Monday, August 5, 2013

The Cisco Carp are having a great summer.  Countless kids and their parents come down the gangplank carrying bags of stales bread, cookies, chips and quarters for food.  Before long they are laying on the docks feeding and trying to touch the carp who are greedily slurping up everything that hits the water.  They thrash around like piranhas chasing the food all to the delight of the audience.  Apparently things are so good that they have attracted another species of fish to Cisco's Landing.  I saw a few last year but now they are plentiful.  They get up to about eight inches and are commonly mistaken for little carp.  Actually, the lake is too cold and has limited habitat for carp to spawn so they do not reproduce.  They are in the same family, minnows, and they are Gila atraria or Utah chub.  Utah chub have a very bad reputation for taking over fisheries because the can out compete rainbow trout for food.  During my career as a biologist I killed millions of chubs around the state with Rotenone.  It is a different story in Bear Lake.  They are native to the lake and have evolved with Bear Lake cutthroat trout who love to eat them.  Because of this predator their population is limited and the only safe haven is in the marina.  Enjoy it now "chubs", because when the water cools down the cutthroat will come into the marina and there will be plenty of food for them at Cisco's.