Exceptional Fish Yield in a Mid-Elevation Utah Trout Reservoir: Effects of Angling Regulations

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Great Basin Naturalist

Volume

56

Issue

1

Publisher

Brigham Young University

Publication Date

1996

Keywords

fish yield, mid-elevation, Utah, trout reservoir, effects, angling regulations

First Page

12

Last Page

21

Abstract

We used creel surveys to evaluate how a change from a 6-mon to a year-round fishing season affected the sport fish harvest in East Canyon Reservoir (Utah), a 277-ha mesoeutrophic system. Under the year-round season, fishing effort was 840 angler-h.ha-1.yr-1, and 360 trout ha-1 were captured. Catch rates were proportional to estimated trout densities in the reservoir, ranging from 1.06 during the winter ice fishery, to 0.18 fish angler-1.h-1 in July. Ninety-nine percent of fish harvested were rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus myskiss). Thirty-two percent of the 300,000 75-mm fingerling trout stocked annually were captured by anglers within 2.5 yr, but return rates varied with the strain and/or size of trout stocked. Annual fish yield was 102 kg/ha, among the highest yet reported for a temperate zone, lacustrine system. Extending fishing from a 6-mon season to year-round increased the number of fish captured and provided almost twice as many hours of recreational fishing in the reservoir. The harvest period was changed from traditional spring-summer months to primarily a winter-spring fishery because relatively few trout survived for more than 6 mon after reaching harvestable size. Although salmonid production in East Canyon Reservoir is very high, the fishery is in a precarious state because high primary productivity driven, in part, by cultural cutrophication, makes water quality suboptimal during midsummer.

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Originally published by Brigham Young University. Publisher's PDF available through remote link.

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