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So what's the deal with all the diseased trout down south. I fished Otter Creek 3 times this year and found 75% of the fish had parasites or bacterial infections.
At Piute Reservoir same thing.
Minersville 50% had bacterial infections
Newcastle 50% had bacterial infections & parasites
Quail Creek 50% had bacterial infections
Upper Sand cove 50% had bacterial infections
Question are the Rainbow that are planted at these reservoirs diseased or are the getting sick after they are stocked. At Minersville I did catch two Brown trout that were in perfect shape. Maybe the DWR should put in Browns so that we can catch fish that have no diseases ?
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Send Paul Birdsey the question. He is the cold water coordinator for the state.
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Beautiful-Fish,
The lakes you mention all have one thing in common - the water tends to warm up in the summer. Rainbow trout get stressed in the warmer water and start to shed some of their slime covering. When this happens, they are much more susceptible to attacks from the myriad of microbes that occur naturally in the lake. The problem is made much worse during low water years when the fish can be additionally stressed by heavy algae blooms, increased turbidity, and lower oxygen. Most of the fish will recover from these attacks once the water cools down in the fall, but occasionally we do see some mortality.
Hope this answered your question.
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Welcome to the site Mike and thanks so much for answering Beautiful-Fish's question.
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It's great to hear from the DWR and know you guys take interest in sites such as these. Thanks for all the effort you put into providing an opportunity to pursue our hobbies (or illness as my wife terms it). Now if you could only find a way to influence Mother Nature into some water to refill and maintain water levels throughout the year that would be grand.
My one concern is with all the algae bloom over the past few years. Will it continue to be the trend even if water levels come up. The above mentioned reservoirs were extremely difficult to fish by the end of the summer. Any ideas or methods to prevent this from happening?
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Welcome to the site Mike. It is good to hear your input on the fisheries.
I used to live in Utah and currently reside in Southern California.
As a PhD candidate for my Environmental Science courses, I have been spending time with my states Fish and Wildlife biologists.
We commonly encounter close to 130 species of algae in many of the lakes. Some of them being beneficial and others causing blooms when it is less desires.
We have recently started a process for the algae prevention with a great product that can be used in lakes that are up to 20,000,000 acre feet.
It is not an agaecide such as CuSO4 and is all natural. It actually adjust the N level which doesn't hurt the fish but does prevent new algae from successfull mitosis.
It is mostly required in the spring and summer, when blooms are more likely to be produced.
EC-504 is the product.
Smaller lakes have benefited with the addition of Plecostomus and in some cases further introduction of Tilapia. Tilapia by themselves serve as excellent algae bloom eaters. They survive best with Duck Moss as well as string algae. They also survive on other fish fecal matter which in turn keeps the amonia content down too.
What do you think of this natural method?
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well I have never caught a trout out of quail creek that had bacterial infection I fish that lake all time even during the summer when I fish deep for them
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You need to fish more, all but one trout that I have caught out of Quail has had some thing wrong with it..But then I have only caught 4 trout from their..
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I fished quail creek today and caught 30 rainbow, all of them were fine, not a sick one in the bunch ! The cold water must have helped .
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Thanks tubeN2 for the reply. It sounds as if there are some natural measures that could help with the algae problem. I hope here in Utah we can implement some of those you spoke of and get a handle on this before it gets worse. We have some awesome fisheries here that are getting really difficult to fish.
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