Willard Cats...Past & Present

[Mr. J]

I’ve been interested in the increasing growth of catfish this past two or three years in Willard.  Having played with Willard kitties since about 1977 I have witnessed a few changes over the years.  Thought some of the “Latter Day Willardites” might get a kick out out my look backs and reckymemberings.
 
I moved to Utah from California in 1977 on business.  Willard Bay was new to me, since my college days in Provo in the 1960s.  Untypically of most other Utah Lakes, it din’t have no trout.  So almost nobody fished it.  But it had lots of cats, walleyes, crappies and both bluegills and green sunfish.  I loved it and I was about the only angler on the lake most trips…fishing from my new commercial model float tube.
 
The ecology was well balanced and productive.  Water levels stayed high all year and the rocks were full of tasty and nutritious crawdads.  Catfish ate em by the bushel…along with baby crappies and sunfish.  Average cats were 16 - 20 inches but there were plenty between 24 and 30 inches.  Fish over 30 inches were caught on most serious cattin’ trips.  And dedicated cataholics caught a few over 20#.  My biggest all-time out of Willard was a 33 inch 16# fish in 1981.
 

Crappies were thick all around the lake…of all sizes…from young of the year to footlongs.  Anybody could catch as many as they wanted…limit 50.  During the spring spawn whole families could easily limit out.
 
There was also a great abundance of walleyes.  They averaged good size on an abundant diet of hordes of young crappies and sunfish.  The limit was six…but only 2 over 22 inches.  With the exception of the spring spawn…when young males crowded the shorelines…it was rare to catch walleyes UNDER 22 inches.  So a limit was usually 2 five pounders culled from a catch of 10-20 all over 22 inches.
 
I moved to Arizona for 20 years on business…returning late summer 2004…after a prolonged drought.  I found Willard Bay to be a big mud hole…with water lines far out from the rock dikes. (bye bye crawdads).  Fishing was dismal. Caught only a few footlong catfish.  But the following winter was a doozy and refilled Willard to full.
 
I also found the ecology of the lake had been altered by DWR.  It now had gizzard shad and wipers.   Good for them, but not so much for the other species.  Main food source for wipers were the shad.  But they spawned in early spring, grew quickly and were too large for most predators by late fall.  So wipers had to steal crawdads and baby crappies and sunfish from the other predators until the shad got big enough to eat.
 
The double whammy on the crappies was that the vast schools of newly hatched shad each year mopped up a large amount of the zooplankton needed by baby crappies to grow beyond about 2”.  The inlet channel of the south marina was blanketed with starved baby crappies some summer mornings…but the birds dined well.
 
While crappie were a main food source, walleyes stayed closer to the dikes…where schools of crappies stayed.  But when shad became the main food source,  walleyes scattered around the lake…in all depths…following the wandering shad schools.  Averaged smaller in size too.  They are now easy to catch before the new shad get big enough to eat, but pretty tough most of the year.
 
Catfish have varied in size and numbers according to changes in the ecology.  In high water years…with good forage in the rocks…catfish have good spawns and good feeding.  Cats almost always pull off at least a “replenishing” spawn.  And they are omnivorous enough to eke out a living on whatever food items the wipers and walleyes leave for them.
 
One of the big changes in the past few years is the increasing number of anglers who have “discovered” that catfish are fun to catch and good to eat.  That has helped “thin the herd”…removing smaller better-eating fish and seeing more larger fish showing up each year.  I got a 29” cat a couple of years ago…my biggest for a long time.  And this year several other anglers are reporting their biggest cats in recent years.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see some over 30” fish again.

Pat, I think you and I talked about this very same thing some time ago. Yes, I too remember those times as well, especially the cats and crappies. I would often take my young family out in the evenings fishing crappie. When the kids got tired I would put them to bed in the sleeper of the pickup, then my wife and I would focus on the catfish. We fought the midges and mosquitoes and watched the mice run in and out of the lite of lantern as we waited for the cats to start biting. OH how it would be to turn back the clock, in some cases anyway!

rj