Green River electrofishing turns up 3.4-pound "football" rainbow trout

UDWR Green River/Flaming Gorge Project Leader Ryan Mosley sent in this report of the second night of the annual electrofish sampling from Thursday night. This makes me even more stoked for next week's trip to film for the Utah Bucket List. Here's his report.

We completed our rescheduled electrofishing at Little Hole last night. The weather was clear, breezy at times, with subfreezing temperatures that laid a thin sheet of ice on the deck of the boat. The cold temperatures didn't put a "chill" on either the work ethic of the crew or the catchability of the fish, and the results were impressive. We sampled a total of 369 fish, composed of rainbow trout, brown trout, and mountain whitefish. It's obvious that we traded numbers of fish for quality of fish, compared to our sampling at Spillway earlier in the week. Big, healthy fish were well abundant in the sample including brown trout up to 19-inches and 2.6 lbs and whitefish up to 19.5-inches and 3 lbs. Big fish of the night was a 20-inch, 3.4 lb rainbow trout which exemplified the "Spalding football" characteristic so common in the rainbows inhabiting the Green River these days. Check out the picture of UDWR wildlife biologist, Clint Sampson, proudly holding this football-shaped rainbow trout.It takes a lot of people to successfully complete this biannual sampling project. Special thanks go out to those that came and fought the cold weather this spring, including those from all sections of the UDWR, Trout Unlimited, and guides of the Green River.