State of the Lake by Randall Knight

 

The Bear Lake fisheries meeting held on March 31 was led by the Utah and Idaho fishery management teams.  The team leaders were Scott Tolentino for Utah and Carson Watkins for Idaho.  They shared a review of the current status of all the fish species and they also shared the objectives and goals of the bi-state Bear Lake Fisheries Management Plan with a very informative slide presentation.  The two teams have similar ideas on how the fish in the lake should be managed with a goal of maintaining an acceptable population of the five indigenous species (Bear Lake cutthroat, Bonneville cisco, Bonneville whitefish, Bear Lake whitefish, and Bear Lake sculpin) along with the lake trout which is not native. 

Because Idaho has a less restrictive health requirement for their hatcheries, Utah stocks all the fish in Bear Lake.  This includes 170,000 Bonneville cutthroat trout that are 7 inches long for the past 20+ years.   Both Utah and Idaho have been improving the spawning ability and installing fish exclusion screens on irrigation diversions in the four creeks that empty into the lake.  Idaho works on Fish Haven and St Charles Creeks and Utah works on Swan and Big Spring Creeks.  Utah also stocks approximately 17,000-20,000, 7 inch long lake trout annually. 

 

Because each cisco are difficult to sample with gill nets, hydroacoustic sonar equipment is used to determine their population numbers.  Dip netting and gill nets are used to get statistical data for the average size of other fish along with tags placed on some when they are caught in the nets, spawning traps and creel inspections.  This information is used to determine the fishing regulations for the fish that eat the smaller fish in an attempt to maintain the desired balanced populations of predators to prey species. 

 

In January of 2022, a change was made to the fishing regulation to allow anglers to keep two trout regardless of whether the fin is clipped and a proposal was made by Idaho to remove brook and rainbow trout from St. Charles Creek to reduce predation on the just hatched native Bear Lake cutthroat trout. They know the last option will be controversial and will require discussions with the public and especially the land owners the water flows through in the next couple of years. 

 

Utah and Idaho will be updating the Bear Lake Fisheries Management plan since most objectives and goals have been met even though the plan won't expire until 2025.  The agencies plan to host a future public meeting sometime next spring in order to keep the public informed of any additional changes as well as the progress on the updated Fisheries Management Plan.