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Fish Lake Splake
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09-29-2015, 01:44 AM
My girl rented a cabin for my birthday down at fish lake for us this weekend. We tried various depths jigging for the Splake. The best depth was around 50ft using white or yellow tube jigs tipped with perch meat we caught rainbows, perch ,splake, and even a tiger trout. I attached a pic of some of the nice splake I invited home for dinner.
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10-01-2015, 02:17 AM
Nice.
How did you hold the boat while you jigged at 50'? Our boat seems to wander around even when I am trying to hold close with the elect. [signature]
10-01-2015, 08:56 PM
We use an anchor....the boat has some movements if you have wind, but that little movement is helpful in my opinion.
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10-01-2015, 10:45 PM
Nice Splake! Fish Lake has the best Splake fishing in the state in my opinion.
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10-02-2015, 09:07 PM
[quote Northman]Nice Splake! Fish Lake has the best Splake fishing in the state in my opinion.[/quote]
Which shows just how  the splake fishing currently is in Utah!Fish Lake is great, don't get me wrong -- but it hasn't been great for the last number of years. Why? Because our hatchery system has no accountability! Why has our hatchery system failed to be able to produce their quota for splake in recent years? Have you noticed how many tiger trout have been stocked in Fish Lake compared to splake recently? It shouldn't be this way. Someone needs to be accountable when the hatcheries lose all of their splake production! Angers should be demanding better return on the splake numbers! Our managers and biologists want the splake. So do anglers. Why is it OK for the hatcheries to lose those splake?? the simple answer, in my simple mind is: "no worries, we have a ba-jillion tiger trout we can use instead...". But that's not acceptable to me. We have the means to make splake, we just need to fix the politics of making them! OK -- rant over. I love Fish Lake. [signature]
10-03-2015, 12:33 AM
I called a month ago to talk with one of the biologists (I think his name was Mike) for Fish Lake about:
1) The stocking of kokanee and the long term plans on keeping them in the lake. 2) The stocking of tiger trout. 3) The lack of stocking Splake. He said they definately prefer to stock the Splake and intend to get back to stocking them next year. And like you said this years Splake stock was basically lost. But he didn't elaborate on the details of why. He said the tiger trout were planted to fill the gap until the Splake numbers could be brought back up. I think the large Splake are one of the gems of Fish Lake, even more so than the Lake trout. I started catching my first Tiger trout out of there about 3 years ago ice fishing and kind of thought- "What the hell is this, these aren't suppost to be in here". I have caught them every year since but to date the biggest one I have caught was just a skinny 12" fish. I don't think the Tigers get very big without a established forage fish in the lake. That may change this year with the introduction of the Kokanee. I do like that they have introduced Kokanee to the lake. I was told that they will be stocking at the same level as this year for the next several years until they can get some natural recrutment going. And the the Kokanee they did stock were lake spawners. The Kokanee may not get huge, but even the small ones are fun. It will be interesting to see how big the Lake trout and Splake will grow with the introduction of the Kokanee. [signature]
10-03-2015, 01:38 AM
[quote PBH][quote Northman]Nice Splake! Fish Lake has the best Splake fishing in the state in my opinion.[/quote]
Which shows just how the splake fishing currently is in Utah!Fish Lake is great, don't get me wrong -- but it hasn't been great for the last number of years. Why? Because our hatchery system has no accountability! Why has our hatchery system failed to be able to produce their quota for splake in recent years? Have you noticed how many tiger trout have been stocked in Fish Lake compared to splake recently? It shouldn't be this way. Someone needs to be accountable when the hatcheries lose all of their splake production! Angers should be demanding better return on the splake numbers! Our managers and biologists want the splake. So do anglers. Why is it OK for the hatcheries to lose those splake?? the simple answer, in my simple mind is: "no worries, we have a ba-jillion tiger trout we can use instead...". But that's not acceptable to me. We have the means to make splake, we just need to fix the politics of making them! OK -- rant over. I love Fish Lake.[/quote] Interesting, and I agree wholeheartedly. A couple of follow-up questions. 1. We have heard that the hatcheries failed to fill most of the splake quota in 2014 and totally failed in the 2012 quota, but I never heard why. Do you have any information you can share as to specifically what happened? 2. Last I heard, the 2015 quota was OK and was on schedule to be stocked. Was 2015 short or messed up too? 3. RE" "no worries, we have a ba-jillion tiger trout we can use instead...". Isn't this what we deserve? Every time I read DWR survey results and a very large number of BFT posts, all I seem to hear is "I want more tiger trout" "Put tiger trout in every @*&% fishery in the state Whaaaaaa!" Isn't the DWR just trying to satisfy the vocal crowd wanting more tigers. Besides, a tiger trout is only a slightly more radical frankenfish than a splake? [  ] I suspect that if more folks made it clear on surveys that we wanted the Fish lake (Joes valley and Navajo too) splake fisheries to be a priority point of focus, the hatchery personnel wouldn't make a hash of producing the correct splake quota. [signature]
10-03-2015, 02:44 AM
Yes we used an anchor the best time was when the wind wasn't blowing in the morning so we didn't move much. The tiger trout we did catch were small also. The Splake were either 8 inches or 15-20 inches no in between.
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10-05-2015, 06:14 PM
[quote doggonefishin]
1. We have heard that the hatcheries failed to fill most of the splake quota in 2014 and totally failed in the 2012 quota, but I never heard why. Do you have any information you can share as to specifically what happened? [/quote] It's very similar to when you tell your child "don't touch that, it's hot". Sometimes people just have to learn the hard way! I'm sure that Birdsey could give a full explanation for us -- basically, hatchery production of splake was moved to a different hatchery. New hatchery + inexperience + different water temps = failed fish production. They'll work it out, and I honestly believe that Fish Lake has a bright future for splake. It's just been frustrating seeing the downturn over the last 5 years. As for tiger trout --- blah. I'm sick of tiger trout. I'd much rather eat a splake. [signature]
10-07-2015, 08:06 PM
Hello,
There have been a number of species that have been moved around in our hatchery system the last several years as we have tried to clean them up from Bacterial Cold Water Disease and replace our brood stocks with clean ones from other state and federal hatcheries. For the most part no one has noticed because fishing has remained excellent. However, the two groups of fish that have suffered the most in these shifts have been the splake and brook trout. I would like to tell you that all of these reassignments of fish to different hatcheries are behind us and that we will be back to some kind of normal from now on, but the reality is different. In 2016 our largest hatchery, Fountain Green, will be offline to reconstruct the spring. All of the hatchery guys have stepped up and are going to take up the slack at the other hatcheries. However, this means that every one of those other hatcheries are going to be operating at maximum capacity and one little hiccup in anything could spell disaster. We are working on replacing the lake trout and brook trout broods with Cold Water Disease free fish but this is still several years away. In the meantime we will continue to operate with the old broodstock. Some of them are getting pretty old and may not be as productive as they once were. I personally love splake and hope that we can get back to achieving our full quota in the near future. We all need to be patient though as the hatchery system continues to make adjustments for the problems of the last several years. Paul Birdsey Coldwater Sportfish Coordinator Utah Wildlife Resources [signature]
10-08-2015, 02:09 AM
Looks like lake mary got skipped on the Brook trout rotation this year.
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10-08-2015, 06:05 PM
[quote ColdWaterCoord]Hello,
There have been a number of species that have been moved around in our hatchery system the last several years as we have tried to clean them up from Bacterial Cold Water Disease and replace our brood stocks with clean ones from other state and federal hatcheries. For the most part no one has noticed because fishing has remained excellent. However, the two groups of fish that have suffered the most in these shifts have been the splake and brook trout. I would like to tell you that all of these reassignments of fish to different hatcheries are behind us and that we will be back to some kind of normal from now on, but the reality is different. In 2016 our largest hatchery, Fountain Green, will be offline to reconstruct the spring. All of the hatchery guys have stepped up and are going to take up the slack at the other hatcheries. However, this means that every one of those other hatcheries are going to be operating at maximum capacity and one little hiccup in anything could spell disaster. We are working on replacing the lake trout and brook trout broods with Cold Water Disease free fish but this is still several years away. In the meantime we will continue to operate with the old broodstock. Some of them are getting pretty old and may not be as productive as they once were. I personally love splake and hope that we can get back to achieving our full quota in the near future. We all need to be patient though as the hatchery system continues to make adjustments for the problems of the last several years. Paul Birdsey Coldwater Sportfish Coordinator Utah Wildlife Resources[/quote] And ^^^^^^^ is something you will never see out of the other mountain state fisheries management. Coming on a public forum and spreading the information as to what is going on has impressed me greatly since moving to Utah. Great to see a Response out of the DWR. [signature] |
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