1 million walleye stocked at Willard Bay

[wiperhunter2]

Saw this article on the UDWR Facebook page. Thought some of you might want to know about it.

Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
April 28
One million walleye in Willard Bay (4 photos)
Many anglers know that walleye fishing at Willard Bay can be fantastic during "on" years. Now, our biologists are working to make walleye fishing that great every year.

Some Utah waters receive regular fish stockings while others are natural fish factories. But what do you do when you have a reservoir that produces spectacular amounts of fish only once every four to five years?

The simple answer may be to stock fish during years when natural reproduction just isn’t enough. This is exactly the approach biologists are taking in northern Utah. Last Friday, one million walleye fry (about as long as a person's fingernail) made their way from a fish hatchery in Wray, Colorado to their new home in Willard Bay Reservoir. By this fall, the walleye should be eight to ten inches long.

For the next three or four years, biologists will study whether or not stocking extra walleye is an effective way to boost the population in years that aren't good for hatching walleye eggs. DWR biologists will monitor the population using gill net surveys.

If the stocking works, Willard Bay walleye anglers should catch more fish, more consistently, but there’s no need for anglers to wait for the end of the study: the walleye fishing at Willard Bay is excellent right now!
One million walleye fry—just like these ones—were stocked in Willard Bay last Friday.

Photo courtesy of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
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[TroutMan93]

Holy crap! The fish in there won't be going hungry for awhile. Hopefully the walleye fishery will get better...but who knows.
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[Flyfishinglover]

For sure we should all advise the proposal to close off the inlet during walleye spawn. That probably got hit really hard last year with all of the snagged walleye being kept.
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[DKStroutfitter]

That is good news for Walleye anglers. I hope that the survival rate is better than the 1 to 3% for Wiper fry. Kudos to the DWR for doing this!
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[Tres_319]

That's awesome! I'm really happy with the dwr trying new approaches to keep all fisherman happy. +1 for Walleyes
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[HYDROFISH]

Curt that's a great news for the best walleye water in ut. Thank you for the information
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[wiperhunter2]

I haven't heard what the survival rate will be when walleye are stocked that small, maybe one of the DWR guys will tell us, if they read this thread.
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[CoyoteSpinner]

Please, lets not start THAT debate up again.

Snagging game fish is illegal. Period. Enforcement is what's needed, not necessarily closing the inlet during the spawn. It's been well documented the recruitment from the inlet is insignificant if not non-existent in that lake, since the eggs get covered in silt. The real producers are the rock-and-rollers elsewhere.

So where's the 5-0 at 4:20, cuz that's a big 10-4!

It's nice to hear the stocking news. Hope they manage to help boost the population overall. Though planting fingerlings offers a lot of tasty niblets to the bigger fishies. But - as they say - safety in numbers.

[Tibbz]

I'm not as fish eco educated as some. But as some have said, seems like a lot those little guys might just be food for fish or maybe the wiper comeback. I know shad are planted for that. But what do I know. I hope it works out for both species.
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[albinotrout]

Wow I hope it works. Great news![cool]
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[SBennett]

AWESOME!
Thanks for the good news.
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[wiperhunter2]

Like DKStroutfitter said, they do not expect but 1 to 3% survival rate but when compared to the high cost of raising them in a hatchery, it the cheapest was to add fish to a lake without spending big $$. I wish one of the DWR folks would reply to this thread but I'll try and give you an example. I'm not sure of the exact cost but lets say it cost $10,000 to stock those 1 million fish, if they put them in a fish hatchery that 10k investment could cost 100k or more to raise to a size where they would do better when stocked, say 7' and another 100k or more to raise them 13". With the cost that high you could stock millions and millions of fry with much better success in the long run. They do the same thing with wipers and they have had very good results with them, except when the let up on the stocking. I'm excited to see what the long term benefit will be at Willard if they keep this up for a few years.[cool]
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[dubob]

[quote Flyfishinglover]For sure we should all advise the proposal to close off the inlet during walleye spawn. That probably got hit really hard last year with all of the snagged walleye being kept.[/quote][#800000][font "Comic Sans MS"][size 3]Are you . . .; oh to Hell with it - I ain't gonna go there. []
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[cyprinus_23]

Hi guys. My name is Chris Penne and I am the aquatic biologist who studies Willard Bay. Hopefully I can add a bit to the discussion here.

As a bit of background. The walleye fry stocked a couple weeks ago are part of a feasibility study to determine whether or not we can make the walleye population at Willard Bay more stable throughout the years. As you may be aware, while the the walleye numbers in Willard Bay are currently very good, this hasn't always been the case. The population in Willard hit the highest numbers we've seen in a decade in 2012, and we're currently still riding the tail end of that high. The current population is made up predominately of fish spawned in 2009 and 2011. Several other year classes of fish are also present, but there are some years where we have fish missing completely and others where the age classes are pretty weak. While its natural for walleye to produce strong year classes every 2 to 3 years in their home range east of the Rockies, the time lag we observe between strong year classes in Willard Bay can be even longer. I wasn't around for it at the time, but the historical data I've been given suggests the walleye population in Willard stayed pretty low during the most of the years of the last decade. The recent surge we've had in walleye at Willard Bay has been a boon for anglers and for the reservoir and we would like to keep it that way.

Walleye lay tens of millions of eggs each spring during the spawn, but the number of eggs and young that survive can change drastically from year to year depending upon spring temperatures, water level, and even wind intensity. We think in Willard it may also have to do with a lack of irregular shoreline which leaves eggs especially vulnerable to wind and wave action. What we are looking to do is see if we can give the walleye population in Willard a boost during years when conditions are not good for hatching walleye eggs. We're not sure if this is possible since the same weather and conditions that are bad for eggs can also be bad for young walleye, but the weather has a way of changing quickly in the spring. Surveys among walleye waters nationally have shown this sort of supplemental stocking works well in about a third of cases, so success is far from guaranteed, but we won't know the answer until we try.

We've got plans to conduct this feasibility study over the next three to four years, but much of that will depend upon the availability of extra walleye fry from other states like Colorado's Department of Park and Wildlife. While Utah currently has plans for a warm water sport fish hatchery, walleye may be a low priority for culturing since most of Utah's reservoirs already have populations that have consistent natural reproduction. Either way, we're excited about the current study and are looking forward to the results.

Regarding the discussion of fry vs. fingerlings. There are several things to consider and as some of you pointed out, survival of fry is generally much lower than fingerlings. Despite that lower survival, as was also pointed out, fry are often much more cost effective than fingerling fish and so fishery managers generally opt to try the stocking of fry before fingerlings. If fry are unsuccessful, then we often move to stock fingerlings. The numbers and costs can change with the water, species, and how a state's hatchery system is setup but here are some numbers for walleye. Fingerlings generally have about 35 x better survival than fry. Despite this much better survival, the cost of a single fingerling fish is equivalent to about 8,000 fry. If we factor in the 1% survival rate towards the aforementioned 8,000 fry, we would still get 80 fry that would survive for the same cost of a single fingerling fish. I could go further with the example, but when feasible, fry are basically the way to go.
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[wiperhunter2]

Thanks for the info Chris, good to know you are on this site. I'll remember your user name now, in case we have more questions in the future. Is this the first time walleye have been stocked in Willard since they were originally planted? Sounds like the survival rate is the same for the wiper and walleye fry. Is the survival rate for all fish fry about the same? Correct me if I'm wrong, at a 1% survival rate does that mean 10k walleye will reach catchable size of the 1 million stocked? Thanks again for helping us answer our questions.
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[albinotrout]

Thanks for te response. Good info to know. I hope it all works out for all.
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[FishSlayerJT]

Like what the numbers could result in. We'll see how it turns out in a couple years.. How about putting in some structure for spawning and for young to hide til they can grow? Maybe rockpiles to snag lures on..
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[cyprinus_23]

I believe walleye were stocked on a supplemental basis decades ago. All I have to go off of there are very some old news reports I've found in files, so I don't have much more information than that. I think we can say this is at least the first time they've been stocked in Willard in decades. I don't know what the outcome of that stocking was back then either. Whatever their results were, the changes in the fish community, which include gizzard shad and wiper, mean it is a different reservoir now than it was back then.

Survival rates of fry can vary widely, so I think that 1% should be seen as more of general rule of thumb. Studies conducted around the nation have seen survival rates everywhere from 0.01% to 11%. We could get almost no returns on those stocked walleye, we could get the 10,000 returning at a survival of 1%, or we could even get 110,000 walleye out of this if their survival is high. We'll just have to wait and see. As an example of this differential survival, we're speculating our wiper fry survival over the past 3 years has been considerably higher than 1%. As those of you fishing the reservoir have seen, there have been a lot of young wipers out there the past few years. Just like our current walleye numbers, the wiper population is also at the highest we've seen in a decade. This is in spite of several stockings of wiper fingerlings that have fallen much short of our desired quota. We've continued to stock 250,000 wiper fry a year over the past several years, but three years ago we altered our methods for stocking those fry and our numbers of wipers in our survey nets have been climbing ever since. Because there are now indications we're getting a significant contribution to the fishery from wiper fry, we're looking to initiate a marking study to evaluate the contributions of wiper fry versus fingerlings to the fishery. This will allow us to see if fry are really contributing as much to the fishery as we think they are.

To answer another question - Yes, we've got plans for some rock piles at Willard and have had for some time, but we keep getting delayed on that one due to issues beyond our control. The intention is to have the rock piles act as fish attractors, but they are in no way intended to act as major nursery habitat or refuge that will enhance fish populations. The sheer size of Willard Bay makes any sort of large scale habitat enhancement geared towards improving fish populations too massive and costly to pursue. There's plenty of fish in Willard, the primary issue that affects a lot of anglers is that the fish habitat in the reservoir is relatively homogenous, meaning both anglers and fish don't have many areas to key in on. I know there are many that will argue with me that there is plenty of habitat in Willard if you know where to look and I agree - our main goal though is just to make easier for the average angler to key in on places to catch fish.
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[WiperMac]

[font "Calibri"]Chris,[/font]
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[font "Calibri"]I was going to email you personally but now that I see you’re on the forum I can thank you and the DWR in public. I personally am very excited about the stocking of Willard Bay and look forward to helping in any capacity I can. [/font]
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[font "Calibri"]Trevor [/font]
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[wiperhunter2]

Thanks again Chris, good info, thanks for sharing. When the new rock piles are put in place would it be possible if you could post that info here?
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