Bait no help to Provo

The request was, please, don't be hasty, but wait and see. Well, I've waited, I've seen and now I believe removing the two-mile section of the Middle Provo from the Blue Ribbon fishing registry is a bigger mistake now than when first proposed.

The request for the change came as an urgent need to thin an overpopulation of fish. I would say, now, it's a forgotten section of river getting no pressure and no relief.

Open this Blue Ribbon section of river, said Donald Wiley, Central Region fisheries manager for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, who drafted and then pushed hard for the change, and bait anglers would flock to the banks to catch and keep their limits and save the river.

This, he insisted, would lift the river from mediocrity . . . and everyone would fish happily ever after — the end.

Not quite. The hordes of anglers he said would come haven't, which means fish are not being caught and kept. And, it would appear, Wiley has abandoned the project in favor of better fishing opportunities elsewhere.

Fly fishing groups fought strongly against the change. The biology, the recommendations and the conclusions were all wrong. It's a section suited for fly fishermen, but is hostile to bait fishermen. And who should know better than those who regularly fish the river.

Three months back I made several check and found almost no pressure. In a dozen stops along the river over the past two months, I found all of the pressure, as fly fishermen predicted, has been confined to about 1 percent of the open stretch. There were a couple of weekends when there was not a fishermen in sight, as was the case last Sunday.

I drove to nearby Deer Creek and Jordanelle, where there were fishermen lining the shores, and asked if being able to fish waters once reserved for fly fishermen was enticing. Few even knew it was open to bait and none really cared. Not one said they were willing to pull up rod holders and move.

Red flags popped up like wildflowers in the spring when I talked to Wiley after my first checks. He didn't know if bait fishermen were showing up, if fish were being caught and kept, nor did it appear if he cared. He was concentrating on the Lower Provo, he said, where they were catching fish. Translation: Don't waste my time on rivers where they're not catching fish.