DWR aquatics chief has a clear vision

It wasn't easy, stepping in as head of a department razed by retirement.

Walt Donaldson, aquatics chief for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, was not new to Utah fishing, however, nor its problems, nor inner-agency procedures.

He was a fish biologist before he was regional supervisor out of Vernal before he became aquatics chief.

Nor was he without a vision: Better fishing for one and all.

"When I went around the state, listening to people, the one reoccurring message was that people simply want to be able to catch fish. Nothing fancy, they just want to go out, either by themselves or with their family, friends or grandkids, and be able to catch fish," he said from his Salt Lake office.

"We need to get back to the basics and really look at what we can do to provide better fishing."

What the DWR can and is doing is providing more fishing opportunities and more fish.

"Several of our hatcheries are back online now.

"We will have planted more than 900,000 pounds of fish this year, which is 100,000 more than last year. That's significant.

"We're also putting more emphasis on our urban fisheries. This has been a very successful program for us. We have communities coming to us now and asking us to look at available ponds. We tell them we'd be happy to manage the ponds but will need a little help, and they're stepping forward."

His No. 1 priority when he took over the position last spring was to increase license sales. The number of fishing licenses sold dropped significantly in 2005.

Reasons range from the extended drought to the closing of fish hatcheries because of whirling disease, which resulted in a reduction in the number of fish being planted, to outside competition from other activities.

"License sales are up. That's encouraging," he said. "We can't do anything about droughts, but we could do something with our hatcheries — and we did.

"We also went to the 365-day license. That helped. And, we did a better job telling people what opportunities are out there."

Now, a fishing license is good for 365 days from the day it is purchased. It used to be that the license was good from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31.