Wyoming > Ice Fishing Wyoming

Lake Trout forage in Lake DeSmet and Fees

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legend:
wgffishbio, thank you for your explanations.

Special:
What is the opinion on taking some of the perch in healy and transplanting them into desmit for forage???  Also would help beef up the perch population. There is plenty in healy to grab. Help both fisheries out???

slamber:

--- Quote from: Houligan on Jan 24, 2018, 09:38 PM ---DeSmet is not owned by the game and fish nor the department of parks and hysterical sites. Pretty sure you will not see a gate fee anytime soon. The funding comes from your licensing already. And remember they just increased license fees. If wanting to pay more for fishing "rights" send a donation to the game and fish. Please don't encourage the bilking of more funds out of the citizenship. All the more traffic DeSmet gets it would cost more in G&F salary to collect the monies and red tape to disperse the funds.

--- End quote ---

The operating and maintenance costs for DeSmet (the lake itself) are paid by Johnson County (68.27%) and Sasol (31.73%). The Mikesell-Potts recreation area, (inlcuding all of the campgrounds, beaches and boat ramps) is owned and operated by Johnson county. There used to be a ramp fee and there has been talk of requiring an access fee again. As a Johnson county resident I'm obviously in favor of asking other users to help pay for the maintenance; During a busy summer day there are more Sheridan and Campbell county vehicles than Johnson. Additionally, if a small fee was charged to use the Mikesell-Potts, they would be able to add some improvements to the lake, such as a fish cleaning station.

The Monument recreation area is actually owned by the Game and Fish; so your license fees do pay for that access area.

From what I can tell there are plenty of perch in the lake; the issue is that there is a shortage of suitable habitat to help the existing population grow. Before the level was raised to its current level, there was a great perch fishery in DeSmet. However, all of the suitable perch habitat is now too deep to be usable. If they continue to drop in habitat every year that will be a big help.

Houligan:
With all due respect, the funding I was speaking of is for stocking not maintenance of the grounds. Proposed gate fees will have absolutely zero impact on stocking costs. If 100% of the maintenance cost being covered why charge visitors more money that may or may not have an actual impact on budgeting?

Questions that come up:
Where are the statistics that show the number of visitors from another county are higher then local visitors?
What are the estimated numbers of visitors per year to the lake?
What is the cost for daily collection of fees and accounting?
What will the added cost of maintenance of a fish cleaning station be and can these fees cover it long term?

My concerns are seeing this or any improvement counting on the funding coming from additional fees paid by visitors just to fall short due to attendance or the profitability not being there in the first place. Then once again sportsman will be the ones taxed for the shortcomings or threatened they will loose something if they're not willing to cough up more. It happens all to often. Don't get me wrong I'm not against the idea. What I am against is irresponsible spending/waste and programs that do not have clear long term budgeting set in place that sportsman pay for. Sportsman usually end up carrying the full bag when it falls short.   

POk3s:
Not to add more smoke, fire, and craziness to this post (although I can't top cutthroat shortages causing elk calf deaths) but where does the madness stop!?

The only experience I have with Lake Desmet is driving past it. However, you guys are talking about whether or not a stocked (and non-native species) rainbow trout is more worth it as a forage or as a sport. The answer is to stock more non native baitfish as a forage base to keep the non native lake trout (that evidently nobody thought would ever make it down stream) from foraging on the non native rainbows.....

And then to help there be more non native rainbows, add a fee...... do I have that right?

What I'm getting at is, when this state got stocked with all these fish in the first place, it was all for recreation, or at least that's how it looks to me, and that is perfectly fine. But why are we so mad at one non native species of trout but so generous to the other? What difference does it make?? Manage it for the health of the fishery, to make the most out of the recreation. Why make it this difficult?

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