The Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) recently put out some limit changes on fishing in some parts of the state. Conservation Outreach Manager, Aaron Bott stopped by Castle Country Radio to discuss the limit changes and the upcoming Youth Waterfowl Clinic.

“During a drought year like this year the water level gets low and also the water gets warm, and that’s not very favorable conditions for the fish. So these fish are going to be dying anyways so we increase the harvest rate or the fishing rate of how many fish can be taken by each person daily and that just to insure that those fish don’t go to waste,” explained Bott. There is one waterbody in our region that saw this increase and that is Monticello Lake in San Juan County.

We will not see an increase in our area because DWR took into consideration the drought like conditions we would face this year. “So here is Southeastern Utah we generally are drier than the rest of the state and because of that our biologists are pretty pro-active in deciding when they stock and when they don’t stock. So with the conditions being so dry they decided to stock few fish this year,” said Bott. Anglers still have been reporting great success all summer on the lakes around the Energy Loop.

There is an upcoming Youth Waterfowl Clinic taking place in September. “We don’t have a date yet but definitely the beginning of September we would like to host this annual event that we have where we teach the youth how to go waterfowl hunting. We typically have trap shooting, we have bird dogs that volunteers bring out, and we just kind of expose the youth to this fun recreational activity and we’re looking forward to that,” stated Bott. The annual event will be held at Desert Lake Waterfowl Management Area in Emery County. Further details will come as soon as officials have narrowed down the date.

To keep informed on DWR please visit their website at https://wildlife.utah.gov/ or their Facebook page.