This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The effort to improve and restore the fishery at Red Fleet Reservoir 10 miles north of Vernal apparently is going well.
The reservoir was treated with rotenone in October of 2015, killing all the fish and giving biologists a chance to start over.
The problem fish were fertile walleye, which had been illegally placed into the reservoir and posed a threat to endangered fish that lived below the reservoir in the Green River.
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources biologists recently spent two nights electroshocking and using gill nets to capture fish and found that fish stocked in the reservoir over the past several months are doing well.
During the two-night study, biologists found good numbers of black crappie, Colorado River cutthroat trout and tiger trout.
The DWR reports that three of the seven fish species that have been stocked in the reservoir — walleye, wipers and tiger trout are sterile. They can't reproduce. The sterile walleye, stocked as fry in April, are now up to 51/2-inches long.
"It was very apparent that the 1,000 yellow perch we caught at Fish Lake, and transferred to Red Fleet, had produced thousands of offspring," said Natalie Boren, regional aquatic biologist for the DWR. "We were also impressed with how the wipers are doing. When we stocked them in April, they were 10 inches long. Now, just three months later, they've grown to 14½ inches."
She said the sterile fish help both anglers and biologists.
"Sterile walleye, wipers and tiger trout give anglers a chance to catch a top predator while allowing us to control the size of the predator population through restocking," she says. "We don't have to worry about the predator population reproducing and getting too large for its forage base."