Walking along the banks of the river watching for fish to rise or a location were the fish are holding. A frown overcame the anglers face when he noticed a 22" Brown trout covered by white fungus floating belly up along the edge of the water. After fishing throughout the day the angler caught fish that were skinny, covered with white fungus, and unhealthy. Unhealthy and dead fish in the water gave concern to the fly fisherman, concerned that irresponsible anglers had been fishing over the spawning fish and causing stress on trout that are already in a naturally high level of stress. Concerned that the constant catch and release of the spawning brown trout was causing the unhealthy, fungus covered and dying fish, the fisherman seek to discuss that closing the Provo River during the spawn would eliminate this problem of trout -particularly large brown trout- becoming unhealthy often resulting in death.

Stories of the good old days from "Old timers" about fly fishing in the "old days", and catching more, and bigger fish has made anglers curios on how to bring this back. Knowing this, the natural thoughts of the anglers is to say, "Stop keeping/killing so many fish". Thus became the idea of catch and release only waters. Fisherman and biologists alike thought - and most still do- believe that the best way to bring back the big fish and up the catch rate is to reduce the amount of fish that are kept during the fishing season. When the Brown Trout spawn on the Provo River anglers are noticing that many fish are unhealthy and dying. Anglers noticing this are naturally blaming the dead and unhealthy fish on the stress of the spawn, and other anglers who are fishing for these already stressed, and unhealthy fish and causing even more stress. What anglers are overlooking is that the problem is starting much earlier than the spawn.

Although the idea of catch and release only waters has a lot of great features to it, there are other issues and situations that could result from this that anglers are overlooking. Any given river or lake has a limited amount of food, cover, and holding water that it can consistently produce and provide to the fish. With this in mind no river or lake can support a population of trout larger than the sufficient resources can support. The limited resources that a river can provide greatly affect the fish population, growth, and overall health of the trout population. When the trout population per given square mile of river exceeds the amount of resources that are available, the trout are put into a highly stressed life style. Shortened life span, poor growth rate, malnutrition, and death are the long-term effects when this happens.

Newly hatched trout and smaller trout that live through the tough early stage of their life during there first 6 months of life, will have a prolonged danger of being eaten by the larger fish who are in lack of nutrition due to over population and lack of other food sources, particularly insect life. Young trout will not be provided adequate food to grow productively thus lowering there yearly growth rate dramatically, that is if they survive the rigorous feeding of the larger trout trying to make up for the lack of insect life. Growth on the smaller fish -which are eating all of the insect life thus leaving none for the larger trout, forcing them to feed on the smaller, younger fish- is decreased so much that the overall growth of fish in the river is decreased considerably.

Trout in rivers have to locate "feeding zones" which allow for the amount of food that the fish has access to and eat vs. the amount of energy being put out to hold in the current to receive the food has to be equaled out. Trout having to put out more energy thus using more nutrition/food, to hold in stiff currents or constantly search for food will obviously have poor health and be extremely stressed. Growth rate drops considerably when this takes place witch results in small fish. Larger trout who require more food and have to use more energy to support they're larger body and in the currents to feed, ultimately are overstressed, malnutrition, and unhealthy, this results in the death of the larger fish, which the catch and release is geared towards increasing.

Biologists who have run tests, and fish counts on the Provo river have concluded that the population of fish in the river is higher than what the river can support. With this in mind it is indeed a high possibility that the unhealthy, and dead fish are a result of malnutrition and over stress. Biologist and local Division Wildlife officers have proposed to have anglers keep some fish out of the Provo River. Special regulations do apply because keeping and killing to many fish could be devastating. Fly fisherman who kept maybe one trout under 15" every three or four trips that they make to the Provo River would play a great part in increasing the overall fish population and definitely increase the amount of larger trout in the river. As stated above over population and too many fish in a river can be just as devastating as too little. Anglers who chose to keep a fish or two every once in awhile would help lower the overall fish population to a more suitable amount. Many who favor catch and release only will strongly disagree with this and say that this would cause terrible results, and I must admit that I too strongly practice catch and release, but upon speaking to many biologists about the problem being noticed this last fall during the spawn, I have come to the conclusion that a few anglers taking a few fish home every once in awhile would greatly improve the rivers trout population and allow for stronger, larger, and healthier fish population.

There is a limit to how many fish that a fisherman should keep and laws on the fish size that is being kept also plays a great role. Smaller trout -12"-15"- would be the ideal sizes that need to be removed. Fewer small trout would allow more feed for the larger trout and the younger trout allowing for a higher growth rate, and more food for the larger trout not forcing them to feed on the fingerling freshly hatching trout. Irresponsible, greedy, egotistical anglers who have to take home 8+ fish every time they go fishing just to prove to there buddy that they did catch these fish, is not what I am proposing at all. One or two fish for every angler that fishes the Provo could also be devastating. More reasonable would be one or two fish each trip for the angler that makes it to the river once or twice a month, and maybe one or two fish every other week for the anglers that fish the Provo River more regularly.

The Provo River receives high amount of pressure and many anglers. If every angler kept two fish every day this would indeed seem to eliminate the trout population and cause undesirable affects on the fish population. Followed as proposed above I think that leveling out the fish population vs. the amount of resources available to the fish is a high possibility and then anglers could go back to a more catch and release fishing style, witch I for one among plenty of others prefer. Once the leveling off was done Biologists and DWR could propose a new law to help keep the population at prime number. This would result in what anglers seek for catch and release. Healthier fish, Higher catch rate, bigger fish, and stronger hatch rates.

I fish the Provo River regularly and truly treasure all of its stretches. My most concern is to provide and keep this fishery as one of the finest blue ribbon waters in America. There is no place else in the country that an angler can drive 30 minutes to blue ribbon trout waters. Leveling off the population would allow for this river to remain a fine fishery and possibly improve it. Fly fisherman have worked hard together to make this water as great as it is and have helped maintain it by following unwritten laws of respecting the fish and there environment, and with the ideas mentioned above we can keep improving this river and make it the finest trout stream in the country.

Landon A. Potter landonut@hotmail.com

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