A blog about fishing in Utah. » Strawberry

A day at Strawberry with DNR

incaseyouhaventheard — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:23:11 +0000

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!

Strawberry 5/15/09

incaseyouhaventheard — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:02:00 +0000

On Friday I ventured to strawberry with my dad and uncle. We were hoping to find some fast fishing right after ice off but I think we were about a week too late. We saw several people float tubing in what I thought was water so could it could turn to ice any second. Our plan was to cast flies from shore behind a bubble. I caught a single cut throat trout about and hour in and it turned about to be the only fish we saw all day.

Doing my best to not get skunked.

The weather was windy in the morning for a few minutes, but then it stopped blowing and turned into a warm sunny day. Fishing season has officially started for me. You can expect updates after every trip, hopefully at least 2 updates a month.

Strawberry 10/31/08

incaseyouhaventheard — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 06:23:33 +0000

My dad and I made another trip up to Strawberry today hoping to catch a few more big cut throats, unfortuantely that didn’t happen, I cycled through all my usual flies without even a strike, Finally after tying my zonker on for the 3rd time I managed to hook into one. It was the only fish of the day.

Gill Netting at Strawberry

incaseyouhaventheard — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:57:46 +0000

I just got a an email with a bunch of pictures from my uncle Roger. He went up and volunteered with the DNR guys. He got to see a lot of nice cut throat trout, the kind that I would love to catch. Here are a few pictures.

Part of the gill netting process

2 26″ Cut Throat Trout

Rogers friend John working hard

More big fish

Strawberry 10/20/2008

incaseyouhaventheard — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:21:27 +0000

My dad and I headed up to Strawberry this morning in search of some big cut throat. We each caught a single fish. My dad’s tube was leaking air and we couldnt fix it so our day got cut short. We were both using red cyrstal killers. The fish were near the surface and in closer to shore. This is definitely the time of year to be up there!

Here is my dad holding up the fish I caught.

Strawberry Reservoir 9/22

incaseyouhaventheard — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:07:15 +0000

After our last few visits to the Uintas, my dad and I were ready to catch something big. If you live in Utah this time of year, then you know there is no better place to be then Strawberry Reservoir. The weather wasn’t looking as cooperative as we had hoped when we got up in the morning. When we arrived at the reservoir the water was already a lot choppier then we had hoped. I spent about 90 minutes on the water before I hooked up with my first fish. I didn’t ended up getting it to the net, but the next cast I managed to hook up again. Unfortunately I forgot my camera and also left my cell phone in the car so I couldn’t take any pictures. After that it started to get too windy for our float tubes, We decided to throw a few bugs from our spinning rods behind a bubble, but neither of us had any luck. We decided to call it a day and stop at the visitor center to check out the spawning Kokanee.