass and about 20 small bluegill. We kept the 6 big Talapia. They seemed to be everywhere and loved worms.
The weather was a perfect 55 degrees and no bugs. I am guessing that the warmer weather the next few months will make that place Mosquito land. If you love the smell of sulfur and catching tiny bluegills, I would suggest venturing out to Blue.
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[font "Comic Sans MS"][#ff4040]Hey nice report! Looks like you have yourself a pretty nice dinner lined up. BTW welcome to BFT.[/#ff4040][/font]
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[cool]Nice report, Wildcard, and way to go on those scrappy little talapia's! After hearing TD's dissertation on how they attack the nests of the bluegills and bass, I'm glad to hear you took a few of those tasty, but devistating (to other panfish) little buggers home with you. Good dinner indeed! Also, welcome aboard BFT/Utah!
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Pretty cool pictures! I've only eaten the "farm pond" variety of Talpia, but they were very tasty. Hope you enjoy!
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[cool][#0000ff]By the looks of things, you fished in the "Bluegill Pond", one of the first lakes, where you can pull your vehicle right up to the lake. It is known for being full of smaller bluegill and more tilapia than in the main lake. The main lake is a hike across the boardwalk and even a Humvee would bog down in the mud in between the parking area and the lake.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Glad you got some tilapia to play. They are good eating. Most places you find tilapia they respond to plain old worms just fine.[/#0000ff]
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Hey Wildcard, would you mind if I used your pictures for my website?
It's [url "http://fishinginfo.atspace.com"]http://fishinginfo.atspace.com[/url]
I'd like to make a Tilapia page as well as add them to the [url "http://fishinginfo.atspace.com/utahlakes/bluelake.html"]Blue Lake[/url]
page.
Thanks,
Kevin
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oh im going there this sunday....
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[cool][#0000ff]Are you giving up on walleye or do you just want to play with something different?[/#0000ff]
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I used to love to fish blue lakes. Looks like it's getting over-run now. How about we quit posting about lakes like this? They really, really, REALLY can't handle much pressure. And from the looks of it this winter that lakes gotten hit harder than it ever has.
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naw im not giving up...already caught enough for the spring..some nights at LINDON boat harbor before 10pm they will start rolling here and there..not much though..but a few mmore week they will roll all over...i just wanna go to blue lake and test out my fly rod on those suckers ]
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Tilapia in Utah? That sounds like just what we need...another trash fish that some dink is going to catch and then transfer to Utah Lake, Willard, or maybe even Powell. Who knows? I have read posts about those ponds before, but never about Tilapia. Have they been there long? If not, how did they get there? From what I have read, those things are tough fish...and difficult to get rid of. That would be a shame if they spread. Still, I understand the fascination with exotic species, or even just a local species that a person have never caught before. So it would be neat to catch one. Let's jsut hope they don't spread.
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I wouldn't worry about them spreading. They cannot tolerate water temperatures below approximately 55 degrees. Any other lake in Utah drops well below that in the winter, and even lake powell drops below that long enough to not be hospitable to tilapia. Nonetheless, it is a shame that bucket biology has struck again.
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[cool][#0000ff]Cat_man is right. The tilapia would not survive any place else in Utah past a midsummer planting. As soon as the waters cooled down in the fall the fish would roll belly up. Even in Arizona and California, where they live all year, sudden severe cold snaps wipe out any that get caught in shallow water.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Nobody likes bucket biologists, but Blue Lake is hot high on the list of managed fisheries and there could be almost anything swimming in there. Divers report seeing some strange looking fishies during their underwater wanderings. I am sure that more than a few overgrown aquarium fish have been delivered to Blue Lake over time.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Of course, some of the divers are not too sharp on fish ID anyway. I had one diver ask me if those long silver fish (bass) were barracudas. I had to keep from laughing as I enlightened him. Should have told him they were diver-eating bassauruses.[/#0000ff]
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Good call guys. I had the thought that they couldn't handle cold water, but I wasn't sure. Thanks for clearing that up. But still, you got to hate seing fish moved around like that.
Tubedude, your story reminded me of both times I have been to Cabelas. While walking through the aquarium, I heard a few people call the musky a barricuda, the Walleye a trout, and some of the larger hook-jawed Browns salmon. It is kind of funny.
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[cool][#0000ff]Fish ID is often a problem, even with people who are supposed to know better. At the recent Sportsmans Show, one of the "hot new lure" displays included a couple of ice chests with trout on ice...supposedly caught on their wonder lures. The rainbows looked like they just came out of the hatchery, with nasty fins and all. But, they had a decent brown in one ice chest. It was the "silver phase" we often see in browns that live in lakes. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]When I commented to the two young studs that were "manning" the booth that it was a nice brown, they got all hostile. They argued that was a big rainbow that one of them had caught out of a small stream. I just rolled my eyes and walked on...without buying any of their fancy trinkets.[/#0000ff]
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