Scouten is an avid Utah Lake angler who has been carefully cleaning and cooking his channel catfish for several years because of suspicions that the fish contain polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs.

The Utah Departments of Health, Natural Resources and Environmental Quality issued an advisory, which will be posted at access points to Utah Lake, warning anglers about PCBs, which are mixtures of up to 209 individual chlorinated compounds that are oil liquids or solids consisting of man-made chemicals not naturally found in the environment.

The advisory recommends that consumption of carp and channel catfish be limited to one 4-ounce meal per month for adults, and that children, pregnant women and women who can become pregnant avoid eating those fish from Utah Lake.

In addition, offal - all tissue except the fillet - of Utah Lake fish, such as black bullhead, channel catfish, common carp, walleye and white bass should not be consumed.

Christina McNaughton, health hazard assessment manager and toxicologist for the Utah Department of Health, said that anglers could eat fillets from black bullheads, white bass and walleye caught in the lake with little concern about PCBs.

"We're not seeing the PCBs elevated in these species because they are not bottom feeders," she said. "Channel cats and carp feed on the bottom sediments."

PCBs are found in the sediments at the bottom of Utah Lake and have no effect on water quality. That means swimming, boating or using irrigation water from Utah Lake should have no ill effects on humans.

The state agencies emphasized that any health risks associated with eating carp and channel catfish from Utah Lake are based on long-term consumption and are not tied to eating fish occasionally.

Scouten has worried about PCBs for years and the new findings just confirm what he suspected - especially in the bigger and older Utah Lake channel catfish, which are oily. PCBs concentrate in those oily areas.

"The method of preparation can negate part of the problem," he said. "When I filet a catfish, I cut out the sensory tissue along the lateral line under the skin. Then I use a high heat system of cooking. I do some heavy frying in peanut oil to extract even more of the oils. My personal theory is that younger and smaller catfish are not as potentially toxic as some of the 10- to 15-pounders people catch."

Scouten has fished Utah Lake since the 1960s, when many of the fish caught smelled strongly of creosote that came from the old Geneva Steel Plant.

Scouten does not eat many catfish caught at Utah Lake, instead preferring to consume channel cats he catches at cleaner Willard Bay that are in the 15- to 17-inch range. The angler, whose personal record channel catfish from Utah Lake is 24 pounds, said he seldom keeps any fish over 6 pounds because of concerns about PCBs and because the bigger fish just don't taste as good.

"Everything that wasn't needed was dumped into Utah Lake over the decades," he said. "That includes agricultural and industrial runoff and waste from municipalities . . .. The residues would scare you if you did core samples. Some of the stuff there will be with us forever."

The state agencies said information about how to prepare fish can be found at the Web site www.epa.gov/waterscience/fish/30cwafish.pdf and information about the advisory and health effects of PCBs is available at www.fishadvisories.utah.gov.

Meanwhile, the state has modified its mercury advisory for hunters on eating northern shovelers, common goldeneyes and cinnamon teal they might kill during the upcoming waterfowl season. Now, the agencies said, the three duck species can be eaten on a limited basis.

According to Division of Wildlife Resources spokesman Mark Hadley, the do-not-eat advisory was changed after biologists collected ducks from hunters during the 2005-2006 season.

"These ducks were collected in the fall, which is the time of year when ducks are being shot and eaten," according to Hadley. "The ducks collected in the fall had less mercury in them than the ducks biologists had collected earlier that spring."

For consumption advisories on the three ducks, log on to www.waterfowladvisories.

utah.gov.

wharton@sltrib.com