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[size 2]Fished blue lakes saturday and sunday with my dad. Mostly caught the heck out of the talapia. I gutted 147 this morning. Got a few nice big largies for our trouble. A few bigger gills thrown in for giggles, too.
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The last cooler full. I gutted around 100 fish at this point. Enough to fill one and a half 5 gallon buckets.
By the outlet, I hooked a fish that should not be there, either. A 24" Peacock Bass, complete with nice bright green coloration, red and yellowish belly, and a nice big spot on the tail. I had him jump 3 or 4 times completely out of the water before running under one of the banks and snagging up. I'd have liked to get him outta there.
I also over heard three scuba divers in the parking lot talking about planting Cyphotilapia Frontosa into the lakes. Their exact words were, "Those Moba's (Moba Frontosa, one genus out of the Frontosa family) are finally in the lake. I did it last week. Hopefully we can see them when we go down." I've already turned them into the DWR with a licence plate number. When they start showing up, say hello to the most expensive addition to blue lakes yet. They cost around $200 a piece for full grown adult specimens at my work.
However, if it's any consolation, the quality of the 50 bass me and my dad caught was far and away the best quality fishing we've had there. Ever. Including the hey days in the early 90's. Blue lakes is here to stay, one way or the other. You've just got to know where the fish are at, and how to fish it. Glad I've learned from the best.[/size]
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[cool][#0000ff]Great report. Looks like you loaded up on the good eatin' tilapia. Are they in spawn mode yet?[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Interesting about the peacock bass. I wondered if they would ever show up in there. I have also heard of the divers bragging about stocking their "private pond" with exotics, just so they can have a more diverse diving experience. Not hard to figure out how the tilapia got in there in the first place.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Good work on reporting the violators. Hope DWR is able to take action. Unfortunately, Blue Lake is not on their high priority list of managed waters. They have mostly just adopted a watch and see program, but they are interested in what goes on there. Just not enough manpower to police it.[/#0000ff]
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Nice work on the talips! Too bad the divers have turned that place into a private fish tank though....
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do the blue lakes freeze over?
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[reply]
do the blue lakes freeze over? [/reply]
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no[  ]
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[reply]
[size 2]By the outlet, I hooked a fish that should not be there, either. A 24" Peacock Bass, complete with nice bright green coloration, red and yellowish belly, and a nice big spot on the tail. I had him jump 3 or 4 times completely out of the water before running under one of the banks and snagging up. I'd have liked to get him outta there.
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So, I am naive about this one I guess.. Although I am not condoning the bucket biologists at all.. The Peacock Bass is a pretty exotic, aggressive bass. Kind of cool to not have to go to Hawaii or somewhere else tropical to catch one. Why would they not be a fun addition to an obvious melting pot of a lake? Seems like we got a lot of spots for LMB, SMB.. But nowhere for the Peacock...Except now illegally in Blue Lake... So, please help me understand why you think this addition is a bad thing (Nope, I didn't put it in there!)
PLUS.. How in the *** do you keep a peacock bass alive long enough to have it be safely released in BLUE LAKE!
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I use to have some pet Peacock Bass years ago. As I would watch them swim around in the tank I always wondered If they would survive in Blue Lakes? The temp is just right for them out there but I wondered if the salt content in those ponds would have an effect on Peacock Bass. It was always a dream to have them planted out there but I never actually considered doing it myself. I will say whoever put one in there took some time and money to do so. I used to spend 30 dollars a week on gold fish just feeding mine. They were only 4 or 5 inches long too. To grow one big enough that would survive without being Largemouth food would take time and money. Its been a good 6 years since I have been out there but that sparks some interest in breaking out the tude and checking to see if in fact there our Peacocks out that way..
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I know what the majority of us think of bucket biologists, yet I think it is not too far off to say that no one will complain if peacock bass get etablished in some lake in Utah. [cool]
The timing of this is funny with the post afew days ago about if you had your way, what fish would the DWR bring into Utah. I'm pretty sure more than one person recommended Peacock bass.
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If peacock bass are established in blue lake I will personally have to drive out there and hit some top water action!! If so, I will need a sniper to watch my car from the vandals, anyone interested??
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We could take turns fishing for peacocks and sniping dirty rotten thieves. What more or a perfect day could you ask for??[  ]
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All 3 of us could take turns! I'm game.[ ]
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But I wouldn't want to cut down on my sniping time![cool]
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We could flip for first shot.[  ]
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I'll let you have first shot if you take me out to Pineview the end of April to throw mice at muskies.[ ]
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How about we just get you one through the ice?[ ] We can do both if you want.[cool]
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Do you really want to risk losing that first place position by showing me how to catch those musky through the ice? [shocked]
Maybe we can tie a mouse on a line with a 2 ounce weight and drop it through a hole?[laugh] Would probably have to fish shallow to make that work.
We could put it in a zip lock bag so it stays alive longer. I doubt that the bag would scare off a musky.[ ]
This whole Musky and mice thing has really got me thinking of some possible really awesome times watching the water exploding. I would volunteer to record the whole thing.
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I've always wanted a tiger muskie and we can use my old work car for the bait on the sniper thing at blue lakes.
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If they had a forage base it would be awsome. But the small LMB we caught out there were skinny!!. I would love to learn that water a little better as we could not find the Talapia when we were out there maybe we were just fishing int eh wrong spot.
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My only concern with having Peacock's in there is, where exactly will it end? I'm already half way expecting a few other species to show up. Red Pacu; Silver Dollars; Oscars. All of them can tollorate variable PH and salenaty conditions, and proliferate in great numbers. Given the chance, I believe Oscars would be even more detrimental to fish populations out there than any other speices, including Peacock Bass.
The Peacocks will get larger than most of the Largemouths in there. The LMB will have litterally zero chance of spawning, or growing to a large enough size to spawn. For someone like me who's fished that lake for so long, loosing the LMB is almost like loosing a child. Like species like the oscars, the PH and salenaty levels are within norms for Peacocks. About ideal for quite a few speices, actually.
Keeping them alive is easy enough. A 5 gallon bucket filled with tank water will keep fish alive for a long, long time. Add an areator, and the fish can stay alive for as long as the water maintains a decent temperature. In summer months, indeffinately. Bagging fish could easilly work, too. I order my fish in from Florida. They're in they're bags for better than 24 hours before I ever get them into my tanks. Blue lakes is maybe, maybe 3 hours out.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not giving anybody any ideas here. And I greatly discourage bucket biology. But if they want to do it, there's no stopping them.
On a side note, I didn't notice any theives out there. I left quite a few CD's and my old water logged cell phone sitting on my front seat with the doors unlocked both days. And none of them were gone. Guess I'll have to find a way to get rid of those country CD's another way [ ]
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