09-03-2011, 02:53 AM
A buddy came back into town and wanted to go fishing with his dad's boat. Since I sold my boa a few weeks ago, I thought this would be a great time for some early fall fishing at Scofield.
Got there at 7 a.m. and immediately noticed small boils on the water! Never experienced that before at Scofield. Once we launched the boat, we noticed that the boils were caused by huge schools of chub. I had never caught nor seen a chub at Scofield in my dozens of trip there in the past 2-3 years so I was shocked by the sight. I thought maybe this was the ONE big school of chub in the lake. Wrong. Everywhere we went there were schools of hundreds if not thousands of chubs. With the high water, there is a ton of the brush and shrubbery in the water providing perfect habitat for the chubs. They were everywhere in the lake!
We ended up only catching one trout each and bailed after three hours due to discouragement with the chubs. We had dozens of follows but none of the trout seemed aggressive. I wouldn't be either with that type of buffet available.
2 years ago we hammered the big tigers and cutts, catching 50-75 fish between 2 or 3 of us during each of our 4 outings, with many 20+inch fish. Last fall we would still catch 20-30 fish per trip and this spring it was only 10-12 fish. Obviously the problem is only getting worse (or I am losing my touch which I highly doubt[
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So my question is what is DWR going to do about Scofield? The 8 fish limit set the stage and was revoked way too late and the slot limit came too late. Now it seems like they have given up. If they would have added some musky a few years ago and increased the slot to 25 or 26 inches, we might not have this problem. I thought I would never advocate the killing off of Scofield but I don't see any other option. Drain it, treat the remaining water, add tons of bows, cutts and tigers, add a few thousand musky, even add some browns, and maybe up the slot. Then Scofield could return to its glory in a few years.
It is not worth the time right now. Sad day. Thankfully BYU looks to have a decent football team this year.
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Got there at 7 a.m. and immediately noticed small boils on the water! Never experienced that before at Scofield. Once we launched the boat, we noticed that the boils were caused by huge schools of chub. I had never caught nor seen a chub at Scofield in my dozens of trip there in the past 2-3 years so I was shocked by the sight. I thought maybe this was the ONE big school of chub in the lake. Wrong. Everywhere we went there were schools of hundreds if not thousands of chubs. With the high water, there is a ton of the brush and shrubbery in the water providing perfect habitat for the chubs. They were everywhere in the lake!
We ended up only catching one trout each and bailed after three hours due to discouragement with the chubs. We had dozens of follows but none of the trout seemed aggressive. I wouldn't be either with that type of buffet available.
2 years ago we hammered the big tigers and cutts, catching 50-75 fish between 2 or 3 of us during each of our 4 outings, with many 20+inch fish. Last fall we would still catch 20-30 fish per trip and this spring it was only 10-12 fish. Obviously the problem is only getting worse (or I am losing my touch which I highly doubt[
][])So my question is what is DWR going to do about Scofield? The 8 fish limit set the stage and was revoked way too late and the slot limit came too late. Now it seems like they have given up. If they would have added some musky a few years ago and increased the slot to 25 or 26 inches, we might not have this problem. I thought I would never advocate the killing off of Scofield but I don't see any other option. Drain it, treat the remaining water, add tons of bows, cutts and tigers, add a few thousand musky, even add some browns, and maybe up the slot. Then Scofield could return to its glory in a few years.
It is not worth the time right now. Sad day. Thankfully BYU looks to have a decent football team this year.
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