Flaming Gorge Lakers

There aren’t many places to fish where you can have 24 of these sized fish in your possession-and be legal about it-but fisheries managers with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department are strongly encouraging it at one of Wyoming’s most productive reservoirs. Flaming Gorge reservoir, stretching into Utah out of southwest Wyoming has a long history of superb Lake Trout and kokanee salmon fishing. But lake trout in the 18-22 inch range are in abundance at Flaming Gorge, and their high numbers…aren’t helping the kokanee population. The abundance of lake trout…has created an opportunity for anglers. Fisheries crews with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Green River region recently conducted annual sampling of lake trout on the Gorge, catching a number of fish just like this one. Fisheries Biologist John Walrath…
“This fish here in my hand is about 21 inches long, and from this 18-22 inch length group, there just seems to be a whole lot of these individuals in the system right now and we’re really encouraging anglers to come out and target these lake trout….In the last few years, we’ve seen pretty dramatic declines in Kokanee, Rainbows, and Cutthroat Trout. What we’re concerned about is that decline is really related to predation by these small lake trout. Most of these lake trout are eating them when they are age zero, age one-anything less than six inches is easily consumed by these lake trout…”
After the fish (large and smaller) were brought in from the nets, they were weighed and measured-- then an extra bit of data was gathered by either pumping or sampling the fish’s stomach to see what it’s been feeding on…Recently conducted research shows the diet of smaller lake trout is roughly 25% kokanee. Kokanee population recruitment estimates show a decline of over 50 percent compared to estimates from 2016-2019. Fisheries managers in Wyoming and Utah are advising anglers to expect reduced catch rates on kokanee this summer. Wyoming Game and Fish and partner agencies have countered by bumping up the stocking rate of kokanee. Through the combined efforts of Game and Fish, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and Jones Hole National Fish Hatchery in Utah, the number of kokanee stocked in 2022 surpassed two million kokanee-a 25 percent increase from the management objective of 1.65 million. Lake Trout under 28 inches are excellent eating, low in mercury and high in Omega-3’s. As summer progresses, they’ll head to deeper, cooler water. In addition to its lake trout and kokanee fishing, Flaming Gorge also offers solid rainbow, brown, cutthroat and smallmouth bass fishing too. Hook up the boat and head out there…

[@youdagoob]

I love Wyoming. Such a beautiful place.

[@leveractiongypsy1848]

The snaky quality of the fish is saying one of two things I can think of - there is alot of competition from other fish for the available food sources - or - there is not enough food sources in the drainage to support a fish of this size. Alot of California rivers (like the Rubicon) have native rainbows that get really snaky when they get to 16-18 inches of more because there just isnt enough food...hence the push for many rainbows to keep moving down stream until they hit the ocean - its for food - and then they are Steelheads