After my earlier post about net fishing carp through the ice at Utah Lake, the folks at the Utah Lake Commission were kind enough to send me a link to a cool video about the program.  Which you can see here:

Wow! That is a lot of fish.  It is crazy to see how many they get in those nets. I think one of the interesting lines from the video is that 90% of the biomass of the lake is bound up in carp so I guess that means roughly 90% of the energy that is in the lake goes toward build carp.  That is pretty astounding.  Imagine if 90% of the usable energy from your car’s engine went to doing something that didn’t help you drive.  I imagine you would want to get that fixed pretty quickly.  I really look forward to seeing how the lake and its inhabitants respond to this project.

I really dig the stories that Brett Prettyman (@brettprettyman) contributes to the Salt Lake Tribune and his blog.  He always has a cool story to tell.  I love this one using nets through the ice to remove carp from Utah Lake.  For those who don’t know there is a massive multi-year project underway to clean up the state’s largest freshwater natural lake which is managed by the Utah Lake Commission. One of the biggest parts of that plan is ridding the lake of carp which have a severe impact on the overall health of the lake.  It would be great to see nice clean and clear water in Utah Lake for the first time in my lifetime.  The goal is to restore the endangered June Sucker to it’s only native body of water.  Perhaps they could even restore the lake to its historical glory as a producer of gigantic bonneville cutthroat.  I think another eventual benefit of cleaning up the lake would mean a cleaner and possibly more trout friendly Jordan River.  This is a nice river in all other respects (except maybe for the the occasional floating body) and is a shame that it can’t be enjoyed as a trout fishery. Read the full story of this ice fishing trip and see more photos here: Carp Seining Through the Ice at Utah Lake

I came across a few interesting outdoors related headlines this weekend. Here is the run down:

• Utah’s exotic species: The good, the bad and the ugly – The Salt Lake Tribune – This article covers several of the numerous introduced species to Utah – some loved and some not so much. Of they ones they list I am most annoyed by starlings, burbot, quagga and zebra mussels, and tamarisk. A couple of trees they didn’t list, but drive me nuts is the are chinese elms and sumacs; they are nearly impossible to kill. It strikes me as a bit hypocritical to pick and and choose which non-native species we tolerate. In just about every case on the list, I would be just as happy with the native counterpart in sport. Bonneville cutthroat trout are the native trout in Utah and they are fun to catch on the fly. I don’t know if I would miss brown or rainbow trout if they were never introduced but hard to imagine. I know that bighorn sheep were once abundant in the mountains here so not sure why they favored bringing goats in instead of recovering sheep.
• Man catches carp the weight of Kylie Minogue – The Telegraph – Perhaps the best written headline of the weekend. I would like a to catch a fish that could be measured to a popular celebrity, perhaps the size of someone like Meatloaf or David Crosby. Anyway that is one MONSTER carp. Looks like something from an episode of River Monsters or Hooked. 
• Utah Field Guide: Bonneville Cisco – Roughin’ It Outdoors on KUTV 2 – A little feature on a fish found only in Utah’s Bear Lake. A smelt-like remnant of the ancient inland sea that covered the region, Lake Bonneville. 

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