Hunter Dave,
Loved your comment about the North Ram. The first year it went to C&R the creel census gal registered 8 fish for all summer. That's what 5/day gets you on a stream that can't support it.
And spend a day looking around @ all the lakes in your area and see if people are actually using them. In the Rocky area, they vote with their feet and only show up in any numbers @ the 3 lakes where they can possibly catch a larger fish.
Which this means of course, that the other lakes are under utilized. I don't spend all day driving around but have taken the time to see how the lakes were being used. The C&R lakes saw a lot of folks there, the kill lakes few to sometimes nobody @ all. From the vote on this forum, that about reflects what shows up on the ground.
There are 3 measurements that should be considered when assessing utilization rates:
* total numbers of anglers.
* total numbers of anglers/surface area - ya' can't compare Lake Superior>Muir
* total numbers of anglers/total numbers of fish stocked over the past 4 years - will get you some right interesting #'s.
Both C&R Lakes in the Rocky area run about 800 fish/angler.
Mitchell Lake which is kill and has browns in it to 17" runs about 3500 fish/angler
Struble lLake which has a 5 limit runs about 75,000 fish/angler mostly cause it full of tiny fish.
And I'll stand by the 2 lakes that are Quality. Just calling them Quality is BS. They have to demonstrate that they are a Quality fishery. So far, we have had 3 in the Rocky area that might have got to or retained Quality standards. Whoops, the ball got dropped and 2 of the 3 are now toast.
Don
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