11-09-2002, 09:43 PM
I don't know whether DWR has conducted any gill net surveys on Willard within the last year, but I would be willing to bet a Prism Shad that there are a few wipers that already exceed ten pounds. Of course every wiper guy has a story of losing one at boatside that would easily make that ten pound mark. Fishermen discover at an early age that any fish lost can weigh whatever you want it to weigh in the telling of the tale.
I have my own theories on what the ultimate potential of wipers in Willard might be. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have had the luxury of catching wipers in several other states and I've spent a few hours in original research on the subject. I say there is no valid reason why wipers in Willard cannot grow to twenty pounds or more. All they need is plenty of food and a few good growing seasons without being invited home for dinner.
Sound simple? It is. No magic formula involved. Some folks say that Willard is too cold and the growing season is too short. Compared to the wiper waters in the Carolinas, Florida and Texas, Willard is colder. But, it is almost identical to many of the lakes in Colorado that hold large populations of big, fast-growing wipers...that do exceed 20 pounds.
The prairie lakes in Colorado are fairly shallow too. They get warm in the summer and freeze over in the winter. They also usually have other predatory species like walleye, northerns, muskies and both largies and smallies. These fish all compete for the available forage, which is chiefly the gizzard shad, just as it is in Willard.
What's the difference? Here's where my personal opinion comes in. I believe it begins at the bottom of the food chain. In a fertile environment, you get lots of algae and single celled critters...which feed zooplankton and copepods...which feed other aquatic insects and the hatchlings of almost every species of fish in the ecosystem, until they are large enough to eat other prey.
The various species of shad feed on these microorganisms throughout most of their lives. In a sterile or nutrient poor lake, there is not enough food to get baby fish well launched to the fry stage. If they die young, they never grow to a size accessible by predators. In short, no matter how successful the shad spawn, if the larvae have no food, there will be no new shad for the bigger fish to eat.
Utah is a mountain state. Most of our reservoirs are fed by streams dropping fairly quickly into the holding basins. Even in good years, they don't pick up much in the way of new nutrients for the ecology. True, there is some agricultural runoff, but not enough phosphates and nitrogen to feed the bottom of a healthy food chain.
One thing that characterizes prolific wiper waters is an abundance of shad as a forage base. Dinner is always served...24/7. The wipers do not have to spend days looking around a large reservoir for isolated small groups of shad, already being decimated by every other species in the lake. And, the shad are healthy and abundant because of regular infusions of nutrients...either through regular rain runoff, or agricultural fertilizer drainage from many square miles of maintained farmland.
Does anyone else recall the experiment on Lake Mead a few years ago? I don't remember where the funds came from, but several tons of powdered fertilizer were purchased and scattered in one of the big arms of the lake, to see if there would be a positive effect on the food chain. In a short time the biomass in that area of the lake exceeded the rest of the lake combined, and the predator fish were chunky, not "hammer handles".
Sorry. A whole lotta words to say that if you want bigger wipers, you gotta have more shad. DWR realizes the imbalance, and has adjusted wiper limits as a measure to help correct it. But, until Willard gets more water, and more nutrients, there will be no more shad than the nutrient levels can support.
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I have my own theories on what the ultimate potential of wipers in Willard might be. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have had the luxury of catching wipers in several other states and I've spent a few hours in original research on the subject. I say there is no valid reason why wipers in Willard cannot grow to twenty pounds or more. All they need is plenty of food and a few good growing seasons without being invited home for dinner.
Sound simple? It is. No magic formula involved. Some folks say that Willard is too cold and the growing season is too short. Compared to the wiper waters in the Carolinas, Florida and Texas, Willard is colder. But, it is almost identical to many of the lakes in Colorado that hold large populations of big, fast-growing wipers...that do exceed 20 pounds.
The prairie lakes in Colorado are fairly shallow too. They get warm in the summer and freeze over in the winter. They also usually have other predatory species like walleye, northerns, muskies and both largies and smallies. These fish all compete for the available forage, which is chiefly the gizzard shad, just as it is in Willard.
What's the difference? Here's where my personal opinion comes in. I believe it begins at the bottom of the food chain. In a fertile environment, you get lots of algae and single celled critters...which feed zooplankton and copepods...which feed other aquatic insects and the hatchlings of almost every species of fish in the ecosystem, until they are large enough to eat other prey.
The various species of shad feed on these microorganisms throughout most of their lives. In a sterile or nutrient poor lake, there is not enough food to get baby fish well launched to the fry stage. If they die young, they never grow to a size accessible by predators. In short, no matter how successful the shad spawn, if the larvae have no food, there will be no new shad for the bigger fish to eat.
Utah is a mountain state. Most of our reservoirs are fed by streams dropping fairly quickly into the holding basins. Even in good years, they don't pick up much in the way of new nutrients for the ecology. True, there is some agricultural runoff, but not enough phosphates and nitrogen to feed the bottom of a healthy food chain.
One thing that characterizes prolific wiper waters is an abundance of shad as a forage base. Dinner is always served...24/7. The wipers do not have to spend days looking around a large reservoir for isolated small groups of shad, already being decimated by every other species in the lake. And, the shad are healthy and abundant because of regular infusions of nutrients...either through regular rain runoff, or agricultural fertilizer drainage from many square miles of maintained farmland.
Does anyone else recall the experiment on Lake Mead a few years ago? I don't remember where the funds came from, but several tons of powdered fertilizer were purchased and scattered in one of the big arms of the lake, to see if there would be a positive effect on the food chain. In a short time the biomass in that area of the lake exceeded the rest of the lake combined, and the predator fish were chunky, not "hammer handles".
Sorry. A whole lotta words to say that if you want bigger wipers, you gotta have more shad. DWR realizes the imbalance, and has adjusted wiper limits as a measure to help correct it. But, until Willard gets more water, and more nutrients, there will be no more shad than the nutrient levels can support.
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