04-27-2018, 03:58 PM
[#0000FF]Over the past three years there has been a growing number of folks who are soaking mussels from the shore and harvesting large numbers of wipers. This was not a factor in wiper numbers in the past but some think it might be now.
I have had several reports of "happy harvesters" catching multiple limits of wipers in a single day...either taking the fish home and returning or handing them off to others who came up over the dikes to collect them. And these witnesses also claimed to have called DWR without getting any followup or response.
I addressed these issues with Chris Penne, of DWR. Here is his response. Once again, thanks Chris.
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I've seen a lot of reports of wiper catches coming in from shore in the past few days, so the action at Willard is certainly warming up. Regarding your questions, I haven't been able to tease out what impact the success of shore angling in recent years has had on the wiper fishery. I don't think it will be something I will be able to figure out from our netting surveys alone. While the wiper population has been coming down in the numbers since about 2015, its hard to separate out what part of that reduction in numbers is due to shore angling and what is due to reductions in stocking by DWR to let the population go down and get our predator numbers more in line with typical forage availability. There is also the confounding effect of the big 2014 year class of wipers that has been dominating the reservoir population for several years. It seems this year class of fish has been so dominant that it appears to be reducing the success of our stocking efforts on new wipers as well. I think the best information we'll get on the shore catch will be when we conduct another creel survey on Willard Bay, as that will give us an estimate of the number of shore anglers and how many fish they harvest. We currently don't have a creel survey scheduled for Willard Bay in 2018 or 2019, but we may get one on the books sometime around 2020 or shortly thereafter. The last creel survey we conducted at Willard Bay was in 2010, which predates a lot of the shore fishing for wipers with mussels.
Regarding the happy harvesting, I talked with one of our law enforcement officers about the overlimits and they encouraged me to let the anglers know they are happy to talk with people about how often they are out patrolling Willard, what they see when they are out there, etc. They didn't want to give out their individual phone numbers, but did say that if an angler was concerned and wanted to provide his or her contact info, they would be happy to contact that person and talk. I think this is probably the best way for people to get clarity on how often our law enforcement officials are out and what they see when responding to calls and patrolling as I am a poor intermediary - in my role as a biologist I'm either in the office or out in the field and I don't get a chance to talk with the law enforcement officers as much as I'd like as they are almost always out patrolling somewhere. I do see the law enforcement captain in our office a lot and talk with him regularly, but its always best to talk with the people doing the "on the ground work" out patrolling. You can feel free to funnel me the number of any people that want to talk with one of our officers.
Chris
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I have had several reports of "happy harvesters" catching multiple limits of wipers in a single day...either taking the fish home and returning or handing them off to others who came up over the dikes to collect them. And these witnesses also claimed to have called DWR without getting any followup or response.
I addressed these issues with Chris Penne, of DWR. Here is his response. Once again, thanks Chris.
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I've seen a lot of reports of wiper catches coming in from shore in the past few days, so the action at Willard is certainly warming up. Regarding your questions, I haven't been able to tease out what impact the success of shore angling in recent years has had on the wiper fishery. I don't think it will be something I will be able to figure out from our netting surveys alone. While the wiper population has been coming down in the numbers since about 2015, its hard to separate out what part of that reduction in numbers is due to shore angling and what is due to reductions in stocking by DWR to let the population go down and get our predator numbers more in line with typical forage availability. There is also the confounding effect of the big 2014 year class of wipers that has been dominating the reservoir population for several years. It seems this year class of fish has been so dominant that it appears to be reducing the success of our stocking efforts on new wipers as well. I think the best information we'll get on the shore catch will be when we conduct another creel survey on Willard Bay, as that will give us an estimate of the number of shore anglers and how many fish they harvest. We currently don't have a creel survey scheduled for Willard Bay in 2018 or 2019, but we may get one on the books sometime around 2020 or shortly thereafter. The last creel survey we conducted at Willard Bay was in 2010, which predates a lot of the shore fishing for wipers with mussels.
Regarding the happy harvesting, I talked with one of our law enforcement officers about the overlimits and they encouraged me to let the anglers know they are happy to talk with people about how often they are out patrolling Willard, what they see when they are out there, etc. They didn't want to give out their individual phone numbers, but did say that if an angler was concerned and wanted to provide his or her contact info, they would be happy to contact that person and talk. I think this is probably the best way for people to get clarity on how often our law enforcement officials are out and what they see when responding to calls and patrolling as I am a poor intermediary - in my role as a biologist I'm either in the office or out in the field and I don't get a chance to talk with the law enforcement officers as much as I'd like as they are almost always out patrolling somewhere. I do see the law enforcement captain in our office a lot and talk with him regularly, but its always best to talk with the people doing the "on the ground work" out patrolling. You can feel free to funnel me the number of any people that want to talk with one of our officers.
Chris
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