Docks at Walcott

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Not in yet nobody knows when. With good weather there will be a ton of people but fishing should be good. Probably close to a thousand fish in the five pound range or bigger caught there this year. Just looked up the plantings, Salmon Falls reservoir with about 1/5th the water as Walcott to Eagle Rock had 152,000 catchable trout planted in it last year plus 575,000 3-6 fingerlings and 77,000 steelhead. Minidoka Dam which produces growth rates of over 3 pounds per year and produces over 100 times the trophy fish had a total planting of 22,000 fish. Also the BLM paid for all the fish that were put in Minidoka and the fish and game paid the whole bill for Salmon dam. I landed Seven pound 26" fish two days in a row from my float tube thur and Friday. Trolling early last week the two of us had about 50 hook ups a couple of days. Can't imagine that type of fishing continuing for very long. The Fri Sat storms and 35 mph winds Monday really riled the water and fishing was very slow early this week. It is a bunch of crap putting that kind of fish into Salmon dam where I have yet to land a 5 pound fish. So far this year there has been 25 times the fish landed in Minidoka than Salmon Falls. We caught five fish last year at Gifford Springs which had tags and were from the 2014 plantings. None at the dam. Folks nearly all these 4-6 pound fish we are catching are from that planting. Going in at an average of 9-10 inches in September 14 in a year and a half they are in the 5 pound range. There is a huge body of water for these fish to hang around in. The dam is full all the time now and folks there is 5 miles of it that a boat is not allowed in. Gifford Springs is about 10 miles upriver from where these fish were planted. For heck sakes we need to plant 3 times the fish we are now putting in. A friend on a digital scale weighted a 21 inch fish that weighed seven pounds. It was 16" around the girth.
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