You might remember an entry from last year where I posted some pictures my uncle took after he volunteered to help the Utah DNR guys with their fall gill netting survery. This year I got a chance to go and help out with the spring survey. I want to say thanks to all the guys that work hard to make Strawberry the great place we all love to fish. They were more than willing to answer all of our questions and let us be involved in every step of the process. I’m going to post these pictures in chronological order to give you an idea of how the day was spent.
As soon as the boats pulled in they unloaded these buckets containing the nets, which contained the fish.
Next we strung out the nets, and started untangling the fish.
You can see how some of the fish can really get tangled in the net.
Everybody took a chance to pose with this monster cut throat. 26 inches, 7+ pounds. They caught him in the net that was 55 feet deep.
Next we started collecting information about the fish, including weight and length, where they were caught (location and depth)
The fish are then dissected. Their stomachs are opened to see what they were eating. One of the bigger cutthroats had eaten a small rainbow, We also saw lots of crayfish and beetles, but the overwhelming food of choice for the cutthroats this time of year is midge pupa. This is why they are so much harder to catch in spring. The fishes organs are also checked. The DNR guys have a code for everything so I was not able to understand everything they looked for, but the whole process was very impressive.
Not wanting to waste such quality fish, we filleted them…
And then ate lunch!
Filed under: Strawberry | Tagged: Chubs, Cut Throat Trout, Gill Netting, Kokanee Salmon, Rainbow Trout, Strawberry, Strawberry Reservoir
