Starvation - Red Fleet - Big Sand Wash - Perch

[gofish435]

I thought folks might like an update on some things going on in the northeast region.

The regions biologists and their crews have been netting some perch in Big Sand Wash Reservoir and relocating them to both Starvation and Red Fleet Reservoirs. The perch have been on the decline in Starvation for a few years so the DWR is trying to give them a boost. The perch for Red Fleet are to supplement what was introduced after the chemical treatment. They netted 1,140 perch over a three day period with 530 going to Starvation and 510 going to Red Fleet. There was about a 60/40 split of males to females.

Next month the DWR is going to collect some crappie from Pine View Reservoir and add them to the mix of fish in Starvation. It will be interesting to see how well they do with all the hungry mouths in there.[]

Kudos to the effort that the DWR folks are going to for the fishermen. Some of the changes have come about because of responses from fishermen on recent angler surveys.[]
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[fishnate]

Thanks for the update and photos. I believe some of those crappie are headed to Red Fleet as well -- unless they changed their mind on that.
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[gofish435]

Your welcome.

Your right about some of the Pineview crappie going to Red Fleet. They are supposed to collect them next week and the first week in May if they don't get enough in April.

One other point I forgot in my report that the biologists brought to my attention. The perch numbers don't seem like that much but they are pre spawn so they will have a much larger impact down the road.[]
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[Kent]

Times have certainly changed. I remember when perch were first discovered in Starvation, and I heard from a reliable source, that it was a possibility that the UDWR would have to rotenone Starvation to get rid of them. The concern was that they would move downstream and threaten some endangered species in the Green River. Now they are doing a supplemental planting of perch into Starvation.
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[fishnate]

Just some perspective on how much impact these few perch can have. The first transplant of perch from Fish Lake to Red Fleet was in spring of 2016. I believe they planted a little over 1,000 prespawn adult perch. As a comparison, they planted 1.7 million sterile walleye fry around the same time. In the fall 2016 netting surveys at Red Fleet juvenile perch were the most common species in the nets. Now that's a lot of reproduction. Did the perch population blow past the 1.7 mil walleye? Who knows. There could be plenty of other factors for the walleye not showing up as much, but walleye and perch typically hang out in similar areas throughout their lives and there was plenty of walleye in the survey as well. One thing is for sure, a few yellow perch can make a lot of babies in a big hurry and can feed a lot of hungry predators as is the plan at Red Fleet. There's some good flooded brush at Red Fleet right now so the perch and crappie should have another good spawn this spring so the walleye and wiper can get nice and fat!
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