Small mouth in strawberry

[jr8fish]

before the big berry was poisoned my dad and i fished it very often. at least once a week and sometimes even twice a week. never in that time did we ever catch any browns brook trout or lake trout. we fished from the shore from the pontoons but most of all from the boat. we trolled deep shallow along structure and more and never once did we ever catch anything that was not a rainbow or cutthroat. we hooked many 6 7 and sometimes even 8 pound cutts. when it came time to poison it the dwr put a chemical known as rotenone in the low reservoir. with the presence of rotenone in the water it becomes more and more difficult for fish to breath. they cant convert oxygen. however not all the fish die. bigger game fish with strong health gills and structure will probably survive. considering that strawberry is a relatively deep lake it would have been difficult for the poison to streach down far enough to kill the big lake trout. if there were actually lake trout in there some of the bigger fish would have survived because they would have been in deep enough water to with stand the poison. i have proof that all the fish dont die when a reservoir is poisoned. strawberry was poison in 1991 and was sufficently restalked in 1992 that is roughly 11 to 12 years ago. well about 8 to 9 years ago ( three years after the poisoning) i was jigging a tube jig from my tube up at the berry. i hooked into my biggest fish since the poisoning. it was an 8 pound cutthroat measuring around 27 inches. i believe that fish survived the poisoning along with some others. or it could be that he was planted 3 years previous and since the water quality and food sources are so outstanding he could have grown to that size. either way, if some fish survived the poisoning or if they just grow extremely fast, strawberry reservior, utah, 20 miles south of heber utah is one of the worlds best trout fisheries. not to long ago it was ranked in the top five out of fifty best lakes in the country and that was not just trout lakes.

i think it is absolutely crazy and stupid that some arrogant *&***# illegally planted small mouth bass. i hope that they die out as fast as they were introduced. it is ashame definitely now that the slot limit on cutts is working so well. i caught well over 20 cutts over the slot while ice fishing this year. oh yeah and by the way i have caught several 5 and 6 pound rainbows out of the berry the last couple of summers. it is definitely a world class fishery.

sorry for the opinion i am just very passionate about the berry

jr8fish
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