Fishing

has anyone been recently? Just wondering how the fishing was, I will have a boat.

Two years ago I drug my little boat up there with high hopes. Beach launch was a challenge as had to unload quite a way from the water as the sand was looking like a "Get Stuck" opportunity.

I brought the fishing lure buffet and had crawlers and large meal worms left over from ice fishing - well long story short - after two hours of trolling and not a nibble I took the worm of a worm harness and put on a large meal worm on the rear hook and bang it was 7" rainbow city.

I even emailed the DWR to ask them why this great lake was such a poor fishing pond and they responded that funding and cuts to fish hatchery fund were the cause of no fish being stocked in the last few years - maybe changed in the last year.

Sorry I wish I had much better news....

Leave no man behind...

'Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.'
John Wayne

Yeah...Moon Lake has sucked for quite some time.

TIGHT LINES

>c((((@

-RICH

We were camping there the first of July. Water levels are decent this year. I saw boats on the lake but not sure how they did. I think One of the boats was the DWR. It was real good for splake a couple years ago and then it was over. I’m not sure what is happening anymore. We didn’t fish this year but I did see fish surfacing in the evening. Jakes used to be real good for rainbows a few years ago. It’s a beautiful place to camp though. Good luck.

Either the DWR gave you bad info or you misheard them cause Moon Lake has been stocked every year going all the way back to 2002 (the earliest archive on the stocking database). There are a lot of minnows in Moon Lake so getting those tigers and splake to bite is not easy.

Here's the email response I got - you be the judge

Hi Craig,
The problem is not getting larger trout, but getting our actual quota of trout. For the last 4 years (maybe more, I only started in this position 4 years ago), we have either only received 25% of our splake quota or none of our splake quota which means that we are essentially missing year classes. As you know, splake are a sterile hybrid so to prevent major swings in population size structure, you really need your quota each and every year. We also stock rainbow trout and tiger trout in that lake, but caught only a handful of rainbows in our 2014 netting and no tiger trout. Essentially, we have a lake in need of some major changes and we are hoping to resolve some things in the very near future. There were plenty of mountain whitefish and mountain sucker (forage fish), which is why the splake and tiger trout were stocked; however, they are not really keeping forage fish numbers down. For that reason, we are considering stocking something else like a tiger muskie to help keep the forage fish down better. It would be at the upper elevational range of the tiger muskie, but I think that they would still do fine. Pike and true muskies are found in colder water temps in their natives ranges. I guess I would be interested in hearing your opinion about the species assemblage you'd like to see there? Should we continue with trout, trying out something as predacious as splake, but a species we can get more often. We could stick with the tiger trout; sometimes it takes a few years to get them to stay in the lake. We could consider something else though too.

Thanks,
Trina


--
Trina Hedrick
Northeastern Region Aquatics Manager
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
318 N. Vernal Ave.
Vernal, UT 84078

Leave no man behind...

'Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.'
John Wayne

I read the email and don't see anything that indicates a gap in stocking for a few years. In the email: "We also stock rainbow trout and tiger trout in that lake." They may have shortages on splake, but they stock other trout on top of splake.

PLease, anything but tiger trout!
Just one more brookie........

One of my favorite fish to catch. They have neat colors, are extremely aggressive and fight like the Eveready Bunny.


"The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it"
- Criss Jami