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A buddy came back into town and wanted to go fishing with his dad's boat. Since I sold my boa a few weeks ago, I thought this would be a great time for some early fall fishing at Scofield.
Got there at 7 a.m. and immediately noticed small boils on the water! Never experienced that before at Scofield. Once we launched the boat, we noticed that the boils were caused by huge schools of chub. I had never caught nor seen a chub at Scofield in my dozens of trip there in the past 2-3 years so I was shocked by the sight. I thought maybe this was the ONE big school of chub in the lake. Wrong. Everywhere we went there were schools of hundreds if not thousands of chubs. With the high water, there is a ton of the brush and shrubbery in the water providing perfect habitat for the chubs. They were everywhere in the lake!
We ended up only catching one trout each and bailed after three hours due to discouragement with the chubs. We had dozens of follows but none of the trout seemed aggressive. I wouldn't be either with that type of buffet available.
2 years ago we hammered the big tigers and cutts, catching 50-75 fish between 2 or 3 of us during each of our 4 outings, with many 20+inch fish. Last fall we would still catch 20-30 fish per trip and this spring it was only 10-12 fish. Obviously the problem is only getting worse (or I am losing my touch which I highly doubt[  ][ ])
So my question is what is DWR going to do about Scofield? The 8 fish limit set the stage and was revoked way too late and the slot limit came too late. Now it seems like they have given up. If they would have added some musky a few years ago and increased the slot to 25 or 26 inches, we might not have this problem. I thought I would never advocate the killing off of Scofield but I don't see any other option. Drain it, treat the remaining water, add tons of bows, cutts and tigers, add a few thousand musky, even add some browns, and maybe up the slot. Then Scofield could return to its glory in a few years.
It is not worth the time right now. Sad day. Thankfully BYU looks to have a decent football team this year.
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second post about this, hope they do something
http://www.bigfishtackle.com/forum/gforu...ead#unread
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It sounds to me like they need to chuck in a few Tiger's . . . Muskie that is!!
Those suckers would have a hay day in there and would grow so fast it would be awesome!
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Have you tried changing your tactics over the past two years? You say you had 70 fish days, then down to 30 now 2 fish. I think you just need to take a different approach. Not being an a-- just saying adapt to the different conditions
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I thought someone would say that. I am not a one trick pony. I probably have 5 or 6 primary tactics for tiger trout and they are very different. I refuse to let bait soak, and my tactics are all very different. I even brought a fly rod and tried several different techniques fly fishing, only catching chubs.
Scofield is my go to lake and I have fished it probably 10-25 times year around over the past 4 or 5 years. Trust me when I say this lake is dead or on life support (in the middle of a hurricane with the hospital running on generator power).
They need to do something, and I really don't think anything but killing it off and starting over will work.
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Just get rid of the chubs. If you've ever seen how fast rainbows grow there when there aren't any chubs, you wouldn't care if they added Cutts or Tigers. And there would be absolutely no reason for Muskies. Anyone who thinks chubs are good for a fishery, check out Scofield. The only good chub is a dead chub.
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I fished Scofield back when it was a pure Rainbow fishery (with the occasional cutt) and remember how big those bows got. But fishing that lake became so much more fun when they added the tiger trout.
I think it is time to be more pro-active with lakes that historically have problems with chubs. Kill the lake, stock it full of cutts, bows and tigers, keep the slot but include bows in it and add a few thousand muskie to ensure the chubs stay in check.
You can't tell me that this would not only keep the chubs in check but we would see some of the most amazing fishing in the state.
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I also imagine that there are some tiger trout and cutts approaching 10 lbs if not over having a heyday in Scofield right now. But getting them to bite when there are millions of small chub everywhere in the lake will be nearly impossible. I should have taken pictures of these huge school of chubs boiling. Horrible sight!
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You'd be spending a lot of money to feed the Muskies. If we could get the bucket biologists to resign and quit thinking that they know more than the professionals, we could have a fishery without chubs. They didn't show up at Scofield for nearly twenty years. And that's without Tigers, Cutthroat (Bear Lake variety anyway) or Muskies.
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Chubs suck !! & can take a fishery over if permitted.. I think we should gang up on them and harvest the crap out of them for cut bait-chum in other states-garden mulch whatever.. We can doit by means of castnet-sienenet-traps or good ole micro tackle im down for it say when ?? Last yr when you posted the ice was safe on the pond we whacked the Chubs and made bait fer days and even caught a few nice Tigers on fresh Chub meat.. I agree with you they R OUTA control and need a APEX Predator besides Tigers !! My 1 cent
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The professionals caused this mess with the 8 fish limit and waiting too long for the slot.
Chubs overran the lake before it was treated. I don't know exactly how long ago it was but I was under the impression it has been less than 20 years. Chubs started showing up years ago and the 8 fish limit set by professionals let them take over.
Talking about pros, last I checked, they decided to plant musky in Joes Valley for very similar reasons. In addition, adding another awesome game fish can only increase fishing pressure there.
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First off, it is disappointing to hear your report. I haven't been up there since last ice season and it didn't look too great then, unless you liked fat chubs and a bunch of emaciated bows and cutts. We have discussed this before, and I agree with you that treating the lake and starting over is probably the best. However, what has transpired down there raises a few interesting questions.
1. Why have the tigers and cutts failed so miserably in chub control at Scofield while cutts worked nicely at Strawberry? Do trout predators work more poorly in a shallow weedy lake as opposed to a big deep lake like the Berry? Almost from the onset of the slot, it seemed to me that most of the cutts I caught were extremely thin and unhealthy. As you know, the tigers were fat and robust, but maybe they are not effective chub controllers as a population. We may have overrated them as a predator?
2. Would an ambush predator like a Tiger musky wipe out an open water fish like chubs? I increasingly doubt it. I might maintain that TM may work better controlling weed hugging fish like perch.
3. What should the new regs be if they treat Scofield? You can bet a lot of people will line up to return it to general regs. Since the likelihood of the chubs returning is moderately high, I would favor a slot like you do for at least the predatory trout, but it would be interesting to see more data on which predator would work best at keeping the chubs down in the future.
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I fished scofield earlier this year,I spoke w/ the CO who checked us! She said the cutt's and tigers had removed most of the shinners out of the body of water, and should be switching over to the chubs. The fish they had been checking were starting to have more and more chubs in their guts than other prey! Will the cutt's and tigers have a big enough effect on reducing the chub population?? Who knows! That could take years to find that out. I believe with the slot limit more and more fish will get a little bigger, and eat more chubs. Bigger fish eat more, than little planters!! Hopefully that helps reduce the population of chubs.
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Trust me when I say there are way too many chubs in Scofield now for the trout to keep them in check. there is probably 100's of chub for every trout and 1000's of chub for every trout that can actually eat chub.
Scofield is turning into Joes Valley; thousands of chubs, a few skinny trout and a few huge trout.
I am sure the big tigers are getting even bigger, but it will be hard for the newly planted 2-6 inch trout to get bigger as the chub are eating all the nutrients in the lake that help the trout gt big enough to eat the chub.
This lake is dead. Trust me. This has been my favorite lake to fish for years and had the lake dialed in. When everyone was catching chub over the last few years, I still had not caught one. But what I saw on Thursday was a complete take over of the lake, and the high water is actually contributing to it.
I also saw the gill nets they pulled out of Scofield this Spring and it was 95% chub with some very large tigers and 1 or 2 bows and cutts. This lake is done!
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Ice out this year treated my Twin (TyeDyeTwin) and I pretty good. Caught 20+ trout near the dam (mainly Tiger Trout) but most of the fish were of smaller size[frown]. We also tried fishing below the dam and never saw any chubs (thankfully). It was a  sight to see so many chubs in that other recent post (there musta been 1,000's) below the dam[:/]. I am with you...the chubs are out of control and it is a reality to know that one day the trout will have to pay the same price as the Evil Chubs. During the winter months a buddy of ours pulled out one of the chubbiest Chubs we have ever seen (definitely not a good sign for the reservoir) but luckily he kept and killed the brute. Sorry to hear one of your favorite trout fisheries is approaching the category of "another one bites the dust.....oh wait I meant another one bites the chub". Maybe this winter we'll forget about driving 100 miles to Chubfield...oh wait I meant Scofield. Thank you for your post.
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It is really simple. If there is a water prone to have high numbers of chubs and the larger fish are kept that can actually eat an adult chub there will always be a chub take over. They need one meat eating fish that is off limits to harvest. I don't care if it is cutts or tigers they need to be left to eat and stay in there long enough to do some real damage to the chub population.
High water years yield huge spawns and lots of cover for the fry. Tigers that are all catch and release would be really easy to manage and even I would take the long trip if I knew there were 10lb tigers to be caught.
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[quote EvilTyeDyeTwin] During the winter months a buddy of ours pulled out one of the chubbiest Chubs we have ever seen (definitely not a good sign for the reservoir) but luckily he kept and killed the brute.[/quote]
You forgot to add he tried to eat the brute in honor of the native americans that used to eat the utah chub. He never made it past the 1st bite! Nasty eating material for sure, no wonder the trout focused on the red shinners 1st before the chubs.
I would love to see TM's added to the water but I doubt that would happen. The DWR will twittle their thumbs and give us the run around for a long while.
Just like the birds at the ponds in SLC. They kept saying "oh yeah we are going to take care of them soon!" Yeah, they just stopped stocking them with trout. They never did a thing to stop the birds.
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[cool][#0000ff]Harkens me back to Starvation in the 70's. A few big browns and a gazillion chubs. Couldn't ice fish because the jigs would never get down past the chubs. The only way to get the browns was casting big Rapalas right at ice out. The rest of the year the lake was just a big chub pond. And the spillway below was even worse than the pics of Scofield. SOLID BROWN. [/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Then came the walleyes...and the smallies...and then the perch. [/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Today Starvation is a well balanced multi-tiered fishery with little management needed. And the only chubs are a few grotesque dinosaurs that are living out the end of their days.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Walleyes would do a better job than muskies but they are not "controllable"...since they do spawn. [/#0000ff]
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Go to DWR and read latest on Scofield. May poision in 2015.
Cost 750,000 to 1M. Lower Fish Creek is ruined due to thousands of chubs going over the spillway earlier this year.
Excellent management of LFC.[mad]
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How do you manage the bozos who put chubs in Scofield? How do you manage the near record runoff? How do you manage water levels in a storage reservoir that you have no control over?
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