Thoughts...

[k2muskie]

Some interesting info came out of the SMB post...I've been reading posts on several other forums regarding Scofield...nice body of water that has an issue regarding rough fish...thoughts on this forum for one's .02 regarding Scofield from an angler point of few...color me curious...
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[albinotrout]

Need more chub harvested.
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[a_bow_nut]

Haul them all to Jordanelle.

Win. Win
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[fsh4fun05]

Oh no! Don't start that hot mess!
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[a_bow_nut]

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[angelic]
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[Browntrout]

Are you referring to the 25 year plan ? Wait until the chubs die - Then Scofield will be a great fishery again.
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[Fishrmn]

From the dearth of comments, it ought to be painfully obvious that there's nothing there worth worrying about.

Poison it, or drain it and fill it with dirt. It hardly qualifies as a fishery at present.



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[fsh4fun05]

Ouch!!! Is it really that bad? I'm not much of a trout fisherman but I thought they had big tigers in there?
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[Fishrmn]

565 views for the thread. Nobody is defending the program. No one has reported any big Tigers for quite a while. Few people fish it, and those that do complain about fish that look like snakes or shoelaces. The UDWR is scrambling to figure out how to get the Tigers to grow again. It took 25 years for Walleye to wipe out the chubs in Starvation. And the UDWR didn't have to plant them every year and babysit the situation to make sure there were enough Walleye and that they didn't starve, and that they completely eliminated the young of the year chubs each year. (If they miss a few then those chubs start another 25 or 30 year vigil.) There's no reason to believe that the Tigers can get rid of the chubs in Scofield any faster than the Walleyes did it in Starvation.

Plan A was to poison Scofield and implement slot limits similar to Strawberry and Panguitch. Scofield isn't a high enough priority, and so we get plan B. Put fish in that will eat the young of the year chubs, and stick with it for 25 years.

Over 2,000 views on another forum, one guy admits to still fish there.

What do you think? Really that bad?


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[dtayboyz]

Wake the Snake!
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[gofish435]

I'm not sure I've got .02 worth but here are some of the problems with Scofield as I see them.

The problems started a long time ago when the DWR put a 4 fish limit on Strawberry and left Scofield with the 8 fish limit. Guess where all the hookem and cookem crowd started going?

Shortly after, there was the illegal introduction of chubs and things went down hill in a hurry. The slot limit was put in place to try and reduce and stabilize the chub population but it takes time and as we all know, anglers are not a patient group.

Then there is a matter of keeping enough water in the reservoir (38% full right now) to improve the water quality. With the low water levels and the customary daily winds, the water never really clears up.
The water management at the reservoir is suspect because of the ongoing battle with Sanpete County. It seems that the water users do there best to keep the reservoir from ever filling. Granted, the last few years of below normal snowpack have made things even worse for an already struggling fishery.

One other side note, if the Gooseberry Narrows Project is completed, the normal water level for Scofield will be around 50% of it's present capacity.[:/]

It is really for some of us who are as old as dirt to see what used to be the number two Stillwater fishery in the state behind Strawberry get to the point that I hardly fish it anymore.
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[Patchydog]

Amen to all that's been said. Sorry I have a cabin there that now is rarely used.
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[Saltslam]

Being from Southern Utah I don't have a dog in this fight but two of the reservoirs in this area were turned around in short order with the introduction of wipers. Both reservoirs were teeming with chubs. Wipers were introduced and four years later it was hard to find a chub. I went from catching 25 a trip to not even seeing a trace of them. Now the wipers are the primary target for many of our local anglers. When the sun gets low in the sky I switch to a much larger streamer and go after them myself. I have landed an eight pounder from one and a 5 from the other. What a rush on a fly rod! Sounds like an experiment worth trying.
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[Kipe]

From what I've heard from local officers in their gill nets the young chub numbers have been way down. The problem is (and I don't know the exact number) but chubs live somewhere around 15-20 years. This means it's basically a waiting game waiting for the remaining 12 inch and larger chubs to die off. Its really to see this place in such bad shape. I used to fish Scofield and lower fish creek weekly but they are both in bad shape and drying up.
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[richyy31]

shore fished there last week with nothing but a worm, caught over 100 chub and nothing else. I can be fun for the kids to catch the chub, juts don't expect much more.
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[k2muskie]

Interesting and how do folks think the chubs got a hold in Scofield...could the 4 the increase to 8 fish limit that removed all the large predatory fish have something to do with it...
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[Kipe]

I don't know the answer to this and would be interested to know myself. There is still big fish in there though. Almost all the fish up to 17 or 18 inches are snakes. When you do luck into a bigger fish they are all fat. The chubs are just too big for the new recruits they plant and there isn't enough forage, so they compete with those chubs. I personally don't think the limit is to blame for scofield, and I do think quite a few big fish were taken back when the state record fish was caught and a few other big ones but I am no biologist.
When I was getting surveyed earlier this year the biologist said they didn't have any fish over either 22-24 inches in their gill net and that trout to chub ratio was the lowest its been in a bunch of years (I forgot exactly how many)
either way im curious about scofield as it is close to home and one of my favorite places growing up
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[Fishrmn]

It didn't help.



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[k2muskie]

What was the reason for increasing the limit instead of having a slot like Strawberry???
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[TubeDude]

[#0000FF]They increased the possession limit about the time they instituted the slot and possession limits at Strawberry...to help appease the cooler-fillers who wailed about the reduction at Strawberry.

At that time there were chubs...and redside shiners...in Scofield. And there were heavy plantings of rainbows for the happy harvesters. But the rainbows had problems growing and surviving against the increasing population of chubs.

The plantings of tiger trout and more cutts helped. But they initially targeted the tastier redside shiners first...as they did in Strawberry. Now neither lake has a significant (if any) population of redsides. And the redsides stayed smaller (edible) for the greater portion of their lives...unlike the chubs that grow too large for all but the largest trout to eat.

The drought...lowering the water level...and the increase in chub numbers and sizes...have made it tough for newly planted trout of any size to find enough food to grow on. Without plenty of easily available food, the cutts and tigers stay skinny...if they survive at all. Only a very select few are able to grow large enough to be able to live on the chubs. And in the meantime there can be several new generations of chubs.
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