Brook Trout [Salvelinus fontinalis] are found in most of the lakes, beaverponds and streams on Boulder Mountain and the Aquarius Plateau

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Brook trout

Brook Trout [Salvelinus fontinalis] are found in most of the lakes, beaver ponds and streams on Boulder Mountain and the Aquarius Plateau. They are not native to Utah but have been stocked in cold water fisheries throughout much of the state for many decades. Brook trout were first introduced to Utah and most of the western United States in the early part of the twentieth century. The Utah Division Of Wildlife Resources [UDWR] then known as the Utah Fish & Game began stocking brook trout on the Boulder Mountain as early as 1945.

Only a few lakes in the area were accessible by vehicle in those days. So, most stocking was done the old fashioned way. Dedicated wildlife officers along with local ranchers would load milk cans containing fingerling brook trout as well as cutthroat trout onto pack saddles. Burlap sacks were tied over the open tops of the milk cans to enable the precious cargo to breathe without being sloshed out on the rough trails. This arduous task of loading pack saddles with milk cans and climbing the rugged slopes of Boulder Mountain was carried out many times over the years until all of the remote lakes and beaver ponds able to sustain trout were stocked. This continued to be the preferred method of stocking trout into these backcountry waters until 1956, when the UDWR discovered a new and more efficient way of stocking trout.

The brook trout fishery as a whole on Boulder Mountain is not what it was several decades ago. This is due in part to a decline in the number of beaver ponds and also a decline in the number of enhanced lakes and reservoirs. Many beaver ponds and man made reservoirs that were once prime fisheries have been breached and rendered useless by the Forest Service and the UDWR. To date, most of the beaver ponds on the Boulder Mountain that were first stocked with brook trout by UDWR and the subsequent fisheries that resulted from stocking these beaver ponds have been destroyed. For those old beaver ponds that still remain, and continue to hold enough water to sustain trout, and that number is shrinking, the future remains uncertain.

There are still many natural, small remote lakes and a few old dilapidated beaver ponds that still hold very fine, trophy quality brookies. The fact that these waters are little known or hidden from most anglers is not the only reason they continue to flourish. The main reasons for their success as brook trout fisheries is the fact that they still hold sufficient water, which by the way is a crucial component for trophy quality brook trout to flourish. Brook trout subsist on a varied diet in the lakes and ponds of the Boulder Mountain. Brookies will take advantage of any and all available natural food sources as the opportunities are presented to them. They are not shy of small swimming rodents like shrews or mice. Fledgling birds falling from overhanging tree branches are certainly eaten by them. Salamanders are very high on the list of brook trout food preference. Frogs and water snakes are found wherever brookies are found, and these are surely eaten as well. The rest of their feeding activity is concentrated on the regular cycle of insect hatches that occur daily at these waters. While caddis hatches are usually very sparse at these high elevations, the evidence of their existence here is right in front of you as you stand on the shoreline. Just look down at the submerged rocks at your feet. Caddis cases literally cover these rocks. Damselflies are always present during the summer months and hatches can be very heavy. Dragonflies are also flying about all season long. Mayflies such as calibaetis are hatching regularly. Midge hatches can be so intense that they form midge clouds on many waters here! The midges on the Boulder Mountain are not the biting type. Scuds are so thick in virtually every lake and pond on the Boulder Mountain that you might wonder if scuds are all these trout eat! The density of scuds could explain why there are also such large numbers of salamanders in these waters. The girth of these brookies could be attributed to a steady diet of both scuds and salamanders!

Anglers harvest enough of the brook trout in these small lakes and beaver ponds to keep their numbers in check. Any small lake or beaver pond where brook trout have shown a tendency to propagate easily and overpopulate their environ should be managed carefully. Some of these small off the beaten path fisheries on the Boulder Mountain are being managed very well by local anglers.

Managing smaller brook trout fisheries on the Boulder Mountain can be as simple as visiting anglers keeping a limit of smaller brook trout on a fairly regular basis. This practice is completely opposite that of brook trout management strategies in the eastern states. Where brook trout reproduce naturally and so prolifically such as the waters on Boulder Mountain, they can and will get out of control quickly. Too many fish in a beaver pond or small remote lake results in overpopulation and stunting. No question about it!

Taking limits of brook trout in order to keep their numbers down is better than releasing all that you catch and waiting for the inevitable. Large populations of stunted brook trout due to overcrowding always results in the UDWR taking drastic measures to correct the problem. Chemical treatment [rotenone] to eradicate stunted brook trout from a small lake or beaver pond is a drastic measure! Rotenone has proven to be a valuable tool for fisheries biologists in removing unwanted fish, there is no doubt about that. Rotenone treatment is the only feasible way to get the job done in most cases. The biggest problem that comes from UDWR and their use of rotenone to manage fisheries on the Boulder Mountain is the way it is applied and how often it is applied. Using dynamite to prepare a beaver pond for the application of rotenone is the preferred method of UDWR southern region fisheries biologists. If you have ever witnessed this process you would have to agree, it is a drastic measure! The process usually consists of first minimizing the total volume of water in the pond or lake....meaning put a few sticks of dynamite in the beaver dam. The use of dynamite is a sure bet. The resulting explosion pretty much drains the pond to a more manageable level in about 10 minutes! Now it's just a matter of dispersing a slurry of rotenone over what water remains in the pond or lake. It is the frequency of these dynamite and rotenone treatments by UDWR southern region fisheries biologists that have left numerous small lakes and beaver ponds on the Boulder Mountain useless as fisheries. These fisheries were public fisheries. Now they are rendered useless by over treatment. When these over treatments to the lakes and beaver ponds have permanently destroyed the fishery that was present prior to the treatment, they cannot rightfully be called successful treatments. If the fishery has been destroyed, then they should be called failed treatments or just failures. Where is the accountability? The frequency of rotenone treatment on the Boulder Mountain by UDWR is astounding. There is no transparency to this operation by UDWR fisheries biologists. There are no proper environmental impact analysis [EIA] or environmental impact statements [EIS] prepared and made available to the public prior to these treatments by the local Forest Service office. There is absolutely no public input periods prior to these rotenone treatments. That would make them transparent. Public involvement tends to slow down the process.

These treatment operations are conducted covertly because of local public opposition. Public opposition usually brings the rotenone treatment and brook trout eradication process to a grinding halt! After more than two decades of this treatment program being conducted by southern region UDWR fisheries biologists and the administrators of that office, the results are clear. The local public is obviously very much opposed to the destruction of these beaver ponds and the public fisheries that existed there.

There are many cases where rotenone treatment and brook trout eradication operations on the Boulder Mountain have resulted in very successful and complete transformations of fisheries where the quality of fishing had diminished due to overpopulation and stunting of resident brook trout. The overall angling experience at some of these lakes now, because of these treatments and subsequent restocking would have to be rated as absolutely excellent! Kudos to UDWR for their success at these waters.

However, the sheer number of lost fisheries due to redundant treatment with dynamite and rotenone by UDWR southern region fisheries biologists is staggering. Shame on UDWR for this! These fisheries cannot repair themselves. They will not come back on their own. Their is a downward curve here that must be corrected. This change must start at the source of the problem. The problem is with the Utah Division Of Wildlife Resources fisheries biologists in the southern region office in Cedar City, Utah 435-865-6100.

Hybrid trout have been stocked into many lakes on Boulder Mountain after successful rotenone treatments to offer anglers some exciting diversity and enhance the quality of fishing there. Where brook trout have shown a tendency to overpopulate a lake, they are being completely removed and replaced with native cutthroat such as the Colorado River cutthroat [Oncorhynchus clarkii pleuriticus] or the Bonneville cutthroat [Oncorhynchus clarkii utah] and also hybrid trout such as the tiger trout [Salmo trutta X Salvelinus fontinalis] pictured above and splake, another hybrid cross [Salvelinus namaycush X Salvelinus fontinalis].

The tiger trout pictured above and below have been stocked into many of the lakes and beaver ponds on the Boulder Mountain. After several seasons in these lakes and ponds these hybrid trout have reached an impressive size and will put up quite a fight on a fly rod!

The tiger trout have been stocked into these small remote lakes and beaver ponds to offer anglers diversity and to act as a control measure to control the inevitable return of the brook trout. Unless the lake or pond is drained completely and dried up totally, brook trout have always managed to make a comeback. With the predatory tiger trout in place, the likelyhood of brook trout overpopulating the water again is minimized. While it would be nice to take home some of these big tiger trout, leaving them in the lake to fight another day would help to ensure that the brook trout numbers there stay in check. You will usually find that all of the lakes and ponds that hold these tiger trout also contain abundant populations of native cutthroat. These cutthroat were stocked by UDWR as put and take fish unless specifically listed otherwise in the Utah fishing guidebook.

Another hybrid trout found on Boulder Mountain is the splake pictured above. The splake [Salvelinus fontinalis X Salvelinus namaycush] is a cross between the brook trout and the lake trout or Makinaw.

Waiting for beaver to rebuild a dynamited dam so that it can fill up with water, making it once again suitable as a candidate for the re-stocking of brook trout or any other species of trout could be a long wait. If the beaver are non-existent and the Forest Service, UDWR and private interests such as downstream water users are not on the same page, with a suitable working agreement, it will be a very long wait. When the beaver fail to rebuild their dams, which is usually the case when they, their lodges and dams are all removed simultaneously with dynamite, then these fisheries are gone permanently. There were once untold numbers of small beaver dams and the ponds and small lakes backed up behind them existing on the Boulder Mountain. Most of these small remote lakes and beaver ponds were hidden deep within the great aspen and spruce mix forests on the slopes that surround this huge plateau. Many of these waters were in their prime during the early days of trout stocking here. In those early years most waters here were stocked with brook trout and Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

Quality brook trout fishing still exists today on this forest. But now more than ever you really have to know where to look. What was very good just a few years ago may not even hold trout today. A lake that you visited a couple of seasons back and caught some real quality trout from might look the same when you see it again, but with entirely different results this time. This phenomenon has bewildered many anglers who could not understand how they could do so well one season and come back and fair so poorly the next. Natural lakes and reservoirs present a different situation to those who would use rotenone there. Since the use of dynamite is not feasible to reduce the volume of water in a natural lake, the answer is a simple one. Just use more rotenone.

For those hidden beaver ponds, small remote lakes and reservoirs that remain here, the future is uncertain. Recent satellite imagery is irrefutable proof as to how many of these waters remain today on the Boulder Mountain and the Aquarius Plateau. Old legends die hard. The old stories of hundreds or even thousands of lakes on the Boulder are just that.....old stories.

When we are talking about viable fisheries, meaning sustainable fisheries, that will overwinter trout consistently...there are only a fraction of that. The UDWR only recognizes around 75 - 80 bodies of water on the Boulder Mountain and the Aquarius Plateau that meet this criteria. That means the entire mountain. Many will dispute these numbers. However, when you take a close look at the satellite imagery available today, you may be surprised. When you also take a close look at the UDWR fish stocking records for this area, you may be surprised to find out when your favorite beaver pond, lake or reservoir was stocked last, and with what.

If you have not visited your favorite fishing spot in a few years, you may want to go and check it out. If you have a secret hole, that is still doing just fine...keep a close eye on it and do whatever you can to protect it. The 2009 fly fishing season begins in April, and there are still plenty of quality brook trout fisheries remaining on this mountain......... for those who know where to look.

If you thought that you had to travel all the way to Quebec or Labrador to catch huge brookies on a fly rod.....well, think again! Why travel so far at such great expense when you can catch huge brookies so close to home? If you live in any one of the western states, you could be closer than you could have imagined. If you live in Las Vegas, you're right next door! A guided trip can eliminate the guess work and put you there with a fly rod in front of the biggest brookies you have ever seen, sooner than you ever thought was possible. Why wait any longer? Check out the link below for a Utah highway map and plan your trip soon.

Call Steve Stoner at 1- 435-335-7306 Your call will always be returned

Click on this link for an easy to use Utah Road Map http://www.utah-map.org/utah-road-map.gif

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