FONTENELLE RESERVOIR – At 6:22 a.m., one of the top of the pole at the feet of four Farson friends began to shake.
“Hey, hey, Kody, Kody, Kody,” said Jess Gutierrez Renteria to his buddy. “I have a bite, buddy.”
Then everything was quiet except for the hum of a propane heater. A burbot had nibbled, but experience told Kody Wagner to wait before jerking his rod to try to stick the jig head’s hook through the fish’s sturdy snout.
Twenty seconds later he ticked the box. Nothing. A series of sighs.
“Drop it,” Renteria trained. “Drop it, drop it.”
Kody Wagner’s underwater lesson, along with a small glow stick, sailed back to the bottom.
In a few moments he felt that the ling had hooked. When the realization set in, he shouted: “He has it!” and “$% & @ yeah!” rang out from the Ice Cap Fontenelle Reservoir.
A few turns of the reel later, a 14-inch serpentine-looking creature was lifted out of the hole.
“Nice work, Bud,” said Renteria. “I didn’t think he was there.”
The excitement for the excitement of catching a money fish was fueled. Not necessarily a big burbot. Literal money. Three of the thousands of burbots that swam in the impoundment of the Green River on Sunday, February 21, were embedded with internal transmitter chips valued at $ 2,000, $ 5,000, and $ 10,000. The tags – similar to the ID chips stuck under your dog’s skin – were found in the fish courtesy of La Barge Ding-the-Ling, an annual burbot ice fishing tournament at Fontenelle Reservoir. The must-kill competitive competition is also welcomed by fishery managers who document the creep of the alien cod-like fish higher and higher into the Green River’s watershed.
“It’s all for protection, this whole derby,” said Sadie Snively, one of the organizers, hours later at the tournament headquarters outside La Barge’s SOS Well Services.
As with many outdoor opportunities during the COVID-19 era, there was great interest in the derby again this year, with around 100 teams and more than 250 people participating. Although most of the locals were from western Wyoming, anglers ventured as far as California, North Dakota, and Alaska. A few weekends ago they hooked, killed and harvested almost 1,400 tadpoles together over three days.
This is a rift in a fish population that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department didn’t want at all.
“Part of the problem with burbot is that they can eat a fish that is half the size of them,” said Robert Keith, the agency’s regional fisheries chief in Green River. “They are really efficient predators.”
While speaking of the tournament catch control station, Keith was handling a 2 foot ling and pointing out the tuberous head and broad shoulders of the animal – easily the widest part of the fish. Lota lota, also known as Eelpout, comes from the Missouri River watershed, which includes parts of Wyoming such as the Bighorn and Wind River Basins. The populations are vulnerable to fishing pressure and pollution and are considered to be “the most needy of conservation species” due to their native range in the Equality State.
But elsewhere they are undesirable, environmentally harmful and unfortunately thrive. Sometime in the 1990s, someone illegally dragged burbot across the watershed and placed enough of it in the Green River’s watershed for them to reproduce. This introduction appears to have been methodical, based on Ling sites above full barriers such as the Fontenelle and Big Sandy dams.
In the absence of natural predators, the ling used a suitable habitat and fanned out. The burbot hit the crab populations particularly hard and caused another non-native fish species, the black bass, to crash. In the Big Sandy River above the reservoir, they also eat native bluehead and flannel-mouth suckers that no longer exist.
“Burbot eats the dung out of them,” said fisheries biologist Pete Cavalli.
The plight of the suckers – too often in ling’s stomach – was worrying enough that game and fish added a barrier to the Big Sandy inflow to keep the alien predator from pulsing upstream.
But by and large, in the Green River Basin, it is impossible to control the whereabouts of the burbot and difficult to contain the density. They are upstream of Daniel in the Green River, and thrust as high into the New Fork watershed as the East Fork River.
“There may be some distractions that may slow them down,” Cavalli said, “but I don’t think there is any way to stop them.”
Fast water, he said, is the only environmental factor that appears to be limiting the burbot, which spawns best in cold water and under the ice in cold winters. But the slopes don’t seem big enough to keep ling from invading places like the Green River Lakes.
With this hand, Game and Fish adjusted their fishing regulations in 2014 so that every burbot that has landed in the Green River watershed must be killed.
The agency also helped orchestrate the tournaments with names indicating the fatal outcome for the fish: In addition to Ding-the-Ling from Fontenelle Reservoir, there is Burbot Bash from Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Around 50,000 ling have been killed at this event and other tournaments in the Flaming Gorge so far, Keith said. It is unclear how much this affected the population, although there are some signs of an ecological boom.
“More in the gorge than up here, but we’re seeing the crabs come back,” said Keith. “The numbers have also fallen and have stabilized.”
One silver lining of the invasion was the anglers’ interest in the firm, white meat of the ling – often compared to the “poor man’s lobster”. The enthusiasm could be seen on Fontenelle.
Part of the mystique of burbot fishing is that they bite best at night. This behavioral tendency kept fishermen like the Farson Foursome and Evanston residents Justin Parks and Clayton and Drew Firth on the ice for three days – with the lines wet around the clock. Fishing and the elements have not always been easy.
“Even after the sun went down, I bet the wind was blowing 40 mph yesterday,” said Clayton Firth.
His father Drew cut in, “It’s just white, and your holes are drifting shut in about 15 minutes.”
Despite all these efforts, they walked away with a 10 ling catch. Still, they had fun – and plan to be back.
Other teams were much better off. The high number of catches for a team went to Hook’em and Kill’em with 119 tadpoles. The 81 fish catch by the Burbot Ling Slinger took second place, followed by the 78 ling catch by the creatively named “Fisherman” team.
None of the tagged fish caught during the weekend tournament registered digits that yielded one of the four- or five-digit pots, but the longest ling caught also earned some prize money. Top was Tim Ellis’ 31.8-inch burbot, followed by Seth Trafton’s 31.1-inch. In the youth division, Kevin Matthaei took first place with a 30.5-inch burbot; Parker Key’s 26.7-inch catch took second place.
While the four Farson’s friends’ 18 ling weren’t making them profit, they were having a hell of a good time. The News & Guide found them in the dark on the ice, investigating expletively laden screams that led far and indicated a fight. It turned out that the only fight was with the fish.
“When we run out of the tent, it’s like a bunch of elephants,” said Renteria. “If we heard a bell and someone stood at the front door and we didn’t know, they would be trampled.”
At 4:30 a.m., the crew was awakened by the sound of bells that rang as one of their 24 lines connected. A ling that was hooked swung too far, crossing additional lines, and digging the bells from several adjacent poles.
While this sounds like a mess, to Kody Wagner’s ears ringing the bells is more like childhood bliss.
“It’s like when you’re 10 years old,” he said. “You wake up and have several fish out there. It’s like Christmas. “
As the finish point of the ding-the-ling neared on Sunday morning 2021, the four friends of Farson-Eden High School began planning breakfast. As the sun shone higher, they faced the long process of dismantling the camp and dividing up the equipment.
By next year everything was fished.
“I think this is time, guys,” yelled Wagner. “Yeah. 7am Reel ’em up.”
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