As always, great report Pat, those are some real fatties you have there. Does the rule about keeping the first 10 perch you catch start in January?
Thanks.
**The mandatory “First 10” rule applies from Jan. 1 to April 30. Still not sure I can get behind that regulation. I do not condone someone killing a bunch of small perch to cull out a limit of larger fish…when they are pulled up from water deep enough to cause the air bladder to protrude from their mouths. But, after observing the REALITY of the situation over the first year that Yuba has been reopened to the harvest of perch I fail to see how the law is REALLY helping. And, if the goal is to protect fish taken from deep water, why arbitrarily start the restricition by the calendar…Jan. 1? Perch go deep enough to cause problems as soon as the water cools in the fall. I have caught perch with the “bends” for a couple of months already. But, most of them are able to power down and survive. **
Like many others, I hit Yuba several times in January and February this last winter…checking out the unmolested perch population. Surprisingly, some of the best perch fishing was in water less than 30 feet deep…and the perch did not suffer much from the rapid ascent to the hole. Those that came off at the hole…accidentally or “on purpose”…seemed to rocket right back down to the bottom without any problems. Others noticed this too, and the practice of shaking off the little fish without touching them became common…even when most folks knew they were being watched by a spotting scope from that tan truck at the top of the hill. The majority of “wasted fish” I observed were those left on the ice by slobs who killed the fish and left them because they were too small to take home and fillet.
I don’t pretend to be a biologist, or to know more than the trained professionals whose job it is to manage our fisheries. However, I have known and fished Yuba for several decades…and through several boom and crash cycles. I have observed that no matter what DWR tries to employ, to manage that lake, it will still be subject to the same old up and down routine. They might delay the inevitable for a year or two, but they will never make it a level and stable fishery…for any species.
My point? Forget the RAC process on such a volatile and unstable fishery. Set the regulations each year, based upon water levels, net surveys, angler creel census and input…and COMMON SENSE. Under the current program, the lake is analyzed to death but nothing gets done in a timely fashion. A species population can explode or crash within the time it takes for DWR to decide to do something…anything. In the meantime, anglers miss out on great short term fishing opportunities, and by the time things are changed there are no more fish left to pursue.
In short…at this time there is an overabundance of food (perch fry) in Yuba. Heavy at the bottom end of the food chain. Consequently, adult perch are feeding well and growing fat. Walleyes also. They are so well fed on perch that they are seldom caught by anglers…in spite of a healthy walleye population. The pike? As the top predator they eat everything else. No worries. Yet.
The carp one of the big BAD factors right now. I have never seen so many. Utah Lake South. They account for a large percentage of the biomass of Yuba and it will explode even more this next year.
Yuba is vulnerable. One bad spawning year and the lake could go crash city in one year. If Yuba does not fill enough to get the water up into the vegetation by perch spawning time, the balance of the ecosystem could tip…or fall. Once the system becomes top heavy with predators, the baby perch disappear from the system and all of the predators become very easy to catch. Just as before the last crash, EVERYBODY can catch walleyes. But, when the ice recedes after a hard winter it is SILENT SPRING. Everything has croaked from starvation.
That’s a lot of words to say that I disagree with the mandatory “First and Ten” rule. It makes no sense. It really does not save any small perch and it makes it tough on someone who drives two hours for 10 fish and has to settle for nothing but dinks. And, two years from now when there are NO perch left of any size, we will ask ourselves…“Why did I have to keep those little ones? Everything died anyway.”
Again, I am not a biologist. But, I know what I have seen…and I ain’t seen much from DWR that would ever make a difference on a lake that is regulated by weather and water users more than a fisheries agency. To me, it is like building a row of sand castles on the beach to stop a tidal wave that is gonna come in whether you do anything or not.