If you grew up in northern Utah, there is a strong possibility that some of your earliest memories of catching fish were created in the Uinta Mountains.

Often accessible for only six months each year (typically mid-May to late October), the Uintas provide not only an escape from the hot dog days of summer along the Wasatch Front, but also a great opportunity to introduce people to the sport or put some fresh fish on the camping menu.

About 650 of the 1,000 lakes of the Uinta Mountains are stocked with trout or grayling. It is safe to say that every lake with fish, and probably some of those that do not support trout, is visited at least once by anglers each summer. Fisheries officials with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) stock the most easily accessed lakes on a weekly basis. The more remote lakes of the Uintas are planted with fish under 3 inches via a Cessna 185 plane on a three- to five-year rotation.

Rainbow, cutthroat, brown and brook trout account for the majority of the fish available in the Uintas. Anglers can enjoy chasing Arctic grayling and golden trout on a more limited basis. State wildlife officials have also introduced two hybrid trout -- splake (a mix between a lake and brook trout) and tiger (brook and brown) trout -- in lakes on the mountain range. The hybrids provide a good management tool for fisheries biologists because they are sterile and their numbers can be managed by harvest and stocking.

Most of the fish planted in the Uintas come from the Kamas Fish Hatchery, which produces 145,000 pounds of fish each year for Utah waters. Wildlife biologists have been working to increase the number of native cutthroat populations in the Uintas in recent years. As a result, anglers may see more Colorado River cutthroat when dangling a line. They do not plan on entirely phasing other nonnative species like brown and brook trout out of the system.

Matt McKell recently began conducting gillnetting surveys on lakes in the range to see if an alteration to the stocking plan needs to be made.

"We try to concentrate on one drainage per year. It has been 20 years since some of the lakes have been visited for a survey," said McKell, an aquatic biologist for the DWR. "We hit between 15 and 30 lakes each summer. We have a plumpness factor. If the fish are lower than what we consider an average for the species, we consider lowering the number of fish planted there."

The Uintas may have a limited season -- it varies depending on snow depth -- but the number of anglers hitting the lakes and streams makes it one of the most utilized fisheries in the state.

The Uintas, as a whole, are recognized as one of the top five most-visited fisheries in Utah each summer. Lakes along the Mirror Lake Highway (State Road 150) obviously get the greatest pressure.

Those seeking solitude opt for a hike in the backcountry, but even then there may be other anglers.

Bait is probably the most common method of fishing in the Uintas. Night crawlers, PowerBait and salmon eggs are all good choices. Small spinners and lures are another popular method. Many anglers like to use spinning rods set up with a casting bubble trailing a fly (dry or wet).

The Uintas are managed as a put-and-take fishery. Even those die-hard catch-and-release anglers should consider taking home fish or eating them on backpacking trips.

"We stock the fish to be caught and kept," McKell said. "Keeping fish helps the remaining fish attain a larger size."