Willard Bay Wiper Tournament

[Theekillerbee]

Mike, the DWR will have no say on water levels at Willard, it is managed by the Weber Basin Water Conservancy. I have an acquaintance there who will be able to tell me when they will be able to "fix" the problem. Currently the goal to finish the project is May 1st. As of last week, they still don't have engineering approval, but they expect it soon. As soon as they are ready, they will begin the work. Unfortunately our snowpack is rather dismal (however improving), and we might be out of runoff by May, and the water level will only get lower with evaporation, and the stuff allotted to the Harold Crane Waterfowl Refuge. If the water levels stay current, or even up a foot or two, larger boats will not be workable in the marina. Right now you could get one boat at a time, but you would have to immediately leave the chanel, there would be no place to stage inside of the marina, and like BLM has mentioned, there would be a lot of prop problems for people who did not know the EXACT route to take their boats. Realistically we would need a good 4-5 foot increase in current water levels to reasonably sponser the tourney with big boats. A small boat tourney may be possible, but staging and launching would be problematic. Many tubers would want to be scattered around the lake, and I doubt everyone would be honest about a "start" time, if you don't believe me, just go out duck hunting on the opening day. My thoughts to cure that would be to have 2 meeting places, one in the north and one at the south, have everyone do all the paperwork, then have the judges on cell phones telling everyone to break the proverbial huddle at the appointed time. I think you could still have your check in at the north marina, as most people aren't weighing/measuring in live fish anyways.

I feel your pain with the sponsors, but I honestly don't think you can make a final decision until the project is completed if you want to try to make it open to larger boats.

Keep us posted.
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