On another thread, we were having a discussion on all of the small wipers being caught...and the reasons for them being so abundant. I promised to address our questions to Chris Penne, of DWR, and to provide his response. Here 'tis. And thanks, Chris
But first, for those not familiar with the two different wipers available...the "sunshine" and the "palmetto"...here is a brief explanation. The sunshine is a cross between a female white bass and a male striper. The palmetto is just the opposite...a male white bass and a female striper. Most fisheries management agencies seem to prefer the sunshine for being hardier and having a higher survival rate. Some favor the palmetto for producing a larger fry and resulting larger adult due to starting with a larger egg. But in the long run there have been no definitive studies showing a notable difference in one over the other.
FROM CHRIS:
Good to hear from you, Pat. Yeah, I've been pleased to see the reports of all those smaller wipers being caught. It's definitely that we were able to stock more fish and not the difference in wiper crosses. While we have been stocking some of the palmetto bass strain, so far we've been putting in such small numbers of them, we think it's unlikely they are a major contributor to all the young fish we are seeing. There have been two recent stocking events that led to all those juvenile wipers. First, we tried something new last year and stocked 1,000,000 wiper fry in early June. These were the sunshine cross (white bass female x striped bass male) that we've historically stocked. I had some concerns that going from the low water levels of the drought to the high water after runoff in 2023 was going to lead a strong increase in shad numbers as they can spawn up to four times in a season and fill that extra space much quicker than the sport fish can. This would have been great for the fish, but would have tanked the fishing as the predator fish like wiper and walleye would have a surplus of forage and wouldn't be very interested in taking lures.
Historically, we haven't had great success with stocking wiper fry, but we wanted to get as many predators in there last year as we could to keep on top of the juvenile shad numbers, so fry were the best way to stock a lot of fish fast. What was different was the timing of our stocking - traditionally we've stocked fry in mid May since that is when DWR receives all the wiper fry that we send down to Wahweap Hatchery to be raised to fingerlings. That's great timing for Wahweap, but it's always seemed a bit early for Willard Bay. We'd just been taking advantage of some extra 250K fry that were surplus to what we needed for Wahweap all these years and so it wasn't a big deal if we didn't get great survival on those fish - basically it was one of those purchases where it was cheaper to buy 1 million fry than to just get the 750,000 needed for Wahweap. So this time targeted early June for stocking those fish since that is consistent with when the wipers in Willard generally come in shore and do their spawning runs and we bumped the number up to 1 million just for Willard Bay. Well, that seemed to have worked well, at least in 2023, and we ended up seeing good survival of those fish, which were being caught last fall at around 4-6" long and then are probably a good portion of the juvenile fish folks are catching now. That could have just been a lucky break, which happens from time to time, so we tried it again this year and will have a better idea of whether if it succeeded again this fall when we do our netting. Until then though - if folks start catching a lot of 4-6" wipers again, let me know as that would an early sign of success for this year's fry stocking and that size of fish doesn't often show up in our survey nets. We also were able to stock about 4,000 9-inch wipers this May and had reports from several folks that were catching those right after they were stocked. I'm thinking both stockings of fish are about the same size right now, so it's difficult to tell which is which. Either way, we're pleased to see we've got a strong year class of wipers added to the population. Feel free to reach out if you or others on BFT have additional questions.
Chris
But first, for those not familiar with the two different wipers available...the "sunshine" and the "palmetto"...here is a brief explanation. The sunshine is a cross between a female white bass and a male striper. The palmetto is just the opposite...a male white bass and a female striper. Most fisheries management agencies seem to prefer the sunshine for being hardier and having a higher survival rate. Some favor the palmetto for producing a larger fry and resulting larger adult due to starting with a larger egg. But in the long run there have been no definitive studies showing a notable difference in one over the other.
FROM CHRIS:
Good to hear from you, Pat. Yeah, I've been pleased to see the reports of all those smaller wipers being caught. It's definitely that we were able to stock more fish and not the difference in wiper crosses. While we have been stocking some of the palmetto bass strain, so far we've been putting in such small numbers of them, we think it's unlikely they are a major contributor to all the young fish we are seeing. There have been two recent stocking events that led to all those juvenile wipers. First, we tried something new last year and stocked 1,000,000 wiper fry in early June. These were the sunshine cross (white bass female x striped bass male) that we've historically stocked. I had some concerns that going from the low water levels of the drought to the high water after runoff in 2023 was going to lead a strong increase in shad numbers as they can spawn up to four times in a season and fill that extra space much quicker than the sport fish can. This would have been great for the fish, but would have tanked the fishing as the predator fish like wiper and walleye would have a surplus of forage and wouldn't be very interested in taking lures.
Historically, we haven't had great success with stocking wiper fry, but we wanted to get as many predators in there last year as we could to keep on top of the juvenile shad numbers, so fry were the best way to stock a lot of fish fast. What was different was the timing of our stocking - traditionally we've stocked fry in mid May since that is when DWR receives all the wiper fry that we send down to Wahweap Hatchery to be raised to fingerlings. That's great timing for Wahweap, but it's always seemed a bit early for Willard Bay. We'd just been taking advantage of some extra 250K fry that were surplus to what we needed for Wahweap all these years and so it wasn't a big deal if we didn't get great survival on those fish - basically it was one of those purchases where it was cheaper to buy 1 million fry than to just get the 750,000 needed for Wahweap. So this time targeted early June for stocking those fish since that is consistent with when the wipers in Willard generally come in shore and do their spawning runs and we bumped the number up to 1 million just for Willard Bay. Well, that seemed to have worked well, at least in 2023, and we ended up seeing good survival of those fish, which were being caught last fall at around 4-6" long and then are probably a good portion of the juvenile fish folks are catching now. That could have just been a lucky break, which happens from time to time, so we tried it again this year and will have a better idea of whether if it succeeded again this fall when we do our netting. Until then though - if folks start catching a lot of 4-6" wipers again, let me know as that would an early sign of success for this year's fry stocking and that size of fish doesn't often show up in our survey nets. We also were able to stock about 4,000 9-inch wipers this May and had reports from several folks that were catching those right after they were stocked. I'm thinking both stockings of fish are about the same size right now, so it's difficult to tell which is which. Either way, we're pleased to see we've got a strong year class of wipers added to the population. Feel free to reach out if you or others on BFT have additional questions.
Chris