Anyone planning to catch kokanee salmon in the Flaming Gorge this summer should prepare themselves for disappointment.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) has said that anglers should expect reduced kokanee salmon catch rates this year compared to previous years. Tony Valdez, the owner of Buckboard Marina, thinks the problem is even more severe than the WGFD is letting on.
"Fisheries managers from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources set a management objective to maintain a population estimate of 600,000 kokanee two years and younger," a WGFD press release explained. "Estimates in 2021 and 2022 were 600,000 and 550,000, respectively. Estimates from 2016-2019 were nearly double the most recent estimates. Kokanee population recruitment estimates show a decline of over 50 percent when comparing estimates from 2021-2022 to estimates from 2016-2019."
Valdez estimates the decline in the kokanee population to be closer to 80 percent or 90 percent, saying that there essentially aren't any left. Valdez said there were 4.3 million kokanee in the Flaming Gorge twenty years ago according to WGFD numbers, and now there are no repeat spawner kokanee left. He said in the past hundreds of thousands of Kokanee would go up Sheep Creek to spawn, and last year only 25 pairs went up.
"Each fall, fisheries managers operate a fish trap in Sheep Creek to collect early and late-run eggs from spawning kokanee," the WGFD explained in their press release. "Utah managers could not meet their egg quota for early runs in 2022, and Wyoming managers could not collect any eggs in 2022 due to the absence of late run kokanee. As a result, the number of kokanee stocked in Flaming Gorge by Utah will be reduced."
Valdez reported that after this year's Lucerne Marina Derby at the end of May, only eight fish were weighed in at the weigh station at Buckboard Marina. Typically there are hundreds of fish weighed in, including kokanee, but this year there were only a few rainbow trout and brown trout.
Valdez also said seasonal anglers who come to stay and fish at Buckboard Marina every summer haven't been catching any kokanee this year. The word is getting out, too. The marina parking lot that used to be filled to overflowing now only has a handful of trucks on any given day. Fishermen coming from other states aren't coming back.
With the low rates of kokanee, Valdez decided to cancel Buckboard Marina's annual Hell on Reels fishing derby.
One of the main factors in the decline of kokanee is predation by small (less than 28 inches) lake trout. Recent researched concluded the diet of small lake trout consisted of roughly 25% kokanee, according to Game and Fish.
"Suppose the population of small lake trout is around 130,000 small lake trout, each consuming just ten kokanee yearly," the WGFD press release stated. "That equates to 1.3 million kokanee being lost to predation and unavailable to anglers in the future."
Once again, Valdez thinks this example is a gross underestimation of the actual situation. He said a past Game and Fish report said small lake trout can eat 12 kokanee per month, or 144 per year, which means you would need 18,720,000 kokanee available each year to feed 130,000 small lake trout. He said Game and Fish typically plants 1.5 million.
Another factor in the reduced kokanee numbers is the drop in water levels in the Flaming Gorge. Valdez explained the water levels used to be kept at 60-40 elevation, and the kokanee spawning beds are at 60-15, so when the water levels dropped 30 feet and went down to 60-10 or lower two years ago, the beds were exposed, so the kokanee couldn't spawn.
When it comes to solutions, Game and Fish encouraged anglers to target small lake trout and take advantage of liberal creel limits. In January 2019, the creel limit for small (less than 28 inches) lake trout was increased to 12 per day and 24 in possession, with only one trout greater than 28 inches allowed.
While Valdez agrees small lake trout should be targeted, he's not convinced the recreating public will be able to put enough of a dent in their population.
"In three years, we've taken out 3,000 pounds of the juveniles, so that's a ton and a half out of 100 tons," Valdez explained, considering the numbers of juvenile lake trout that have been taken out from things like the "Pupulation Control" fishing contest.
In Valdez's opinion, the limits and wanton waste restrictions on small lake trout should be lifted completely. He also thinks pit tags should be put into small lake trout, similar to a pit tag competition that targeted burbot in the early 2000s. Anyone who catches a fish with a pit tag can get a prize or cash reward, but since the pit tag is put inside the fish, the fish have to be caught and killed to determine if they have a winning tag. A more extreme option would be gillnetting the Flaming Gorge, waiting until the trophy trout go to Utah and using a gillnet to catch the small trout.
Whatever the solution, Valdez believes more needs to be done and it needs to be done soon to try to recover the kokanee population within the next few years.
He also said this is an issue that affects the entire community since kokanee fishing brings in visitors and economic growth in Sweetwater County. He said kokanee fishing was previously estimated to bring in $322 million of revenue to the economy, which will be lost if there are no fish to be caught.
"This is one of the best recreational kokanee fisheries in the United States, it always has been for the last 20 years, and now we have no kokanee," Valdez said.
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