This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Mike Slater, a regional aquatics biologist with the Utah DWR, sent in this report from the recent gill netting at Deer Creek Reservoir
During our annual monitoring of the fish populations in the reservoirs we do not typically find these large fish dead in our nets. They are simply too large to get caught by the gills and we are able to release them back into the reservoir. This was not the case with this brown trout. While unfortunate that the fish died, the information we gather from this annual monitoring is very valuable in understanding how the various populations of fish are doing in the reservoirs. It allows biologists to detect any concerns from one year to another, whether the number of fish are going up or down, if size of fish, diets, fish condition are changing from year to year etc. etc. These trends are very important for biologists to again understand the biology of any given system and make any changes necessary to maintain or make improvements to the fisheries being sampled.
This particular brown trout weighed 16.75 pounds and was just over 32 inches in length, it is the largest trout we have sampled in Deer Creek Reservoir in recent years. In general, rainbow and brown trout in the nets at Deer Creek looked healthy. There were also some nice walleye sampled too. FYI, the Walleye at Deer Creek Reservoir are spawning (typically along rocky shorelines) right now and its a good time to target them. Deer Creek Reservoir is full right now and fishing should be good this year based on what we saw during our spring monitoring and the fishing reports we have received over the past couple of years.