OCR Text |
Show Wednesday, May 29, 1974 sCOALmON Page 15 1974 F by David Mueller Once again this year, as opening day of fishing season rolls around, d you will see a optimistic man from the Utah Department of Fish and Game appear almost nightly on local television. He will smile and give glowing reports of the terrific fishing that will be had by Utah anglers this year. Possibly in the next instant if the show isnt interrupted by a commercial message the sports commentator will smile and chuckle and ask the question about how the stocking of local waters is coming along. The d man from F&G will smile a little wider and reply with a hearty voice: Ralph, we will plant 3 million of those fighting eight-inc- h rainbows that everyone likes to catch this year. And the sports commentator will reply, Well, the fishing certainly should be good. And the F&G man will smile once more. I am always waiting for him to reach around and pat himself on the back. But that is only my view of this annually enacted scenario. To a lot of fish IS good news. But what I folks, the stocking of all those legal-size- d always resented was that the planter fish automatically implied good fishing. And Im afraid that was my complete impression of our Fish and Game Department up until this year. I had to make a few calls around to verify my disappointment so I could write about it with diabolical glee. When I finished making a few calls, I was pleasantly surprised that my conceptions were misconceptions, and I was never so pleased to admit my ignorance. Yes, now I know that the boys in the fish and Game Department downtown and all over the state are working for an alternative to the plan. The hatchery trucks, of course, will keep on rolling, but now I know why, and I dont feel so bad about it now that Im aware that the Fish and Game hasnt given up trying to provide and increase quality fishing within our state. First, the need for all those eight-inc- h planters (and three million IS the number of legal-size- d fish that will be poured into our waters this year) is coupled with the destruction of our trout waters as places for trout to live. If a trout cant spawn or feed well, if it cant find a place to hide from its enemies, if the silted runoff waters cut into the sensitive gill tissues of the fish, then those little hatchery rainbows will provide about all the fishing that an angler will get. And destruction is exactly what has happened to Utahs most accessable watersheds, the Weber around Park City will tell you of the fanand Provo rivers. tastic fishing of years ago in the Provo, fishing that they whisper about in low tones while comparing it to Montanas famed Madison River. Yes, the great and famous Weber and Provo rivers have been gutted, bulldozed, dreged and straightened into neatly diked channels until they have become little better than freewater ditches. Everyone notes the tremendous increase in the numbers of whitefish in both streams. The whitefish are a living testimony that something is wrong with the trout habitat. As the trout dwindle, the whitefish flourish. It is not so much that the whitefish are driving the trout out, but the real problem is that the trout cannot survive to any extent in these waters anymore. To the untrained eye, these rivers may still look good. And the occasional monster brown is taken from each. But the rivers as prime trout water have been virtually destroyed. It is fruitless to wonder which part of the fishery has suffered the most damage. The spawning beds, perhaps? Or the natural food supply? Is there no more shelter for an adult trout to hold, hidden from predators and placed so he can feed easily and grow? Has each watershed lost the ability to disperse springs runoff floods without producing suffocating siltation? You can safely say without too much question that every one of these symptoms of a sick river has been realized. So call for the hatchery well-dresse- d, well-mannere- d, well-verse- well-verse- put-and-ta- ke Old-time- rs truck. Wait a minute! the long-tim- angler screams. Theres parts of e the Provo. . . and the Upper Weber Yes, there ARE parts of the Provo, and some sections of the Weber which have somehow been spared the wrath of channelization that has become the fate of most of the water in each drainage. And therein lie the first small steps of our fish and game department to regain the wonderful fishing that once was. There are two management programs that are relatively unheard of at this moment, but they will prove to be vital if we in Utah expect to have any fishing to be proud of in the future: Wild Trout Fisheries, and Channelization Control. I will discuss the first of these two in this weeks column, and then continue with the second, interrelated subject next week. ! The Wild Trout concept is simply: discontinuation of all legalsized plants; let the native fish within the stream establish a stable population that the stream will be able to maintain year round, year after year. Quality trout habitat is mandatory. The nearest example of the Fish and Games attempt at creating a wild fishery is the section of the Provo River from Hailstone Junction, upstream to the Duchesne diversion tunnel. News to you? It was to me. I had assumed that legal fish were stocked there every year. Not so. Stocking of this section was discontinued in 1971. Prior to that, 30,000 rainbows were chucked into the river annually. Well, hows the fishing been? According to the survey that Charlie Thompson of the Provo Regional office of the F&G, angler success Not so good, you say? ranged from 0 fish per hour in 1971-7Well, Mr. Thompson feels he has a more valid set of figures, figures which represent angler success among those fishermen who had at least one trout in the old fish pack. Nine out of ten of those anglers had a success ratio of .5 fish per hour, or BETTER. Charlie feels this is a much more accurate indication of the fishing in this part of the river because most of the fishless sorts were recreationists who stopped briefly along the highway for a few casts on their way to Mirror Lake or some other part of the Uintas. The Thompson is c fident, represented serious plyers of the Provo who had com specifically to fish IT. Frank Marcellin, local Park City sportsman, says: I havent noticed any change in the fishing. But then I go for the big ones. It iust takes time, patience.. .and a knack. I fish for the sport of it, and those d rainbows dont make any difference to me. No, there little hasnt been any difference. I still take my fish. Frank is a fly fisherman, so to get a different opinion, I asked Bob Rinehart of Woodland about his success the past three years. Bob fishes with lures and bait. I caught several good limits of fish on the Provo last year. Browns, natives and all of them, claims Rinehart. In one limit, I had all fish over sixteen inches. If a man knows fishing, hes going to catch fish. Now back to the statistics. Consider: .5, or one-haof a fish per hour means you will taking four fish with you when you go home at the end of an eight-hou- r stint on the river (assuming you keep all your fish) . Four wild trout per day is nothing to sneeze at in 1974. Just how popular was the water? In 1971, 80 percent of all anglers interviewed by the Fish and Game were satisfied with the fishing in this sector of the Provo. In 1973, 91 percent of the anglers questioned rated the sector satisfactory or better. But as Thompson puts it, We experienced an immediate drop in angling pressure. We used to get 20,000 hours per year of fishing hours up here, and now were running just over 11,000. What? Audacity! You mean to tell me that fewer people fish there, but those that do like it better? It couldnt have anything to do with the absence of the hatchery truck followers, could it ? And what about the businessmen operating in Kamas and Woodland and Oakley who depend to a great extent upon fishing tourism to boost their business? At first we had quite a time convincing everyone we had a good idea, states Thompson. But now, I think they like it. That couldnt have anything to do with local pride in a prime trout stream, could it? As a bonus, Thompson add, were getting better cooperation from landowners now, as far as access privileges. Now, I could be wrong, but that couldnt have anything to do with a fable Ive heard that people who respect wild trout and can catch them will respect access rights to fish for these prime creatures . . . Could it? But a population survey made in the autumn of 1972, one year after the discontinuation of legal-size- d stocking in the Provo, showed that the wild trout, although holding their own, werent utilizing the habitat to its fullest potential not enough wild fish in the river. And so, the Department made the decision to stock on a selective basis, not eight-inc- h fish, but fingerling brown trout of wild stock not hatchery fish which had been bred for years to produce a fish with limited survival capacity (not unlike pedigreed dogs which have been bred for show and have lost all functional capacity). During last season, 60,000 brown trout fingerlings were planted. Now this program has several advantages aside from a genetic one. The first and most obvious is a financial one. Fingerlings (3-- 5 inch fish) reach their desired length usually well within a year of hatching. Because they are ready for stocking so much sooner than a fish that must be raised to an eight-inc- h length, fingerling trout will consume far less food during their stay in the hatchery. This is critical these days when the anchovy has become scarce in Peruvian waters and the Peruvian anchovy is what those fish pellets are made of. Ron Creer of the Scott Avenue hatchery tells me that the cost of trout food has doubled in past months. Mr. Creer passed along several revealing statistics about the cost of .29-.4- 3. fish-taker- s, pan-size- lf , |