Lake trout

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Interesting. It is all about the forage, that is why they are trying so hard to get people to eat as many pup lakers as possible. Other studies have found that the growth rate of lakers in the Gorge has been slowing with the high density of smaller lake trout and the disappearance of the Utah Chub (the cover they used has decayed as the vegetation on the bottom of the lake has decayed away as the reservoir aged).
 
That's pretty wild! I would have never guessed a big Gorge laker could be that young. I remember reading years ago about one tagged on the northern end, was 20+ years old and only 23". Just like people I suppose, all types!
 
People need to remember that fish are indeterminate growers and not determinate. Big fish are almost always a result of fast growth rather than age. Lake trout harvest should not be limited to the pups but should also include the big fish....all harvest can help the population.
 
Maybe some are fast track growth but I assure you that allot of the large lake trout are ancient as well. When you see a potbelly pig with tiny head yeah a younger fast tracker. The old big headed with large yellow fins and tails are a different animal , no need to kill them or the fast trackers, these are special fish that most people spend thousands of dollars on trips to Canada.
 
I was always told that lakers where 1 to 2 years old for every pound. I have no problem keeping one, but after catching a few of the big ones it’s hard to kill one that big and that old. I don’t blame you for keeping a record one or a person’s first trophy one. Keep fishing!
 
Maybe some are fast track growth but I assure you that allot of the large lake trout are ancient as well. When you see a potbelly pig with tiny head yeah a younger fast tracker. The old big headed with large yellow fins and tails are a different animal , no need to kill them or the fast trackers, these are special fish that most people spend thousands of dollars on trips to Canada.

One could also say that a lot of the small (20") lake trout are ancient too.

Assumptions aside -- we KNOW that big fish are the result of fast growth. Too many papers written on the subject to deny that.

The original report from this thread says: "...As you can see the fish was only 16 years old and you can see in its first 12 years it grew very rapidly.."
Just so we are all clear, this fish is the Utah state record @ 53lbs and 44" long!! It was only 16 years old! That is FAST GROWTH, not old age.
Take a look at the attached article, then compare the otolith from the orignal post:

The fish grew quickly for the first 3 years, probably to about 20". At this point, the growth slowed. Why? Because the fish was still eating a mix of other fish + other aquatic forage. For the next 4 years the fish grew slowly. At age 7, and probably at about 24", the growth increased again. Why? Most likely because the fish made a switch from a "mixed" diet to a diet of strictly fish only. Until this conversion happens, lake trout stay "small". So, at year 7 the growth increased again for the next 5 years. This matches exactly with the attached report, where the fastest growth rates observed were with fish between 25 to 30 inches (look at years 8-9!). This fish exploded in size from somewhere around 24" - 40" between the age of 7 - 11! That's amazing! And this fish was nowhere near being "ancient".

It shouldn't be assumed that this example would be an exception, but rather the norm. This is the problem with using an "average" to attempt to determine the growth of fish. If you average it out, you don't see those periods of fast growth. Over time, as the fish gets older, that average per year will shrink more, and more, and more -- diluting the phenomenal growth that this fish actually experienced, and giving anglers the false assumption that big fish are the result of old age. This thinking is more in line with how mammals grow (determinate), not how fish grow (indeterminate).

The person that caught this incredible fish made another comment, particularly noteworth:
"... over all the lake trout in flaming gorge are growing much faster than people think and it wont ruin the lake if a few bigger fish are harvested for someone to enjoy on the wall."

Agreed 100%.

I have another article titled "A 4-step method to manage for quality fishing. It is too large to attach (1.2mb), but it explains these concepts. I'd be happy to send to anyone that wants to see it.
 

Attachments

  • A study of the Lake trout population of Fish Lake Utah.PDF
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There -- I got the file reduced in size. Enjoy.
 

Attachments

  • A 4-step method to manage for quality fishing.pdf
    722.7 KB · Views: 11
16 years is relative.. That may not be long in terms of lake trout life span possibility, but it certainly is not replaced tomorrow either.
No matter the age or growth rate, big fish don't get any bigger dead.
I believe 100% those fish are more valuable as a trophy resource for countless people to enjoy, than a record, or skin mount on the wall.
 
A 16-year old trophy fish may not be replaced tomorrow, but it would be by the following year. Eliminating that one fish and its' biomass allows for accelerated growth among other fish. Increased harvest--even of the trophy fish--will only allow the trophy potential of Flaming Gorge to increase not decrease. That's what so many fishermen fail to understand. Take a closer look at the fish this post was started about....It grew from ~24" to ~40" and 50lbs in 5 years!! In other words, it grew around 43-45 pounds in 5 years. Imagine now increasing growth rates among all lake trout to this kind of accelerated rapid growth...wouldn't that greatly increase the trophy potential?

So, how do we do that? The answer is simple--reduce lake trout and burbot numbers down to low enough numbers that prey species flourish. Not just the little lake trout or burbot, but all of them.
 
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Funny how I see things allot different . That 16 year old large fish has consumed allot of biomass over that 16 year period to get to the size it is. Killing it removes it from the pool for people to enjoy catching. There was a large investment in that fish to get it to that size, allot of rainbows and kokanees were consumed over that 16 year period, Now another fish to replace it needs to again consume allot of biomass to reach that size. Seems to me if you put a dollar value on what it took to raise a large lake it makes no sense to want it harvested.
 
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Remember, though, biomass is constant. In other words, the biomass that fish is consuming is replaced immediately. So, if we can reduce the number of lakers in Flaming Gorge, we can also change how that biomass is comprised--either lots of smaller fish and relatively few large ones, or fewer fish but more big ones. Again, read the attachment PBH posted called "4-step Method to Managing Trophy Fisheries."

Additionally, part of the plea among anglers to harvest more lake trout at Flaming Gorge is for the benefit of rainbow and kokanee. I would suggest that fewer lake trout and burbot at the Gorge would also be cost beneficial to managers in terms of rainbow trout and kokanee stocking. It's a better plan either way...
 
Considering I spend most of my time fishing Flaming Gorge, I’ll add a couple things here. #1 is my step dad is the record holder for the Wyoming side. I’ve talked to him frequently about his record fish and while the technology may not have been then (1995) what it is now, his fish was “aged” at 35-40 years old. I can’t remember the exact age but I do remember it was “born” before flaming gorge dam was constructed about 30 years before he caught it (1964), so the presumption was that, that lake trout was already in the river system coming down from green river lakes, before the dam was built. This gave it the upper edge in reaching that 50 lb mark.

There is also an old fish that regularly got caught a few years ago. He weighed between 45 and 48 pounds depending on scales and probably what he ate that day. These pics are ranging from January 2017 to April 2019. So in two and a half years he hadn’t really gained or lost a nothing. Sure you can have a fish that reaches record class in 16 years and it’s no big deal to harvest one, and other end of the spectrum you can have one reach that size in 16 years and be available to catch at that size for the next 30+ years by who knows how many people. You just never know. “Back in the day” skin mounts were far superior and I never would and still never do hold it against someone who wants to take one out of the river system to put on their wall. But now the replicas look better and last longer than the skin mounts anyway. F82CF89F-E383-4F5B-9676-5082252B78CE.jpegD9A02386-36B8-400D-8EAE-F4D4E8223DFC.jpeg
 
The concern from the bio side is that growth rates have slowed greatly just in the last 10 years. So, that 1995 fish probably was 35-40 years old. However, what is missing in all that are the growth rates of that fish. It might have only taken that fish 15 years to get that large and then growth rates slowed dramatically. The key in all of this is if you want more people to enjoy trophy fish, we need to make more room for trophy fish to exist. That only happens if lake trout numbers decrease. The regulations at Flaming Gorge ask for liberal harvest of small lakers but do allow for the harvest of a large laker as well. I trust that this allowance in the regulations to harvest a trophy laker is not done as a detriment. And, based on the biology know that Flaming Gorge would grow more trophies if the lake trout population were reduced. According to Ryan Mosely, ""An eight-year-old lake trout was about 30 inches long in the 1990s," Mosley says. "Today, an eight-year-old fish is only about 23 inches long. On top of the decreased length, the number of lake trout in the reservoir has increased 89 percent in just the last two years, so we're concerned the situation may only get worse."

I get the idea of allowing others the opportunity to catch these big fish and turning an individual fish back allows for that fish to be caught again. But, where we differ, is that I believe if we harvest some of those big fish, we can potentially grow more of them. Which, in turn, would allow more people to catch trophies. In Mosley's words, "Reduction would also increase the survival of salmon and rainbow trout and provide more of them to catch. Since kokanee salmon and rainbow trout are the primary prey for trophy lake trout, it would provide more salmon and rainbows for the remaining lake trout to eat, allowing the lake trout to grow quicker and larger."
 
... I believe if we harvest some of those big fish, we can potentially grow more of them. Which, in turn, would allow more people to catch trophies. In Mosley's words, "Reduction would also increase the survival of salmon and rainbow trout and provide more of them to catch. Since kokanee salmon and rainbow trout are the primary prey for trophy lake trout, it would provide more salmon and rainbows for the remaining lake trout to eat, allowing the lake trout to grow quicker and larger."


This ^^

Again, the key is FAST growth, not old age. Read those papers. If you want a fishery to have more trophy quality fish so that more anglers can catch them, then you need to get back to that zone of maximum fish growth (ie: FAST growth rates). If growth rates continue to slow, then you end up with a fishery full of OLD, and SMALL fish! The last thing you want is a bunch of 25" lake trout (spawners!) that are 20-30 years old.



This can also apply to Lake Powell. Consider the liberal limits on small mouth bass. Why? Because growth rates. Too many smb with not enough forage = slow growth rates, and fewer "trophy" sized smb lake wide. Increase the limits, encourage harvest, and try to get the growth rates to increase. The faster the fish grow, the more "big" fish you'll have.
 
removes it from the pool for people to enjoy catching.
I suppose it's a matter of management and what are our goals. Do we want one trophy size fish, or 3 fish of significant/healthy size? More fish means happier anglers and more income until they become so small/prevalent that it's just not worth catching them. Kind of a balancing act, and a job for wildlife managers. I keep everything up to the limit, because I trust our wildlife managers.

PS I also keep them because I like to eat them.
 
Good conversation. There's a lot of variability in lake trout growth in Flaming Gorge. Here's a chart of lake trout lengths by age from fish sampled in 2019 (280 total). This aging work was completed by taking a cross section of the maxilla of the fish. Otoliths are most commonly used for aging lake trout, but using the maxilla allowed us to also age trophy fish that were caught and released by anglers and guides and during sampling efforts. As you can see, some older fish will never achieve trophy status, for example note the 24-inch fish that was 19 years old. The state record was an obvious extreme of a fast growing fish, but even in 2019, we observed fish with considerably high growth rates. For example we observed 38-40 inch fish that were less than 15 years old. Most anglers talk about lake trout in pounds instead of inches, so a 40-inch fish in 2019 averaged 25 lbs.

Hope this helps, thanks, Ryan Mosley

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Just throwing in some perspective and food for thought. While I see the advantage of releasing for "trophy" fishing to the individual who catches it, the fish itself can be damaged overtime with repeated boating/handling. I say this from experience on the frying pan river. I have caught many many fish there, even ones in the 10+ pound range and there are very few that aren't beat to hell. Between the foul hooking and poor handling they begin to have skin sluff off from infection.

I would hate for an old mule like that Laker to suffer the same life of some of those trout. I understand foul hooking is unlikely for lake trout but poor handling is so common any more its painful. There are a few scientific studies that show catch and release results in a range of 15% to 20% mortality rate due to poor handling and stress. A large fish like that is going to fight for a long time and the longer the fight the higher its chance for mortality.

off topic but similar are the guys who release kokanee later in the year, most of those fish are not going to make it once they rise in temperature.



 
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