This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
Scofield Reservoir has always been a popular family fishery with a major problem — it is susceptible to invasions of the Utah chub, a non-game fish that can take over a water and has often done so in Scofield.
The chubs began to invade the reservoir in 2005 and peaked in 2009, making managing for a traditional family-oriented rainbow trout fishery difficult.
Biologists then altered management, trying to turn it from a family fishery to a trophy fishery by planting large predators such as cutthroat and tiger trout.
Now, the Division of Wildlife Resources is seeking input from anglers as to what kind of opportunities they would like at Scofield.
Biologists are asking fishers to take a survey to let them know what kind of fishery they would prefer. It wil be available until Nov. 1.
"We're hoping to get feedback from the public on what direction we'd like to take Scofield in the future," says Justin Hart, aquatics manager for the DWR's Southeastern Region.
"We have no indication that what we're doing right now is failing. As a matter of fact, it looks promising. It's exactly what we expected to see," Hart says. "The problem is it's going to take a while for the larger chub to die, and people don't want to wait."
The survey is asking anglers to see whether they want to continue to see predators used to manage chubs or to treat it with rotenone, a tool biologists use to remove fish from lakes and rivers.
"We need to get rid of the chubs," he says. "That could potentially be through a rotenone treatment. It could also be through using different species of predators that we've never used before in Scofield, such as sterile walleye or wiper."