It's really up to anglers to halt disease in Utah fish

As Roger Wilson said, we all knew whirling disease would eventually be found in Strawberry Reservoir. It's not there yet, but it's creeping closer.

Wilson, now sports-fishing coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, was for years the project leader at Strawberry. No one knows that lake better than Wilson.

He said he never expected the disease to come down the pipeline but felt certain some unthinking angler would carry the parasite to the reservoir on his or her boots or in a patch of mud picked up at a contaminated site on the undercarriage or tire of a vehicle.

The parasite has been found just eight miles downstream from a pipeline that carries water indirectly to Strawberry.

There are, at last count, 32 disease hot spots in Utah. They range from Otter Creek to Jordanelle to the Logan River.

Signs are posted at these sites asking anglers and visitors to be aware and be diligent.

What is so concerning here is the whirling disease parasite is durable. It can survive anywhere, for a long, long time and can be carried any number of ways — by humans, birds, animals or in the water itself.

Which means a fisherman can pick up a glob of mud, with parasite attached, on his or her boots at Jordanelle and then drive to Strawberry, step to the shoreline and deposit the mud and parasite.

And no one, not even the fisherman, would know that this would be the start of something terrible.

What fishermen have to understand is that in the end, for every newly infected site, they are the eventual losers.

Bottom line is that whirling disease is directly responsible for fewer bites, thus fewer fish.

It doesn't take much for an individual to de-bug.

Simply clean up the equipment, thoroughly, and clean fish where they are caught. Oh, and don't transport live fish. First, it's illegal; and second, it's dumb.

What fishermen often don't realize is that the disease costs millions of dollars to clean up, especially when found in the state hatcheries.

To start with, hatchery raceways, once left in the open, must now be enclosed by pitched roofs and expensive siding to stop animals and birds, which can carry the parasites, from getting to the raceways.