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[#0000BF]Removed hijack of thread and made separate thread, Kent[/#0000BF]
perch. At Fish Lake. What a travesty. Oh well.
The perch in Fish Lake are going through one of their "boom" cycles. Typically, you don't find perch outside the weeds. But, when their population starts to get too big, they starting "overflowing" the weeds, and you start finding them outside the weedline. Bad news for all the other fish.
It's hard to imagine what kind of lake trout fishery you could have at Fish Lake if the perch hadn't been illegally introduced. The day they showed up was a  , day for Fish Lake....
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Unless you like catching perch at Fish Lake right? haha
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[quote AERO63]Unless you like catching perch at Fish Lake right? haha[/quote]
of course -- because there are so few places in Utah to fish for and catch perch, right?
Why do we need perch in every single fishery in Utah?
How many quality lake trout fisheries does Utah have? 2, maybe 3? Yet anglers are quick to sacrifice Fish Lake because people like catching perch? How .
Scourge. That's what they are. A source of widespread dreadful affliction and devastation.
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Some folks have better luck at catching dinky perch. They would rather that than risk being skunked trying to catch a Mac.
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[quote Fishrmn]Some folks have better luck at catching dinky perch. They would rather that than risk being skunked trying to catch a Mac.[/quote]
if that's the case, then they could drive another 5 miles and fish Johnson. Or, any plethora of other lakes in Utah with stunted populations of perch. We don't need them in EVERY lake!
You could take home more pounds of trout from Fish Lake than you currently take home in pounds of perch, if there were no perch in Fish Lake. Remove the perch, bring back the chubs, and then watch what happens to the splake and lake trout. Instead of catching 100 perch in a day, you'd be catching 100 seventeen inch splake in a day....
(when we were kids fishing at Fish Lake, we would have those days where 100 splake were a certain possibilty. Of course, that was before the perch took over. We also caught lots of 5 - 8 pound lake trout, which are next to non-existent today.)
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True, true PBH. Kids have fun sight catching perch at Fish Lake. HOWEVER, think how much fun they would have catching 17-20 inch rainbows and splake with an occasional 5-8 pound laker. My old neighbor used to catch lotsa big fish at FL back in the 70's.
When did the splake arrive? And while we're at it, when did the perch. Perch, the sharp dorsal finned, eye-bugging, float bladder gagging vermin.
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I agree! Now, if we could only figure a way to get rid of the:
[quote MrLipripper]Perch, the sharp dorsal finned, eye-bugging, float bladder gagging vermin.[/quote]
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[quote MrLipripper]
When did the splake arrive? And while we're at it, when did the perch.[/quote]
Splake were initially introduced in 1984.
Yellow Perch were illegally introduced in 1960.
Utah chub populations started to decline in the mid 1980's and harvests of rainbow trout (alternate forage for lake trout, primary sport fish) also started to decline in the 80's. These declines directly coincided with a population increase of yellow perch. The illegal introduction in the 60's spurred a chain of events that led to the decimation of Utah chubs.
Want to learn more? Read the attached report. It's got everything you ever wanted to know about the sport fishery known as Fish Lake.
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Well I guess I just choose to take what Fish Lake currently offers rather than worry about what I wish it had or how it used to be...
Best of luck finding the lakers or whatever else you're after.
I'll make a few trips down and try to do my part to take out the perch, 50 at a time!
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[quote AERO63]
I'll make a few trips down and try to do my part to take out the perch, 50 at a time![/quote]
+1
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[quote AERO63]Well I guess I just choose to take what Fish Lake currently offers rather than worry about what I wish it had or how it used to be... [/quote]
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" -- George Santayana
If you don't understand why our fisheries are the way they are, then it might be you who screws up the next fishery.
How many illegal introductions does it take before anglers realize that they are harming our resources? How many before anglers stop their passive approach of "I'll take what it currently offers..." before they put their foot down and put an end to the destruction of our fisheries?
Personally, it makes me mad -- and thus the reason that I continue to bring up what was done, and what could have been. It's up to anglers to protect our fisheries from those selfish individuals that continue to move fish around for their own personal pleasures.
Thanks for reading. You can now go back to your regularly scheduled back-patting.
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AERO63 wrote:
Well I guess I just choose to take what Fish Lake currently offers rather than worry about what I wish it had or how it used to be...
I don't see this statement as being anything but stating that he will fish for what is in there. I don't reed between the lines and see anything more.
I don't like to see illegal fish introduced into any waters and I hope that those that do so will get caught.
I just don't see a problem with someone liking what a water has to offer and enjoys fishing it.
I feel the same way about East Canyon.
Yes SMB were stocked in there and the Division isn't happy about it. [Still don't know how they got there.
I will fish for the Bass and Crappie there and enjoy it.
Whats wrong with that?]
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Quote:I don't like to see illegal fish introduced into any waters and I hope that those that do so will get caught.
I just don't see a problem with someone liking what a water has to offer and enjoys fishing it.
+1
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Haha hey no back-patting here, I'm a million miles from being an anybody, I just like catching fish.
I agree that illegally introduced species can be bad news, I think most fisherman understand that. You don't need to worry about me being one of the illegal private stocker-dudes, way too little gumption on my part to do something like that.
I've learned reading this thread that perch were illegally introduced to Fish Lake over 50 years ago. That's pretty old spilt milk for me to cry over, so I'll just keep catching the perch since they are there. I like to fish, I don't have the smarts to try and manage the state's fisheries. I'm happy that we have variety in Utah, and perch are some of my favorite fish to catch. So for me, perch in Fish Lake isn't such a travesty.
I hope you can still find a few of the splake and lake trout when you go down. I've only caught a small handful of lakers in my life, and they were fun as well.
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To me, it just seems that the "I'll enjoy what happens to be there" attitude gives the green light to 'bucket bozos' to experiment with our fisheries.
More often than not, introductions cause problems. They cost money too. Fish Lake was absolutely awesome as a Mac, Splake, and Rainbow Trout fishery before the Yellow Perch took over. I only wish I could have enjoyed more of it before it went South. It's still worth the trip, but it is nothing compared to what it was. 70 + Splake in the 2 to 3 pound range was what I expected per day. Now I feel lucky to get a dozen in the 15" range. But hey, at least now everyone can expect to weed through a few dozen perch to get a few over 9 inches in length.
As MrLipripper said:
[quote MrLipripper]Perch, the sharp dorsal finned, eye-bugging, float bladder gagging vermin.[/quote]
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So Fishrmn, you don't "enjoy what happens to be there"?
What do you suggest we do?
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[quote DKStroutfitter]So Fishrmn, you don't "enjoy what happens to be there"?
What do you suggest we do?[/quote]
We make it known that this is unacceptable to us. We do NOT make it appear that we are content with an overpopulated perch fishery. We do NOT celebrate the perch fishery at Fish Lake. We do NOT promote Fish Lake as a perch destination. We DO promote Fish Lake as a travesty due to illegal introductions, and we DO attempt to education fellow anglers on what can happen to fisheries when we do sit back and accept mediocrity due to the selfishness of others.
I just hope that those of you still reading this thread have taken a few minutes to read the report that was posted -- and, more importantly, learned something from it. We certainly can't go back in time and "fix" it, but we can learn from it. Understanding what happened, and why is very valuable. Preventing it from happening again in the future is priceless -- and inevitable.
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So do I.
But I still fish in places that have illigally stocked. Don't you?
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The bad thing about perch in Fish Lake is that there ain't much we can do. And the one thing that could be done just seems to reward the behavior we should punish. There should be a mandatory catch and kill regulation on perch and no limit at Fish Lake.
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I think that aint such a bad idea.
Yes it aint right that Fish Lake was hit with the perch, but I choose not to dwell on what I cannot control. Just not worth worring all the time personally. So lets just make the best out of a bad situation.
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