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SCOFIELD, Carbon County — State wildlife officials, volunteers and avid anglers spent Thursday morning pulling fish from nets at Scofield Reservoir as part of a seasonal gill netting survey.
"It gets your hands all fishy," said Angela Kenison, a seasonal employee with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
Biologists are working to cut the invasive Utah chub population and decrease the number of large cutthroat trout at Scofield Reservoir, according to Justin Hart, an aquatic program manager with the division.
“We’re going to reduce the number of cutthroat we’re stocking, and we’re going to try and stock a much larger tiger trout,” Hart said. “Hopefully we’ll get better survival rates because they were an important predator in here at one time, but they’ve seemed to kind of become scarce.”
Gill netting helps biologists gauge and study fish in a specific region. Nets are dropped into the water for 24 hours, and fish swimming by are caught in the mesh.
The next day, volunteers pull up the nets, untangle fish and sort them into bins. Biologists then examine the catch.
"It’s always fun to pull the net up. You never know what’s going to be in it," Hart said.
Biologists analyze the length, weight and size of all the fish caught, though they are specifically looking at Utah chub and rainbow, cutthroat and tiger trout.
"We’ll know more accurately what’s in the water so we can better manage the fish," said Calvin Black, an aquatic biologist with the Division of Wildlife Resources. "We’re putting a lot of effort into surveying at all of our lakes."
Scofield Reservoir traditionally has been a family-friendly rainbow trout fishing spot. Now, the rainbow trout are almost eradicated due to the Utah chub, which compete for the same food, Black said.
Local fishermen at Thursday's gill netting said they don't fish at Scofield Reservoir often because of the lack of trout.
"I’m just coming up here today to see what the samplings are and see if it’s worth coming up here fishing anymore," said Gary Blake, an avid angler and insurance accountant.
Paul Huntington has been volunteering at the gill nettings for two years.
"I love fishing," Huntington said. "I like to see what fish there are. I used to come up here quite a bit, but it’s not been really good fishing for a while."
If larger trout survive the gill netting and measuring, they are returned to the water. If not, the fish are given away to the volunteers.
