I think if they do commercial netting like they do in the ocean they can put a big dent in the carp population.They sure have put big dents on dolphins(mahi mahi or dorados),kingfish,tunas etc…!So why cant they put a dent on the carp population?I think if they do it over a long period of time it can happen .
They have already been doing commercial netting for years on the carp at Utah Lake. When I was only a teenager (which was a couple years back) I once saw them filling up a dump truck full of them.
But did they use the commercial nets the ocean guys use?There would be no boating allowed for a long stretch of utah lake .My guess would be a mile in length .Those nets are long.
I am not an expert on oceanic seine fishing but I believe that many of those techniques require a certain water depth to be effective. Utah Lakes shallowness eliminates some types of netting techniques. Also I would hope efforts would be made to minimize netting of the game varieties, which may reduce effectiveness.
As for the ecosystem there, Utah Lake has been good to me this year, but there is room for improvement. A sizable amount of the bassin takes place in the harbors, not out in the lake, vast areas are unproductive mud bottom, and the lake whips itself into a milkshake any time it is windy. If a grass bottom habitat could be established in some of that muddy shallow area, more structure introduced (esp. for bass), and water quality improved, the numbers of all our game species would skyrocket and we might have the best fishin hole in the entire state. We might even save those suckers too. I pontificated on this ad nauseum last time this subject came up so I’ll shut up now. Good luck fishing for all this week.
About 30 years ago at the Provo River inlet at Utah Lake State Park I talked to a guy who was in charge of a commercial carp netting operation. They had five very large aluminum john boats about 8’ X 20’ full of carp. Several men were using large coal scoop shovels loading the fish onto a conveyer and into a large tractor trailer. He said that day they netted about 54 tons of carp! At 8.7 lbs. average as mentioned in the recent newspaper article, that is over 12,000 carp. This guy went on to say that they were doing this day in and day out from Ice-out to Ice-up and the largest daily catch was 78 tons or approximately 18,000 fish. I don’t have any idea what kind of population is in Utah Lake, but if you had several small operators like this working the lake most of the year for a few years, they should be able to put more than just a dent in the population. Maybe it really could work. It might not even have to cost a lot if some incentives were offered. Incentives plus the proceeds of the fish sold for fish meal, pet food, etc. could make it a viable business. It might be worth a try, who knows. You will never get rid of the carp, only reduce the numbers to a more acceptable level. Mr. J.
So, Ok. Where is the best place on Utah Lake to catch Carp on rod and reel? I’m not looking for the “Try any Harbor” advise. I want to catch some Carp. Lots of them.
Where did you last fish Utah Lake that you left because the Carp had moved in?
I have mixed feelings about this idea. What happens if the removal of Carp caquses the Walleye to finish off the June Suckers? If we wanted to restore the June sucker the answer is to destroy all up stream dams and allow the lake to return to it’s previous state.
That Won’t happen.
Seine netting would be a very effecient way to remove carp as well as fish weirs during the spawing season. Both of these methods can be carried out in a manner that does not harm non target fish and allows for an accurate assement of the true ratios of game fish to carp.
About the only place I fish on Utah Lake anymore is Bird Island for Catfish. Out there I really never run into carp much and have never caught one, probably since I am not targeting them. Perhaps some of the others on the board can help. Good Luck.
I’m betting on the carp…they’re smarter.[;)]
Currently the nettting of the carp in Utah lake is limited by tonage. After a company reaches its’ permit limit it must cease the harvesting of carp. So what happens as with any good business they adjust so they can may keep working year round. If I understand what Utah County would like it is an all out effort to harvest as many fish as possible. In other words remove the limits. Every year in the side canals and tributaries they have thousands of pounds of dead fish after the spawn or it may be during, I really don’t remember which. But this spring they showed it on the news … loading tons of dead stinking carp with loaders into dump trucks. There is a serious problem and anything they do to improve it has my support. Do I think they can eliminate the carp from Utah Lake? NO! Do I think they can make a huge dent in them? YES! Should they is another question for debate I for one suppot their effort.
I think they should just let me go down there with my 20 in “fishing” pole and my 55 gr lures and have at em.[;)]
Now thats the spirit! Go and huntem down!
Hey Troll, if you want to get into great carp area take a boat or canoe into Mud Lake (Provo Bay). It’s only 2 or 3 feet deep but the carp there are EVERYWHERE!!! You should be able to catch them on a worm below a bobber or piece of bread below a bobber.
The tricky part about getting rid of carp in Utah Lake is that you have dozens of streams, canals, ponds, sloughs, etc. that feed into Utah Lake that are also FULL of carp. I know of several ponds along the east side of the lake in Orem and Provo that are chuck full of carp. I think they really can make a dent in the population, but it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to completely eradicate them. We need to reduce them as much as possible though. 50% reduction could really help out the gamefish and the June Sucker.
A 50% reduction? Is that like cutting all of the carp in half. That would work.
Someone else mentioned setting up fish wiers around the perimeter of the lake during spawning season. That is an idea I have suggested before. Spawning carp are like many other species, such as salmon. They tend to group together and swim around the edges of their spawning areas. A series of nets extending outward from the shore, and funneling the fish into a holding area would congregate zillions of them, where they could be scooped out and trucked off.
That’s the way the native peoples of the northwest have harvested salmon for eons. They simply let the natural movement of the fish bring them into a confining area where they may be easily captured and processed.
BUT…what about the other species? Sure, there would be some incidental capture of non-carp species. But, they could be tossed back outside the holding area and allowed to swim off. In most cases, the rowdy activities of the carp tend to drive off most other fish during that time.
The commercial seining operations are not kind to other species. I have seen lots of dead walleyes, white bass and largemouth after those guys empty their nets and “release” the game fish. Being crushed together with several tons of thrashing carp is fatal to most wimpy game fish. The operaters of the commercial netting venture readily admit that on some hauls they have large numbers of other species along with the carp.
If the state was to launch their own aggressive carp seining operation, there is reason to believe that they would do a certain amount of damage to the game species too. It’s kind of like the old expression “Throwing the baby out with the bath water”.
Fishing column in Tribune Outdoor’s section Thursday
Fishing: With carp choking Utah Lake, it’s time to eat
Brett Prettyman
Salt Lake Tribune Columnist
The Central Utah Water Conservancy District is looking for people with a taste for carp meat, a lot of carp meat.
Recent trapping and tagging efforts at Utah Lake show the carp population not only dominates fish life in the lake but it also prevents other species from thriving.
Chris Keleher, local coordinator for the June Sucker Recovery Program, watched as workers hauled in more than 24,000 carp in 15 days, with some nets holding more than 4,000 fish. The fish were tagged and released. Another 10,300 carp were caught to see how many recaptures there were in an effort to figure out the carp population in the lake. The team turned up 208 fish with tags out of that 10,300, for just a 0.8 percent return.
Keleher says he will wait for official results on numbers to say just how many carp are in the lake, but he does feel confident that the non-native species makes up more than 90 percent of fish biomass in Utah Lake.
Keleher’s job is to find ways to build June sucker populations so the native Utah fish can be removed from the endangered species list.
Right now that means finding a way to reduce carp.
“Having one species represent such a large portion of the biomass leads to a really unbalanced and low-diversity kind of ecosystem,” Keleher said. “I would like for us to be able to reduce the carp population by 75 percent. We need at least that much to see an ecological response in the system.”
While there are no estimates on how much it would cost to undertake such a huge program, it probably would run into the millions of dollars. Because carp could probably never be entirely removed from Utah Lake, the removal efforts would have to continue for years; much like the current National Park Service project
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------------------------------------------------------------------------ to keep lake trout numbers in check at Yellowstone Lake.
Biologists bonk the lake trout on the head and throw them back in the lake in Yellowstone, but that is something officials could not do at Utah Lake because of the warm and shallow water.
“We are looking for some kind of use for the fish,” Keleher said. “We don’t want to waste them.”
A reduction in carp would allow for vegetation to recover in the lake and that would help the June suckers and sport fish alike.
Tom Pettengill, sport fishing director for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, says Utah Lake is underused by anglers, and it might be in part because of the perception that carp are the only fish there.
Catfish are one of the main reasons anglers head for Utah Lake, but there are plenty of other sport fish opportunities.
“We probably don’t have another fishery with as many big walleye, and there is a terrific amount of white bass and the largemouth bass that fit into the trophy category as well,” Pettengill said. “The value of Utah Lake as a sport fishery could really take off if efforts were made to reduce the carp.”
Keleher said a decision on whether to attempt the carp reduction will need to be made late this year or early in 2005.
OK, one more post on this thread. When I attended the Sucker recovery meetings last May, the biologists I talked to seemed certain that they would go ahead and be doing the netting described here. I also got the impression that they were not confident it would accomplish what they wanted to achieve. What Mr. Kelleher did imply in our coversation was that they would not have unlimited patience and funding to net carp into perpetuity. I believe that if they see their effort reduce carp only some, but not significantly, they will then plan to pursue some alternatives that to me sound more appealing, such as dikes that protect certain sanctuary sucker areas. I viewed a proposal dike map at the meeting and several options have been looked at. Personally, I hope we reach this point quickly.