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GOAL AND OBJECTIVES <br />Study Goal <br />This study was designed to obtain an estimate of the rate of escapement of walleye and <br />smallmouth bass from the spillway and outlet works of Starvation Reservoir and to bring <br />together recent data and literature on fish populations in the Duchesne and Strawberry rivers <br />adjacent to Starvation Reservoir, in an effort to aid in the evaluation of impacts to native, <br />endangered fishes. <br />Objectives <br />1. Review and synthesize available data and reports on smallmouth bass populations <br />and other fish species of the Duchesne River adjacent to Starvation Reservoir. <br />2. Complete an initial draining of the outlet basin prior to the irrigation season. <br />Theoretically, an effective initial draining would allow crews to clear the stilling <br />basin of all fish so that the only fish present during the next draining, the evaluation <br />draining, were those that escaped from the reservoir during releases. This is not <br />exactly true in this case as the outlet basin was not blocked off from the river, thus <br />fish were able to move freely back and forth between the outlet basin and the river. <br />3. Complete an initial draining of the spillway basin prior to a spill. Again, this was <br />done to clear the spillway basin of fish prior to a spill so that the evaluation draining <br />would turn up only those fish that escaped over the spillway during a spill. While the <br />spillway basin was blocked from the river with a mesh block for the entire study, this <br />initial clearing proved difficult due to the spawning of fish in the stilling basin. <br />4. Complete an evaluation draining of the spillway basin following a spill. Because all <br />fish would theoretically have been cleared out of the spillway basin during the initial <br />3 <br />