DWR official is the authority on Lake Powell

PAGE, Ariz. — When Wayne Gustaveson speaks, rooms grow silent, eyes and ears turn and pencils and paper come out.

"Good fishing is ... ," he starts out. From there he pinpoints, with the accuracy of a computer, specific bays and cliffs and rocky points where fishermen can catch fish along the 1,200 miles of rocky shoreline of Lake Powell.

He has, over the past 30 years of directing fishing operations for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, learned all the little habits and characteristic and quirks of this lake.

He's been everywhere and seen everything, and in many cases carries the burden of responsibility. He's seen its fishing evolution go from largemouth bass to crappie to striped bass to smallmouth bass, each, at its appointed time, rising to notoriety.

He remembers, for example, with some hesitation, the years between 1985 and 1990, "When we saw for the first time striped bass starving because of overpopulation. They had no food. That was a low point for me. There was nothing I could do. I tried to introduce a new forage fish, but I couldn't overcome all of the politics involved.

"So, I realized if I couldn't feed 'em, the only thing I could do was reduce their numbers."

He accomplished this in a rather unique way — he enlisted the help of fishermen with the promise of more and better fishing.

"I went to the anglers for help in keeping the stripers in check. I asked the wildlife board to increase the limit, and someone suggested eliminating the limit altogether on striped bass and allow fishermen to keep all they could catch. It made sense. Since then we have not had another die-off," he said.

And fishermen have been able to catch and keep all the striped bass their skills and tired arms would allow.

"We're facing a similar situation now with the smallmouth bass," he continued. "They were so numerous in 2000 we raised the limit to 20. It's not that 20 is a magic number, but it sent a message to fishermen that it was OK to keep fish. Keeping fish wasn't going to hurt the fishing. Up to that point they felt they had to release fish. The limit could have been 20 or 50, the message was the same — it's all right to keep fish."

After graduating with his master's degree from college, Gustaveson had two job options here in Utah — take a desk job or live in Page, Ariz., and have Lake Powell as his back yard.

"It wasn't a hard decision. I wasn't ready for an office job. I wanted to be in the field," he said.