Willard 5/6/2011

[The_Red_Leaker]

Fished from 3:00pm till dark. Launched from the North Marina and trolled all over using a variety of plugs and bouncers. Landed one 18" walleye, lost 2 or 3 before I could tell what they were, and had 2 or 3 more hits that never hooked up. I am going to assume soft lipped crappie. My transdcuer said the water temp was 59 degrees which seemed a bit warm. If someone could confirm or deny that reading I would appreciate it. Thought fishing would have been better with the warmer weather but even the reports coming in today seem slow. Willard is a mystery but I intend on solving it; probably with a lot of swearing and tears.......[pirate]
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[Jmaze]

I would like to offer my opinion on Willard. It is a fascinating reservoir in Utah. I won't get in to many details of it and won't talk to much about it's Morphology. To start it is a 10,000 surface acre reservoir which makes it one of the largest reservoirs in Northern Utah. The Weber river is the source of all it's water. It has a 0 conservation pool which means if can be drained to a mud puddle for agrarian or other use.

That said, it starts to be interesting when you think that it will be no deeper then say 36 feet at peak level (I am not trying to argue absolute water depth, that is just what my fish finder says) but could go much lower depending on time of year. The temperature range of the water is huge as well because of it's relative shallowness. The lack of relative structure, other then shoreline is the only other major factor. These are the "big" effects of number of fish, quality of fish, and quality of fishery.

This is not all the technical data, and there is lots more to know about the place, but for this particular article the important physical stuff is there. Let me expound a bit about the types of fish now because this brings the nature of the fishery to true light.

Shad. That is what runs the reservoir now. I don't recall the timing of the planting, but I do recall the effects on the fishery. This will come to bear shortly. Before the planting it was a Walleye factory. After it was a great fishery in all aspects of the word. With the Shad in the lake it has a relatively reliable and abundant food source. Shad being Plankton eaters are ideally suited to Willard. The reservoir is a giant soup bowl for which the Shad are designed to live in. With the introduction of the wipers you now have 3 predators to keep the Shad in check. Catfish, Walleye, and Wipers. I won't go into the Carp factor but they are a large impact on the reservoir when it comes to both the damage they inflict on the spawn of other fish and/or the piscivorous nature they adapt sometimes that competes with Game fish.

Now that is the general picture. The more specific picture is that it is a "soup bowl". There are big meaty chunks floating around, and a lot of broth. That means that other then the dike, and a very few other locations around the lake there is no structure per say to hold fish. That means that the Shad roam and the predators roam after them. The shore is technically the prime place to fish being that it is the only true source of cover (
What I am saying is the fish are where the bait fish are at and the bait fish roam like the buffalo all over the reservoir. Seasonally there are patterns, but the fishing day to day angler to angler is not as consistent for the above slated reasons.

The most successful Willard anglers usually roam where the fish roam. Or like the people who fish the dikes use specific patters that always produce. Those patterns almost always imitate the Shad. My most successful lures are a white 2-3 inch curly tail grub with a 1/8-1/4 ounce jighead in various colors or a Rapala Clown shad rap.

You need to have very good electronics to stay on fish at Willard, or be very persistent and patient on the dikes. More to the point the fish are deeper in the spring, shallower for a few weeks towards the start of summer, deep again during the summer, then surface bashing during late fall.

I suggest these are only the basic patterns and fine tuning of these patterns is a must. These are interesting musing's and mulling's but tried and true. There is always a better way, but these are the most basic.[:/]
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[The_Red_Leaker]

Thanks for taking the time to post your knowledge, very much appreciated. After reading the information, my successes and failures at Willard make a bit more sense. I do generally (not every trip but more often than not) come home with a fish or two but I cannot seem to decipher a pattern as to when and where I catch them. The wandering bait theory explains the randomness of each trip to Willard. My electronics are adequate enough to pick up bait schools and the predators wanting them; the bigger issue for me in chasing the bait (now that I know about the need to do so) is the size and power of the Red Leaker. 14' semi-flat bottom aluminum w/ a 15 hp to get from place to place, and 34 lb thrust electric to troll. With so much surface area to cover the Leaker has her limits, especially if a breeze picks up... can get a little tricky. Again thanks for your post, I will put the information to good use.
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[wiperhunter2]

[quote The_Red_Leaker]Fished from 3:00pm till dark. Launched from the North Marina and trolled all over using a variety of plugs and bouncers. Landed one 18" walleye, lost 2 or 3 before I could tell what they were, and had 2 or 3 more hits that never hooked up. I am going to assume soft lipped crappie. My transdcuer said the water temp was 59 degrees which seemed a bit warm. If someone could confirm or deny that reading I would appreciate it. Thought fishing would have been better with the warmer weather but even the reports coming in today seem slow. Willard is a mystery but I intend on solving it; probably with a lot of swearing and tears.......[pirate][/quote]
We marked 60* in the evening at the N/E corner yesterday, so I'd say your finder was reading right. Shore fisherpersons do good this time of the year because the wipers tend to come closer to shore then. Maybe for a false spawn but there is also a lot of food there as well and the water is warmer. This month will see a big turn on for the fish as the water temps go up. When it gets to 65* watch out, that is what I call Wiper Time and feed bag goes on and stays on[].
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[The_Red_Leaker]

Thanks for putting my mind at ease concerning the temp reading and I am looking forward to feed bag time!!
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[retch_sweeney]

Don't forget the smallmouth and largemouth bass, crappie and perch. They are all big eaters of shad.
That's one of the things I love about Willard; mixed bag!
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]Good info. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I am just wrapping up a couple of sections on a book on Willard...Willard Bay Wipers and Willard Bay Catfish. In addition to about 35 years of fishing experience on Willard I have been able to dig up a lot of helpful info from various sources at Utah DWR. Here is a copy of something I received from one of the biologists in the area.[/#0000ff]
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[ol][li][font "Times New Roman"]88,000 gizzard shad were stocked into Willard Bay in June of 1994 this was the first time.

2. Typically Striper females and white bass males are used but we have used both crosses at Willard by. I don't know if we have seen a difference in the 2 different crosses at Willard Bay. If white bass females are used the emerging sack fry start out smaller.

3. We stock about 500,000 sack fry in the lake in May. Survival of these fish is very low, probably 1 or 2% or less. In June our stocking quota is 300,000 but generally stock between 100,00 and 200,000 fish. These fish come as 2 inch fish from the Wahweap hatchery. Survival of these fish is much higher but we have not estimated their survival but I would guess it is around 50%

4. We have not aged wipers from Willard Bay but when size classes or plotted graphically they have fallen out quite nicely into different size classes that we correlate to age. When we started stocking the sack fry this changed somewhat because at the end of the first year the sack fry sere significantly smaller than those that were raised at Wahweap. At that time we were seeing fish that were 6 or 7 years old. The record wiper is 9 lbs 12 oz. this is bigger than anything we have netted. We have not netted Willard Bay since the lake was drained because of the leak, which is the same time frame we have seen the record wipers come out. My guess is that is about as big as we will see come out of Willard Bay. We have done some diet analysis on the wipers at Willard Bay and for the most part they don't eat much except for when gizzard shad are available.

5. I don't foresee any changes to the wiper program at Willard with the new hatchery unless they are not able to provide the numbers of fry we need. The trick will be to get the timing of the stripers at Lake Powell and the white bass at the hatchery the same. It may be that we will have to cryopreserve gametes from one of the sources until the others is ready. But that is yet to be seen. Drew probably would have better information on 5 than I have. I don't know if they still plan to use Wahweap as grow out before they ship to Willard Bay or if they will grow out at Lee Kay but that could effect what happens at Willard Bay if they didn't grow as good or if they grew better than at Wahweap. I don't think we will abandon what we are doing now until we have some of these question answered at Lee Kay but again Drew would be the one to ask on that. [/font][/li][/ol]
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just a few notes. Wipers were always planed to go into Willard after the establishment of gizzard shad it was not at after thought and a way to control shad. We needed to establish the forage before we added the predator. Gizzard shad are filter feeders and eat anything that they encounter which includes algae zooplankton and detritus. The eat a lot of gunk off of the bottom. This is especially true with the adults.
Wipers were stocked in New Castle to control golden shiners that someone illegally introduced and had become uncontrollable.

If there is anything else I can help you with please let me know.

Take a kid fishing and take advantage of the new 365 day fishing license.

Craig J Schaugaard
NRO Regional Aquatic Program Manager
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Northern Region
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[k2muskie]

Thank you and very interesting read...OBTW our temp on Willard was hovering just below 60* also.

Now question if I may as we're attempting to crack some type of code on the deliberate biting Willard Walleye. So here goes: Can you further expond on the statement on Willard being a 'Walleye Factor' before the stocking shad? I think I may know but not sure as we're very novice Willard anglers and I'd like to hear about this...thanks in advance.

Sincerely,
K2
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[DKStroutfitter]

K2,
The quote was "Walleye Factory" not Walleye Factor.
To me, this means that Walleye were the primary game fish in Willard and they were there in very good numbers, before the introduction of Shad and Wiper.
After the wiper were introduced, the DWR seems to have lost interest in Walleye.
It appears to me that Walleye are now on their own to survive at Willard.
There hasn't been a stocking of Walleye in Willard for years.
I hope that the DWR will be willing to help the Walleye out if ever needed though.

Last year, the DWR spent a couple of days doing gill netting at Willard. This was in May.
They were going to study the age of the Wiper that were netted to see just how old the fish were.
The netting produced several fish that were large enough to rival the state record. This was very promising for anglers.
I got this information from one of the DWR employees that was involved with the netting program last year.
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[Jmaze]

I do believe my post said "Walleye Factory". It was in my humble opinion that I was pointing out that prior to the stocking of shad, WIllard was in the top 3 best Walleye fisheries in the state. I actually believe now that it is a better fishery but back then the fish came much easier. About 10-12 years ago all you needed was a bottom bouncer or a Rapala to fish out 6 or 7 Walleye in relatively short order. They were easily patterned. They ate crawdads and minnows off the dike that was it. But now trolling mid-lake with Hard baits and finding the correct depth is more important. This is not a complaint mind you just a neophytes observation.

The "deliberate biting Willard Walleye"... Can you catch the non deliberate ones?[]
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