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Great Saltwater Fowling
Utah's Farmington Bay WMA is home to thousands of ducks.
By M.D. Johnson
Utah's Great Salt Lake--an experience all waterfowlers should rank high on their list--is home to the 18,000-acre Farmington Bay Wildlife Management Area. Three main units comprise Farmington Bay, any one of which holds promise for an outstanding waterfowling experience.
Once You're There
Formerly stationed at Ogden Bay WMA to the north, Rich Hansen has overseen operations at Farmington Bay for the past five years.
"There are Units 1 and 2," said Hansen, "and the Turpin Unit. They're big units, where boats can be used. Often, hunters will take boats in and then walk to smaller potholes. We do have a lot of ambitious people around here who don't mind riding a [mountain] bike four or five miles along the dikes and then heading into the marsh. There's a lot of area out here; in fact, you can walk two miles from one parking area before you hit the Great Salt Lake, and it's all emergent vegetation marsh."
With metropolitan areas like Ogden and Salt Lake City nearby, it makes sense that Farmington Bay does attract quite a bit of attention.
"The amount of hunting pressure we get would blow your mind," said Hansen. "Opening day, we'll average 730 vehicles on the area and anywhere from 1,500 to 2,200 hunters. Yes, the pressure is high, but we still keep producing birds."
Information:
Season: Early October through the third week of January; typically a 107-day season. Daily bag in ’07 was seven birds.
License: Nonresident annual, $65; nonresident small game three-day, $25. Federal Migratory Waterfowl Stamp, $15, required.
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources: 1594 W. North Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84116; (801) 538-4700; wildlife.utah.gov
Farmington Bay WMA Manager: 515 E. 5300 South, Ogden, UT 84405; (801) 451-7386
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There are places where you can get away from people. "You have to work hard at it--I see more and more ambitious people taking advantage of those places, but Farmington Bay produces a lot of birds. In fact, we produce probably as many birds as all the other waterfowl management areas in the state combined," said Hansen.
Greenwing teal lead the harvest at Farmington Bay, followed by mallards, gadwall and northern shovelers. For the diver fanatic, there are plenty of canvasbacks, redheads, bufflehead and ruddies.
Tundra swans, too, are a possibility, with 3,000 to 3,500 hopefuls vying for one of the 2,000 annual swan permits. "December is a good time for swans," said Hansen, "and I'm seeing more people target them specifically, setting out two to twenty-four swan decoys."
Access Options
If small duck boats--Aquapods, Marsh Rats, Four Rivers and the like--are your gig, Hansen suggests focusing on Unit 2, which lies south of Unit 1 and east of the Turpin Unit.
"Unit 2 is the ideal place for those types of boats," said Hansen, "because while there is a boat launch there, it's an unimproved launch and not too many big boats can use it. I manage it that way, so walk-ins or small boats can have a place to hunt where they're not getting run over."
Airboats cannot operate within the dikes at Farmington Bay. However, Hansen says that with more than seven miles of Great Salt Lake shoreline, there's plenty of room "out front." A launch facility is located on the area proper, but as Hansen says, "airboaters have to run west from there."
Hansen has one word of advice and one of warning: "A stiff south wind can make for phenomenal duck hunting," he said, "and the deepest water is right off the dikes." Watch that first step.
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