DWR stocks 25K fish in Jordanelle Reservoir

DWR stocks 25K fish in Jordanelle Reservoir

(Scott Root, Division of Wildlife Resources)


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PARK CITY — As part of an ongoing effort to build up the fishery at Jordanelle Reservoir, Division of Wildlife Resources biologists placed 25,000 wipers in the lake on Aug. 25.

Fish hatchery personnel and biologists stocked the reservoir with 25,000 2-inch wipers, which are a cross between a striped bass and a white bass, DWR officials said. The hard-fighting fish will provide anglers with great fishing and will also increase the size of the smallmouth bass population by eating some of the smaller fish in the reservoir.

As part of the fish management plan, 9,000 6-inch tiger muskies were also stocked at Jordanelle Reservoir on July 12 and 60,000 kokanee salmon were stocked in April. In the future, around 250,000 kokanee salmon will be placed in the reservoir each year, DWR said.

“As the wipers and tiger muskies mature, they’ll eat a portion of the smaller bass,” DWR regional aquatics biologist Mike Slater said in a statement. “Removing the smaller fish will free up food that will allow the bass that remain in the reservoir to grow larger in size. In the future, we’ll stock 12-inch rainbow trout instead of 8-inch trout that have been stocked in the past. Placing bigger rainbows in Jordanelle will result in fewer rainbows being eaten. And that should increase the number of trout anglers catch.”

Wiper, tiger muskie and splake are all sterile species, and DWR officials said using sterile fish helps provide diverse fishing opportunities, increases the ability to react to changing management and stocking needs and helps protect sensitive species.

“Since sterile fish do not reproduce, we have better control over the number of predators in the reservoir,” Slater said. “For example, if the number of sterile predators in the reservoir gets too high, and they’re causing other fish populations to stunt, we can simply reduce the number of sterile predators we stock and then let harvest or other management actions decrease the number of predators in the reservoir.”

All of the recent changes with the fishery at Jordanelle are part of a management plan put together by a work group and the DWR. The 15-member work group included representatives from state resource agencies and numerous sportsmen and fishing groups who assisted DWR biologists in updating and developing a fishery management plan for the reservoir that "will provide anglers with a quality fishing experience," DWR said.

Photo credit: Mike Slater, Division of Wildlife Resources
Photo credit: Mike Slater, Division of Wildlife Resources

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