I think I recall, from previous discussions, that we both got acquainted with Lady Willard back in the late 1970s. No wipers, no shad and no “management”. The lake was full of crappies and walleyes…and the cats routinely grew over 10 pounds.
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From my old logs I see many days of just working along the rock dikes and scoring 20-30 walleyes…in addition to grundles of crappies and cats. The limit was 6 walleyes…only 2 over 20 inches…and it was rare to catch fish under 20 inches. Most limits were two fish of over 5#…the small ones. And that was fishing from my float tube or rock-hopping.
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**Somehow, we have “managed” to lose our walleye fishery. I guess it should be comforting to know there are a lot of the bucket brigade of happy harvesters who dine well each spring…at our expense.
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So true Pat, things are changing and not for the better. Lost my brother in law a month ago he had a lot of good days chasing the eyes at Utah lake, Yuba, deer creek and starvation gonna miss the old boy.[:/]
Sorry to hear about the loss in the family. Was that Ed? I shared some water with him a couple of times at Starvation. See attached pic.
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**How is the wife dealing with it?
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Yes that was ED, he had just turned 65 4 days before his passing, The Mrs. is taking it pretty hard and she is not in the best health herself.
My personal best wishes for Lady B. Sorry to hear of her health situation.
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My wife has been acting as a caregiver for her sister who lives in Orem…with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I think it has been harder on my wife than the patient.
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**Growing old is tough…but considering the alternative I think I will keep trying to make the best of it.
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We are enjoying the outdoors as much as we can now that we are retired, we had a great trip to south Texas hunting Axis deer and black buck on Ty Detmer’s ranch near Freer Texas and visiting old AF friends along the way.
Thanks for another enjoyable report. I’m sad to hear the 2 W’s are mostly absent at Willard right now. I was sort of thinking of trying an overnighter there sometime in June. I guess I may have to think about Starvation.
It has been a wierd spring. Is it possible things are just starting late?
Willard is just off this year…so far. And it is not all related to weird weather. This is Utah…weird every year…never the same.
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Wiper plantings have been down…to help balance the ratio of predators to prey (shad). So wouldn’t ya know it? Last year saw a shad explosion and all the predators were glutted on natural food. Fishing was slower than it should have been. Low planting numbers the last couple of years have made fishing for wipers much slower…but the survivors have been porky. If you catch one it is memorable.
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Walleye? Who knows? DWR tells us that the lake is full of them. But they are not showing up on our lines. Even the best wally chasers are crying into their live wells.
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Crappies? As published by DWR in their annual report on Willard, the crappie population is only a small fraction of what it was the previous two out of three years. Good in 2015 and 2016 but dropping off last year. This year there are a few here and there but not EVERYBODY catching them all over the lake.
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**June is usually a good month for all species. But no guarantees this year. Ditto for Starvation. Too early to make an informed forecast yet. June can be good…before the July 4th weekend. I usually don’t hit it much until warmer waters get the perch moving in July. The walleyes are usually active then too and fill in around the edges with trout and smallies.
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Thanks for the insights. I knew the DWR sampling based forecasts indicated low wiper and crappie numbers this year. Since they predicted those 2 fairly well, I suspect that their walleye estimates are in the ball park too. Maybe the eyes are still too well fed to take our imitations.
Who knows, for me half the fun of fishing is trying to figure it out.