500 tagged as part of Family Fishing Event

VERNAL — Rainbow trout are usually 10 inches or less when the Division of Wildlife Resources stocks them in waters across Utah.

The DWR is stocking about 1,200 big rainbow trout in the Uinta Basin. More than 500 of them, including this rainbow, were tagged and released in Steinaker Reservoir for the annual Family Fun Fishing event.

Photos by Calvin Black

That's not the case in northeastern Utah, though. Personnel from the DWR's Whiterocks State Fish Hatchery have included about 1,200 Kamloops rainbows with the smaller fish.

Each of these rainbows weighs between two and three pounds. And about 500 of the 1,200—the ones placed in Steinaker Reservoir north of Vernal—have been tagged with special tags as part of a Family Fishing Event.

If you catch a fish with a special tag, you can turn it in for a prize.

The Family Fishing Event is sponsored by radio stations and businesses in the Uinta Basin, Utah State Parks and the DWR.

For more information about the event, call 435-722-5011.

Big fish

The 1,200 fish that Whiterocks hatchery manager Dana Dewey and his staff have been placing in waters in northeastern Utah are called brood stock. Hatchery workers raised the fish for breeding purposes.

The workers create young trout by fertilizing eggs from female trout with milt from male trout. The young Kamloops rainbows they raise are then stocked into some of the deepest and coldest lakes and reservoirs in Utah.

The hatchery had about 1,200 extra brood stock rainbows this year, so hatchery workers decided to add them to the fish they're stocking in northeastern Utah.

The fish weigh between two and three pounds each. Each one should provide a lucky angler with a thrill, even it if doesn't carry a special tag!