New waters for kokanees

[Joe_Dizzy]

Here's a hint to my theory for Jordanelle that might hurt Koke fishing this year and beyond. Too many hungry mouths that don't exist elsewhere.  Introduced piscivorous predators that are now big enough to eat small Kokes, Namely Wipers, Tiger Musky, Splake, Cutthroats and the existing Smallmouth and Browns. In the early part of the process when Kokes were fist planted the predators were not big enough to impact it, they are now. I hope I'm wrong! I will post more on this later in another thread

Good point. Jordanelle does have that "model home" feel to it at the moment... almost every gamefish in Utah swims here.

I am curious to see the long term effects of Kokes in all these small reservoirs. Many are steep-sided with limited food shelves and subject to massive draw-downs which forces cyclical (negative) impacts on the base of the food pyramid. Kokes are filter feeders so their presence in large numbers really eats into the zooplankton population. On a mega-fertile, large lake like Strawberry balance can be achieved, but on smaller reservoirs with limited carrying capacity, maybe the effects on other species become real.

As you eluded to... the food pyramid gets quite narrow at the top, for a reason.