Grand Junction Daily Sentinel: "A two-step program is needed to get local anglers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to stop fighting about the controversial removal of smallmouth bass and other non-native fish from the Colorado River. The removal program is part of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program and is reducing competition and predation on native fish by exotic species, in this case smallmouth bass. Anglers aren't happy about losing a potential fishing opportunity and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and by extension the Colorado Division of Wildlife, doesn't appear interested in involving anglers in the project. But the project isn't going to stop, no matter how often a small handful of anglers revert to diatribes, inane disquisitions and personal attacks on Service and DOW employees who merely are doing their assigned jobs. We're not sure if there is a viable smallmouth sportfishery on the Colorado, but the feds don't help by acting as if it's a secret where the smallmouth are.
"Because the recovery program doesn't allow smallmouth bass to be re-stocked in the Grand Valley, any smallmouth caught are killed and then tested by a DOW researcher looking for specific isotope in an attempt to trace the fish's origins, said Pat Nelson, non-native fish removal coordinator from the Fish and Wildlife Service. The theory is that if you know what pond or ponds the fish are coming from, you can put stop the fish from escaping by putting a net across the opening or simply poisoning the fish before they escape. While the poison route is the least-expensive path and the one often followed by the DOW and the feds in recent years, it's ineffective if the ponds are fed by irrigation return ditches, which are chock full of catfish, suckers, and yes, bass. Poison a pond and the minute the water comes on, the fish are back."
Category: Colorado Water
6:25:46 AM 
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