Utah DWR works to help Bonneville cutthroat trout thrive despite late-season snowpack

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SEVIER, Sevier County — In an effort for the Bonneville cutthroat trout to continue to thrive in Utah water bodies and help improve fishing, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources is launching into their annual quest to help the fish reproduce and distribute around the state.

Despite previously being limited to a handful of streams, Utah’s Bonneville cutthroat trout populations now inhabit some 2,500 miles of running water in Utah and other western states, according to a Utah Division of Wildlife Resources news release. The organization’s biologists would like to keep these populations thriving, so this summer they are trapping some fish in order to distribute their young into more Utah fisheries.

“In Manning Meadow Reservoir, we have a population of native Bonneville cutthroat trout,” said Mike Hadley, with the Division of Wildlife Resources. “Every year when they are getting ready to spawn, we set up a fish trap in the tributary of that reservoir and we capture the fish as they are running up the stream to spawn. Once we have enough fish, we go in there and collect eggs from females and fertilize them with the males, and then transport those eggs to a hatchery.”

Those eggs are hatched and the fish are raised up to about two inches in the fall, Hadley said. Then they are stocked all over southern Utah. He added that their efforts are both to help restore fish to their native ranges as well as to increase the amount of fishable Bonneville cutthroat trout in Utah water bodies.

“In a lot of the places where we have to stock them annually it is more for sport fishing purposes, just because in most lakes where we stock these fish (if they don’t have a really good inlet stream) they don’t reproduce on their own in the lake itself,” Hadley said. “We have to stock them annually, and that’s the same for just about every trout species we stock, whether they are native or nonnative. In some circumstances we are trying to help restore these fish to their native ranges, which is usually in specific streams.”

Despite this being a yearly effort, biologists are facing extra challenges this year as they find themselves pressed for time.

“The main challenge we are facing is that we had such a heavy snowpack, and then a late snowmelt,” Hadley said. “Basically, our timing is backed up from what it normally is.”

They ordinarily have all the work done in early June, and they are only just starting the process now in late June. “The fish’s timing is later as well,” he added, “Because when they spawn is triggered by the ice coming off the lake, water temperature increasing and things like that.”

Nonetheless, Hadley believes they will still get everything done in time and is looking forward to seeing the Bonneville cutthroat trout thrive this year.