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We hit the Nell at 6:00 and had our first small smallmouth soon after (where is the good old days of Jordanelle) and worked all over the lake with only small bass to show for our hard earned money spent..
It seems that the new reg's are rely working, in the last two years I have caught more and bigger SM in every state around Utah bigger then in Utah..
Is there any waters in Utah that has any good size and numbers of smallies??
To drive to a lake and fish for hours and only catch 4 to 8 bass over 12" is a joke on the DWR and very very bad management as I see it..
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you just have to call them jumbo perch and it changes the whole experience.
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You seemed surprised that you only caught small fish??? Jordanelle has been on the decline for quite a few years now. Just stop going there if you don't like it. If you want change, harvest your limit of 10 inch bass. That's what I've been doing at Deer Creek. The small bass need to be thinned out to leave more food for the rest.
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[#0000FF]Don't you know any other song, Cliff? The lake is in decline because the food chain has been disrupted. It is not because of DWR regs.
Nobody is catching and keeping all the big fish. There are no big fish because they do not have a good food source.
Quit whining and go fish in all those better lakes. Or better yet, go fish Pineview or Starvation. They both have larger bass because they have lots of food for them. And they are also managed by the same DWR.
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I couldn't agree even more with the same song he's playing.
I think he just needs to move to Texas that's it.
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I tend to think of largemouth when I think Texas. Maybe somewhere back east would be better if he wants big smallmouth. Either way it is getting old hearing the same sob story and blaming the dwr..
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Any 30" Browns?
I heard the Berry has some monster smallies.
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[quote utahgolf]you just have to call them jumbo perch and it changes the whole experience.[/quote]
That is funny right there! Nevertheless, I doubt it will change the nature of Cliff's rants any.
The  thing is that there were a couple trips up there last year where a couple of (real) jumbo perch were some of the biggest fish I caught on a given day with a high bass catch count.[:/]
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You of all should know what a lack of food makes the fish look like..Big heads and long skinny body right??
If so then why are the bass and the trout so fat, the bass at 11" have big guts and weigh about 2 to 3 oz more then the same size in other lakes..
And the trout both Browns and Bows are getting guts on them?? Lack of food??
Here is a picture of the trout that was caught, the two are average size we catch and release..,
.[inline Brent2.jpg]
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Not this trip but we did get a few bows at 19" to 22" and browns up to 24" ..
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Maybe if there were less of those little bass, a few more would reach that bigger size you are after. It might help the fishery, if a few more people kept some of those smaller bass, when was the last time you had some delicious bass to eat Clif?
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[#0000FF]A big head and a long skinny body is not a sign of poor food. It is mostly a sign that the fish were once healthy but had an interrupted food supply...like the shad cycles in Powell. An ongoing lack of food just doesn't allow the fish to ever grow very big in the first place.
There is food in Jordanelle...but not the right kind of food to produce larger bass. Unless there are chubs, baby perch, crawdads or other larger food items the bass will never transition from their smaller sizes. And the food supply has to be year round...not just when the bugs are hatching and the fish can find more to eat.
Think about it Cliff. When there were lots of chubs and tons of perch the bass got bigger. That was when the lake was new and there was still a lot of nutrients. But the exploding populations of bass and perch ate up all the baby chubs as fast as they could be spawned...and the bigger chubs died out. Then the predators turned to the only remaining food supply...baby perch. When the population of big spawning perch crashed there were not enough small perch to feed the remaining bigger perch...and the bass.
There are lakes and streams all over the country with smallmouth populations in which the fish seldom grow larger than 12 to 14 inches. Most of these waters have a fair supply of aquatic invertebrates...but no big supply of minnows or crawdads.
Virtually all prime smallmouth lakes that produce big fish have crawdads as a base food source and several species of minnows or the young of other fish available year round. It takes abundance and a balance. That does not describe either Deer Creek or Jordanelle. But it does describe Pineview and Starvation...and Powell.
Once again, quit blaming DWR. The downturn in bass sizes was well underway before there were any changes in regulations that might result in the scenario you keep crying about. THERE ARE NO LARGE FISH because there is no food. In a healthy lake there will always be some large fish. Anglers cannot catch them all. And if a superstar angler like yourself can't score even one or two over a season that should tell you something. The fish are not being caught out by worm dunkers...as you suggest.
And it is not good biology to compare relative health and growth patterns of bass against trout in the same waters. They occupy different places in the ecology and mostly have vastly different diets. The bass will survive on bugs and other trout foods but they will not get enough nutrition to make the jump from teenagers to big healthy adults. Instead, their systems keep them at a smaller size so they can at least survive on what is available.
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Lots of fish in the 3-4 pound class at starvation but no giants
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Pat, nothing you or anyone else can say will ever convince him. He's a one-note singer. He thinks he knows the one magic pill, the one elixir that cures all - and he'll tout it regardless.
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[#0000FF]You can always tell an opinionated person...but you can't tell them much.
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I don't like to eat fish..And in all the years I have yet to hear or know of any body of water that keeping the small fish has help to get any to grow bigger..
Can you tell me of any??
If you keep the bass that is 10" to 12" how do they get any bigger??
They (the bass) in Jordanelle this year and in the past that I have seen have all been in great shape, so how would keeping them help??
Please tell me seeing how they do not look like they need more food??
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Years ago I had a long conversation with Del Canty. He has done controlled studies for years on harvest effect on lakes & reservoirs.
If only the largest fish are kept by anglers, then the size of the general population will diminish. I know this seems obvious for a number of reasons but my fingers don't have the ability to review all we talked about. If the pan sized fish are kept, then the size and overall health of fish will improve, dramatically over just a few years.
The recent gill net studies at flaming gorge seem to validate this. People have been encouraged to release the larger fish and keep the pups for the grill. It is complex but it works.
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The two of many trout we caught on the last trip at the Nell was full of minnow as was the bass and the brown you seen had a crayfish in it throat as well..The bass had deep bellies from the top of the back to the bottom..
They looked short for there size, the numbers of fish and size dropped in one year, the same year the reg's was changed and when you do catch a bass over 14" it is wide across the back and in great shape..Nothing I have seen with any of the bass shows lack of food..
But some lakes and studies of lakes like Deer Creek and Jordanelle in rivers and lakes in the east and north east parts showed that over harvest of the bigger bass makes the lakes with small bass they get up to a small keeper size and not any bigger..Even some lakes in Texas and Florida just to mention a few others witch there are many..I like many do not like slot limits but they work on some waters not all..
Look them up, you know how dumb I am with this, Even some shows on tv talked about this, along with some bass tournaments tv shows have the same Info..
All the other places talk about this but Utah's dwr..WHY??
That's not quiet right some of the biologists have said slots will work but was over ruled..
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Yes let the bigger ones go but in bass it works the same way but you need a slot so they can grow to the bigger size like they have at the Berry for the Cuts..
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Does the dwr ever introduce a food source like crawdads? I'm not familiar with the whole process.
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