Willard N. Marina 9-15-20

[TubeDude]

where da wipers at?
fishtacoed?

It has been a couple of years since DWR published an "annual" netting survey report.  So the relative strengths of the individual species populations is purely guesswork these days.  But in the two previous netting reports numbers were visibly down from some of the peak years...and anglers' results have definitely been on the low side.  And there have been no wild and wooly boils for several years.  The predator- prey (wiper-shad) ratios have been low enough (on the wiper side) that there has been abundant food.  Fewer wipers and more shad reduces the numbers and sizes of any wiper schools...and the need to "gang feed".  The wipers and walleyes have only to swim around with their mouths open to get all the food they need.  Well...no really.  But close to it.

Earlier in the year...when wipers were actively feeding during the spawn and post spawn periods...there were some good catches.  Walleye too.  That's when there were no young shad of eating size in the ecosystem, so the predators had to scrounge for food...and they would readily smack all the silly stuff fishermen dragged by them.  But once the newly hatched shad got big enough to eat, angling success dropped way off.  Again, too many shad and too few predators.  

There seems to be about 3 year classes of wipers in the lake.  The fewest are among the 4-5 year old wipers that are over 20 inches long.  Some have been caught over 24 inches this year.  But not many.  The next size down is the 15 - 17 inch crowd...probably 2 year olds.  There have been more of them caught than other sizes.  But still not in the numbers of past years.  Lastly are this year's plantings.  They have grown to several inches and are often caught on small lures being fished for crappies or other smaller species.  They would be average sized white bass in Utah Lake but are not much on Willard.

A lot of us fondly remember the years before about 2010...when there were hordes of wipers all over the lake.  And they could be caught year-round on a wide variety of lures.  During the late summer into fall it was a rare day when there were not multiple wide-open boils somewhere on the lake...and anybody who could cast a lure (or fly) into the fray would get bit.  I recall days when fishing in the back of the north marina my wife and I...in our float tubes...would sometimes be surrounded by boiling wipers.  It got crazy, with shad-crazed wipers almost jumping into our tubes and bouncing off our legs below the water.  And all we had to do was dip a lure into the water in front of our tubes and we would be instantly bendo.   We had days of hooking over 20 fish each...from our float tubes...even back inside the marina.  

Alas...no mas.