Whats the love affair with bear lake cutthroats about?

Utah Fishing Reports & Discussion Utah Fishing General
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Some have shared their opinions and I’ll share some of mine:

  1. BL Cutts in the Berry - Purely for chub control. They have no business in the Colorado River drainage otherwise and I still question whether the DWR is harming the native cutthroat goals by doing this. Regardless, they are doing a great job.

  2. BL Cutt size in the Berry - If I can go somewhere and get into a mess of 20"+ fish anywhere else in the state, I call that a really good day and a really good water. We’re spoiled by the Berry. The slot busters are out there and I can’t wait until my next one.

  3. BL Cutts on the table - Once these cutts break the slot, they really pack on the weight, I’ve noticed. A big healthy cutt from the Berry is some of my most coveted trout meat. Whether filleted/breaded or oven roasted, I love that meat! Never had a bad slot buster from Strawberry.

  4. Rainbows in the Berry - I’m still awakening with cold sweats, thinking of the last rainbow that escaped me at the Berry. Biggest bow of my life (would-be). There are a lot of big bows in there on both sides of the lake. The SC seems to have more of the smaller size, but without too much experience on a boat there, I can’t gauge that so well. My best luck comes from smaller bays and the ladders area.

  5. Tigers in the Berry - PLEASE!!! Hate that sentiment if you must, but I fully support a voracious predator with the growing potential of our novelty freak fish. If I think the cutts taste great, I can only imagine what a big female tiger could be like. Drooling

Not to mention, sterile fish can’t mess with the genetic purity of downstream cutthroat.

edit: I forgot about the fight. BL Cutts have a bad reputation for fighting like duds. I’ve seen good battles and sorry ones as well. It depends on the individual fish and possibly how many times it’s been caught previously. Many nice cutts have broken me off, long distance. On the other hand, many will cruise right up to hand, saving the fight for the net or shoreline rocks.

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Oh also forgot to mention that tigers are highly disease resistant. If anyone is wondering how/why they grow faster than native species its because they do not waste energy in a spawning cycle.

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I like this idea, in my opinion the tigers are a better tasting fish as well, Loads more fun to catch!

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I also prefer to catch tiger trout over cutthroat (see by two Electric Lake reports).

I would have to disagree with your statement that tigers “…are more easily targetable..” than cutts. They are definitely more aggressive and fight equal to if not better than a rainbow but IMNSHO, for the average angler, they are a little more difficult to catch than cutts (I have seen many cutts caught on PowerBait but I have never seen a tiger trout caught on PB – I’m sure a few have been caught on it, but I haven’t seen one) and definitely more difficult to catch than rainbows.

Another issue I would question would be the cost, and fish hatchery capacity that is available, to plant tiger trout in the quantities necessary to replace the current number of cutts that are being planted.

Even with my reservations, I would still welcome all of the tiger trout that they can spare be planted in Strawberry, with the same restriction that they have on the cutts. While they are at it, I wouldn’t mind seeing some macks planted, but I doubt it will even happen. If they could plant sterile macks (assuming they even exist) that might even be better.

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Yeah I thought about the capacity issue too. Apparently due to the cross breeding only about 50% 80% of the fry are viable so maybe that would put a bit of a burden on the hatcheries - I don’t know. A new hatchery? :laughing: As far as targetability I think we are actually both on the same page, I just said it the wrong way. What I am saying is that if you have tigers and rainbows it will make it easier to target rainbows specifically.

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Tiger caught on power bait. (And a little bragging on my 6 year old who caught it herself)

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Turning one of the largest and deepest reservoirs in Utah into a Cutthroat fish hatchery makes no sense.
Jordanelle, Deer Creek, Rockport or Echo could have been converted into a Hatchery to keep the Feds at Bay.
Strawberry has the depth, size, and pool reserves to actually provide a fishing experience that most reservoirs in Utah lack. Depth for Macks and Kokanee, the Chubs could have been controlled with Tiger trout or WIpers. It provides quality Cutthroat and lately Kokanee fishing for sure but what species wouldn’t have flourished in Utahs only reservoir that has it all.
Poor choice for a hatchery!!

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Wasn’t my choice and that is just what I have heard about it. Not like am an authority on it or anything.[;)]

Personally I think Strawberry fishes just fine. But there are lots of opinions out there.

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Turning one of the largest and deepest reservoirs in Utah into a Cutthroat fish hatchery makes no sense.
Jordanelle, Deer Creek, Rockport or Echo could have been converted into a Hatchery to keep the Feds at Bay.

as mentioned before, the cutthroat in Strawberry have NOTHING to do with endangered species preservation. They are strictly in there as a management tool for chub control. If Strawberry were being used for endangered species preservation, then it would be full of colorado river cutthroat, not bonneville (bear lake).

Strawberry has the depth, size, and pool reserves to actually provide a fishing experience that most reservoirs in Utah lack. Depth for Macks…

Strawberry stratifies during the summer and leaves no oxygen at depths that lake trout would need. They would die. This is well documented.

… the Chubs could have been controlled with Tiger trout or WIpers…

Tiger trout are already in nearly every reservoir in Utah! Why do we have to have another one?

…It [Strawberry] provides quality Cutthroat and lately Kokanee fishing for sure but what species wouldn’t have flourished in Utahs only reservoir that has it all?

As mentioned before, due to lack of oxygen at depths below 30 feet, lake trout would not flourish!

How many reservoirs in Utah are managed with cutthroat trout the show the quality that Strawberry has? There are only 3 (Strawberry, Panguitch Lake, Bear Lake). Why on earth does everyone want to put tiger trout in every single lake and reservoir in Utah? What’s wrong with having a couple unique places?

Personally, I think it’s great that we have two fisheries (Strawberry and Panguitch) that I can fish for large cutthroat. Where else can I do that?

There are a lot of places that I can go to catch big rainbows. There are even more with tiger trout. We also have numerous places with fantastic wiper fisheries. If you want those species, options are certainly available. Let’s keep Strawberry the fantastic fishery that it already his. How can you mess with success??

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Brett, you make some excellent points.

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if strawberry had a consistent forage base for the cutts, than you would love them. There would be a lot more fish pushing through the slot and putting on some big time size. There are some decent fish in there but with a better forage base, you would see many more big fish being caught, especially with how many thousands of people fish there.

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if strawberry had a consistent forage base for the cutts, than you would love them. There would be a lot more fish pushing through the slot and putting on some big time size. There are some decent fish in there but with a better forage base, you would see many more big fish being caught, especially with how many thousands of people fish there.

Forage (chubs, prey fish) isn’t the answer. Remember, the cutts are being used to keep those chubs in control. If more chubs enter the system, the trout size will decrease, not increase. Those cutthroat can, and will, grow big on invertebrates if given the opportunity.

What you see much more often happening with slots is that the minute a fish outside the slot is caught, it is kept. Thus, you end up with a lot of fish inside the slot and very few outside.

Instead of focusing on how many inches the fish are, we need to focus on keeping the fish in that zone of maximum growth! As long as growth rates are fast, then you WILL have big fish. How do you keep growth rates fast? You minimize the nongame fish (chubs, suckers, perch, etc.).

Adding more forage to the mix would give you the opposite results that you are asking for. This has been proven time and time again with chubs in Utah reservoirs.

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most fish I see up there are healthy 17 and 18 inchers. the 21 and 22 inchers are skinny,. and I catch many more 18 inchers than 21 and 22’s. I know they said an age class is missing up there so that might be some of it. But you don’t see a lot of 23 inch fish being kept or even 22 and 1/4 or 22 and an 1/8. etc… In a place that size with that many fish, there would be more fish packing on some size and being caught at different times in the year. The chub fry is gobbled up pretty fast and they aren’t going to eat the big chubs you see in there…They do eat crawdads but that isn’t a prime source for the cutts. There are other places with a reliable source of food that helps grow them big, a place with whitefish and cisco. If the berry had a good minnow in there, those fish would bust through!! I’m not saying that needs to happen and I know they are in there for chub control. I accept it and know everytime I go there what to expect.

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I fully believe that if you put that slot at 24 inches, you still wouldn’t see many 23 and 24 inch fish being caught.

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and I know someone will post pics up of some slot busters and say you just need to know how to find them etc… But in a healthy lake with that many people fishing, you would see many more big fish being caught if they were in there in decent numbers.

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and I know someone will post pics up of some slot busters and say you just need to know how to find them etc… But in a healthy lake with that many people fishing, you would see many more big fish being caught if they were in there in decent numbers.

maybe stocking rates should be adjusted? Stock fewer fish, with the expectation of catching fewer but larger fish?

Managers have to determine what to manage for. Sometimes they have to compromise. Strawberry gets more pressure than any lake in Utah – with a few exceptions taking size into consideration (Panguitch Lake, Navajo Reservoir). Managers have to decide what fishing experience to attempt to achieve for the majority of those users:
A. quantity
B. quality
C. combination of the two

If you want to catch more fish per hour, you increase stocking rates, which also decreases average size of fish.

If you want bigger average size fish you decrease stocking, which reduces the catch per hour.

Personally, I really don’t see where people can complain too much about catching 18" healthy trout! We’re a spoiled bunch!

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Another thing to keep in mind in this conversation is the fact that a number of fish outside the slot are being caught and folks aren’t telling anyone.

There are always a few anglers that are more successful than others and either don’t want any more people crowding them or trying to get their secrets to catching them.[;)]

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Another thing to keep in mind in this conversation is the fact that a number of fish outside the slot are being caught and folks aren’t telling anyone.

There are always a few anglers that are more successful than others and either don’t want any more people crowding them or trying to get their secrets to catching them.[;)]

true but if there was a decent amount of big fish in there, with how many people fish in the berry, you would see guys hooking large fish more often, even if it was incidental. I know a couple people who throw specific bait down on the bottom and catch some slot busters but if the place had a decent population, a decent sized white tube jig would still yield big fish. and consider that place in the fall has lots of people fishing that way.

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and I know someone will post pics up of some slot busters and say you just need to know how to find them etc… But in a healthy lake with that many people fishing, you would see many more big fish being caught if they were in there in decent numbers.

maybe stocking rates should be adjusted? Stock fewer fish, with the expectation of catching fewer but larger fish?

Managers have to determine what to manage for. Sometimes they have to compromise. Strawberry gets more pressure than any lake in Utah – with a few exceptions taking size into consideration (Panguitch Lake, Navajo Reservoir). Managers have to decide what fishing experience to attempt to achieve for the majority of those users:
A. quantity
B. quality
C. combination of the two

If you want to catch more fish per hour, you increase stocking rates, which also decreases average size of fish.

If you want bigger average size fish you decrease stocking, which reduces the catch per hour.

Personally, I really don’t see where people can complain too much about catching 18" healthy trout! We’re a spoiled bunch!

I agree… Didn’t the berry use to have a shiner minnow in there? How was the fishing back then for size?

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“Didn’t the berry use to have a shiner minnow in there? How was the fishing back then for size?”

Yes it used to have a decent population of red-sided shiners (probably still a few around, but not like in the past) and it appeared to me the fish were growing about the same then as they do now.