(07-14-2023, 03:15 PM)Cowboypirate Wrote: Pat, I know in a past post you have shared a bit of perch history of DC. My bride asked me why it has never really returned to it perch heyday of days past. I mumbled some gibberish about bass and such but finally admitted I did not know but I would ask you and our fellow BFTs. Figured since your were just on the water your mind would be fresh with insite.
I am attaching a special writeup I put together on the "non-trout" species in Deer Creek...which includes both the perch and the smallies...their main nemesis. As usual, on most Utah waters, it boils down to the food chain thing.
In the distant past there were only rainbows, browns, largemouth and perch in Deer Creek. The perch were prolific and produced vast numbers of young each year. The rainbows did feed on the baby perch for a while but are mostly plankton and other invertebrate feeders in Deer Creek so they had little impact on the perch. The browns did feed a lot on young perch, but also had plenty of small planted rainbows (4 inchers) that were being planted at that time. They also ate crawdads and aquatic insects. Not a big factor in perch survival.
The largemouths also ate perch, but subsisted largely on the abundant (at that time) crawdads. Again, not a major factor in perch population maintenance.
The perch, on the other hand, were their own worst enemies... as well as their own best friends. They produced a lot of babies every year but those young were a major part of their food chain. Besides baby crawdads there was not much else for them to eat...except their own young. But wherever perch exist, they usually do a good job of sustaining their numbers through their own abundant spawning efforts.
Walleyes showed up in the late 70's. They also had some impact on the perch, but only to thin the herd and make for fewer but larger perch. No big problem.
Then, in the 1980s, DWR planted smallies in Deer Creek. The smallies took over a lot of largemouth habitat, ate up a lot of the crawdads and then decimated the perch. The larger smallies fed on perch up to 6" in length. But the worst predation was from the schools of young smallies that slurped up thousands of newly hatched perch each spring before they could grow to catchable size...or ever get large enough to spawn. That, combined with droughts...making for poor perch spawning conditions...dropped the perch numbers below the "tipping point"...at which they could reproduce enough to counter predation...from themselves and all the other predators. So now they are a minority species...after once being so numerous they were nuisances and were thrown up on the bank.