I keep hearing about the chub “problem” what problem? If we need more pray base in starvation and the gorge why are thay a problem at strawberry? The fact that the chubs are finaly comeing back in strawberry only means one thing to me, never underestamate the power of prayer, if you’re catching them you’re useing the wrong bait.
I agree with that,if your catching chubs switch locations and bait..I guess time will tell and I guess we have to put the TRUST into the dwr agian not to screw the berry up agian.I atill think they need tighter regs up there in the mean time catch and release of ALL cutts!! For a period of time Then reopen back to the current regs in a few years..
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what i ment was all trout eat the smaller fish. ive caught thosands of 9 10 11 inch cuts at the berry and i fish with #7 and #9 rapalas. rainbow and minnow patterns. dont tell me that none of the other guys trolling minnow baits are catching all bigger fish. it has never and will never be.i watched ut walleye catch a 8 inch walleye on a 11 inch stk bait. while night fishing big eyes. caughten 1000s of 9 inch browns on provo on cd #7 s. point all meat eaters eat meat. all eat ther own young as well. that was what i ment. i caught my first fish at the berry at age 5. a 5 1/2 pound cut bow.five minuits later my brother 6 pound cutbow. on opening day in a hale storm from the devel. 1968 the berry kicked but till i was 16 by then most bigger fish were gone and the big chubs took over. remember the good old days when a five pound trout was just another fish.
On June 30, 2005 the Deseret News ran the following article on the progress being made at Strawberry:
"Survey reveals progress in Strawberry Reservoir project By Ray Grass
Deseret Morning News STRAWBERRY RESERVOIR — With each tug on the net, one chub after another appeared. When all were counted, there were far more chubs in that first net than had been expected. It was not a good sign.
Steve Linde and Alan Ward pull in gill nets at Strawberry to gather fish-population data. Jason Olson, Deseret Morning News But when the next gill net came up, there were far fewer. On the last net pulled, there were only a few.
“Initially, things looked pretty bad,” said Roger Wilson, project leader for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources as he reviewed results of a spring gill-net survey.
“There were lots of chubs in that first net. On a whole, though, things look pretty good. That net turned out to be the exception.”
And even though there were many more chubs in that one net, Wilson said that after reviewing the report sheets, “We found they were mostly adults or the older chubs. There weren’t many 1- and 2-year-old fish. When chubs get to be adults, there’s not much you can do. The fact we saw fewer of the smaller fish is encouraging.”
In the end, only three of the 12 nets pulled held an abundance of chubs.
Each spring and fall, biologists conduct gill-net surveys to check on the progress of a new management strategy.
The villain here is the Utah chub. It’s a nuisance fish. A trash fish to some. They have very poor dining qualities and are an annoyance more than they are appealing to catch, but they are hardy. They can out-compete more preferred catches, such as rainbow trout. Which, of course, is why all the fish in the reservoir were killed in 1991 and why new management strategies were implemented in 2002.
Prior to the '91 treatment, chubs made up 95 percent of the fish population. After treatment, Bear Lake cutthroat were planted in hopes they would eat chubs. Also planted were sterile rainbow and kokanee salmon. Sterile rainbow were planted so their more passive nature wouldn’t dilute the cutthroat line.
This spring’s gill-net survey of Strawberry Reservoir found lots of fat, healthy cutthroat trout that had been dining on chubs, a nuisance fish in the reservoir. Jason Olson, Deseret Morning News Progress was slow, so three years ago new strategies were introduced. Now, all cutthroat trout between 15 and 22 inches are classified as illegal catches and must be immediately released.
The theory being that the bigger cutthroats, a voracious predator, would dine more frequently on the chubs.
“And we’re seeing that,” Wilson said. “The vast majority of the chubs we saw were older . . . larger than what most cutthroat can eat. The younger, smaller chubs are the ones we want to target, and we saw far fewer smaller chubs. There was a dramatic drop in minnows, (redside) shiner and chubs, which means the cutthroat are doing their job.”
Another sign that the project is working is the cutthroat checked were fat, healthy and, in some cases, full of chubs.
“What this tells us is that the predation rate has exceeded what it was last fall, which is what we want to see,” Wilson said.
The survey did not produce many rainbow, and Wilson isn’t sure just why. The number of rainbow being brought in by anglers, however, is staying pretty consistent, but the number of rainbow being caught in the nets has been going down the past few years.
“We’ll increase our netting this fall to see if we can see where the rainbow are holding,” Wilson said. "We know they’re here, but it seems they’re in places other than where our nets are. But then we may find we need to be more concerned with survival.
“We may have to change our stocking program and move to larger fish. What this means is we’ll stock fewer fish, but they’ll be larger, so we’ll get better survival. With some anglers, it’s how many fish we stock. And even though we may stock fewer of the larger fish, anglers will be able to catch more fish because of the higher survival rate.”
The survey did show an overall increase in the size of the cutthroat, which again is an indication that the new management plan is working.
Alan Ward uses an ultraviolet light to check for identifying dyes on a fish caught at Strawberry. Jason Olson, Deseret Morning News Wilson explained that the age class of 5-year-old fish, which makes up the bulk of the larger fish, was a weak one, which means there are fewer of the larger fish in the 20- to 21-inch class.
“But we have two very strong age classes following — 4- and 3-year-old fish, which make up the vast majority of feeding fish, and we’re getting good growth,” he said.
“We predict, through our modeling, that the overall adult population of fish in Strawberry is the best since treatment. We’re predicting we have more than 200,000 cutthroat over 20 inches. There were years in the mid-1990s that our modeling predicted we had fewer than 500 of the larger fish in the whole lake.”
And, as noted, the fish that were caught in the nets were fat and healthy. Fat ratings range from zero to 4. The vast majority of the feeding fish were in the range of 3 to 4.
“I really do think fishing is as good as it’s ever been here in Utah, and here at Strawberry,” said Jim Karpowitz, newly appointed director of the DWR, on a recent visit to the reservoir. “I remember coming here as a kid and catching nothing but chubs. My dad has fished here at Strawberry his whole life. We came here last year and caught a lot of cutthroat.”
The results of the spring survey were generally what Wilson expected, which was good growth in the cutts, a slight drop in the number of rainbow netted and the appearance of some chubs.
All things considered, he said he’s encouraged with the results of the new management strategy and that by all indications this should be a good summer for fishing at Strawberry, but added that 2006 and 2007 will be even better.
E-mail: grass@desnews.com"
I READ THAT ARTICAL THIS SPRING,IT GIVES ME A LITTLE HOPE THAT THIS NEW PLAN OF THE DWR IS WORKING,THE ONLY THING I WOULD LIKE TO SEE CHANGED IS THE CATCH AND RELEASE OF ALL CUTTS FOR THE NEXT FEW YEARS TO GET A SOLID BASE OF LARGER FISH.IF YOU WANT TO KEEP FISH TO EAT THEN CATCH THE BOWS INSTEAD,THATS WHAT THERE IN THERE FOR.ONLY TIME WILL TELL I GUESS..IS THE RED SIDED SHINNER A INTRODUCED FISH OR A NATURAL FISH IN THE BERRY???