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[#0000FF]For Utah Lake fans I have attached a copy of the Jan. 2016 newsletter from the Utah Lake Commission.
One of the buttons you can click on that newsletter takes you to the website pages for ice safety. For those that want to avoid that step, here is a
[url "http://utahlake.gov/utah-lake-ice-safety-and-recreation/"]DIRECT LINK TO ICE SAFETY[/url].
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Thanks for posting that.
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Thats a good little video BYU students did on the lake to.
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[quote big_griggs]Thats a good little video BYU students did on the lake to.[/quote]
[#0000FF]Yes, it did a pretty good job of detailing the past and present ecology of the lake. Some good footage too. But the young Loy boy got a little carried away. He claimed that Brigham Young commissioned the Loy family to net CARP during the early pioneer days. The facts are that carp were not introduced into Utah Lake until 1881. They were planted to help replace the cutthroat trout and June suckers that had been wantonly harvested[/#0000FF][#0000FF][#0000FF][b] by commercial interests [/#0000FF]and/or simply killed by farmers flooding their fields with river water during spawn time.[/b][/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]Utah Lake has been a pet research project going back to the 1960s. I have been fortunate to meet a lot of folks with first hand info...and to collect some of the charts and files put out by DWR through the years.
It also helps to have a pornographic memory...or however that goes.
I am attaching the intro and history chapter from my CD/book on Utah Lake. It has some of that info that may be of general interest to others.
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Great article, Thanks!! I wonder sometimes if the Utah (Lake) Cutthroat was less retarded than the Bonneville they have in Strawberry? Seems to be a shame no one thought to preserve that gene pool back then.
I suppose we should be glad an original strain of Lahontan was isolated then later located. It seems to be doing well in Pyramid, I'd like to give it a try this year.
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[quote TubeDude][#0000FF][b]
It also helps to have a pornographic memory...or however that goes.
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I think you meant photographic LOL[bobhappy][bobhappy][bobhappy][bobhappy]
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[#0000FF]My understanding is that the cutts in old Utah Lake were the same Bonneville cutts we have in Bear Lake, Strawberry and elsewhere. During the first few years of the pioneer settlement in Utah the concern was more about survival of the humans rather than anything to do with ecology of non-human species. The fish were needed for food.
The problem was that there were so many fish and they were so easy to catch that nobody gave any thought to the potential for wiping them out. Sound like the bison thing? Or passenger pigeons. It got to be so that people were catching and killing them just because they could...for "sport". And as mentioned, farmers upstream on the Provo River would divert the river onto their fields for irrigation at the time the cutts were upstream spawning. Thousands of large spawners died in the fields.
By the time it was recognized that the trout were in trouble, it was too late to do much about it. The decimation of the fish...along with destroying their habitat and spawning beds...sealed their fate.
The return of the Lahontans is a good example. Once again, humans dewatered their spawning habitat (Truckee River) and just about eliminated the once prolific species. But the small Lahontans transplanted from Pilot Peak streams have flexed their genes and are now flourishing after the native American owners of Pyramid Lake secured more water for the river. Spawners over 20# are once again showing up in the pens...and for anglers.
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