There are many legends concerning southern Utah's Boulder Mountain. Stories around campfires in fishing and deer hunting camps are as numerous as the lakes of Boulder Mountain. There are tales of monster cactus bucks that roam this mountain. Fables of bull elk that would score over four hundred points! We call them tales and even fables because very few photographs are ever offered up as bonified proof. It is easier to produce an old worn black and white picture of a jackalope than one of these monster mulies or record book bulls. But most local anglers over the age of fifty have a collection of old photographs of fishing trips to Boulder Mountain. When you see these old photos it is clear that the big brook trout of Boulder Mountain were not just fish tales. It was common at one time to catch and keep limits of three to five pound brookies. Back in the day......Well what day? What year was it? The answer to that is that it was a number of years of fantastic fishing and then a number of years of slow fishing with meager catches of smaller trout. A cycle develops where trout populations will soar and then crash.

Back in the fifties and sixties legal fish limits were larger and anglers were of a mindset to keep a limit of fish when they went fishing. It is just the way it was....everywhere, not just on the Boulder Mountain. And so families and fishing buddies would display their huge catch of trout on stringers made from long willows or on ropes strung between trees in their camps. They would proudly pose with their trophies and have their pictures taken with Kodacs or whatever camera was brought along for posterity. Were they wrong to harvest these seemingly glutunous limits. Were the wildlife officials wrong to allow limits of twelve and sometimes more fish of any size. Maybe not. The anglers certainly had the right. that was the way it was done then.

What happens to brook trout in smaller environs like the lakes on Boulder Mountain is that they reproduce. They reproduce naturally in conditions that other trout struggle to reproduce in. Brook trout are really char not trout. But that is what they are commonly referred to and names have a way of sticking. So we'll just keep on calling the little rascals brook trout and brookies! So when brook trout are stocked in the nutrient rich lakes of Boulder Mountain with the swarming midge and damselfly hatches and the scuds....oh the scuds! Well, their populations soar. For a period of years, sometimes a decade or more the brook trout in a given lake or small beaver pond will thrive. Eventually though, what goes up must come down. Unchecked, with no natural predation the quality or average size of individual fish in a population of brook trout in a small lake or pond will peak and then go into a steady decline as numbers of older larger fish die off naturally. Numbers of young fish soar and eventually exceed available food suorces. This results in stunted populations of brook trout. The numbers of trout in the small lake or pond are vast but the average size is quite puny in comparison to the monster brookies of legend! But what can be done about this problem?   

Pictured at right is a limit of cutthroat trout from Boulder Mountain from back in the fifties. Cutthroat trout were the indigenous fish of Boulder mountain. Colorado cutthroat trout to be specific. The trout pictured at right are Yellowstone cutthroat. Any guess as to their weight? Surely the two in the center of this old worn photo are well over five pounds. Closer to eight or nine is more likely. Yellowstone cutthroat trout are hard pressed to reproduce naturally in the lakes on Boulder Mountain. Conditions are just not suitable for them. However, they grew to great size on the available food source. This made them ideal for stocking on Boulder Mountain. They will hit a fly readily and are terrific fighters. There are still good healthy populations of these beautiful cutthroat trout in many of the lakes here. UDWR has been concentrating more on their efforts to restore the indigenous Colorado River cutthroat trout to much of it's former range and less emphasis on stocking the Yellowstone cutthroat trout to the lakes of this mountain. Why? The Colorado has shown a tendancy towards very slow growth rate where they have been reintroduced. The Yellowstone when it was stocked in the same waters grew rapidly. Why then? Poitics perhaps.....

At right is a digital image of a Colorado River cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki pleuriticus. This is a mature male in full spawning colors caught and released using a barbless dryfly of minute porportions to match this diminutive trout! This photo was taken in the early summer of 2005. The Colorado River cutthroat trout were reintroduced at this particular location [anonymous] in the summer of 1991. It has been claimed by UDWR biologists that these native cutthroat trout were there naturally and have always been at this location. This is a matter of much dispute locally however. Most local anglers who revered this fantastic destination clearly remember catching and cooking many fine brook trout and many equally fine specimens of Yellowstone cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki bouvieri from this same beloved fishery prior to 1991. In any case, the cutthroat shown on the right is definitely a Colorado and in fact was the grandaddy of them all in that particular water. After more than a decade of existence at this remote location on Boulder Mountain, there has yet to be a Colorado River cutthroat trout exeeding eight inches!

At right is a digital image of a Yellowstone cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki bouvieri. This fine cutthroat was also caught and released using a barbless dryfly in the early summer of 2005. This trout was stocked as a fingerling into this unnamed water in the summer of 2003. Clearly a considerable growth rate discrepancy. The Yellowstone cutthroat were the tried and true stocker for the lakes and beaver ponds on Boulder Mountain. They thrived without reproducing and grew to fantastic size. They did not overpoulate their environ and remained healthy through all but the harshest of winters. At one time there were brook trout of manageable numbers along side equally manageable numbers of Yellowstone cutthroat trout in most of the lakes on Boulder Mountain.

What happened then? Two distinct problems have occurred with many of the fisheries on Boulder Mountain. First of all, public opinion and the popularity of catch and release fishing. This has resulted in too many fish in many lakes. This is the first cause of the decline of quality fishing in a particular lake. Second, wildlife agencies like UDWR are under pressure from the public to increase the quality of fishing yet the public isn't cooperating by their practice of letting every fish they catch go. On the other hand, UDWR has been just a little too loose with their fish management / rotenone treatment program on Boulder Mountain. Is rotenone treatment and the eradication of brook trout and then subsequent immediate restocking of the same species the only answer? This is what has been happening for the past two decades on this mountain. The mindset that the only way to manage trout on Boulder Mountain is through rotenone treatment / eradication and restocking is just that, a mindset!

What can we do? Addendums to fishing proclamations that are already printed and circulated is not feasable. Yet getting the word out that a particular lake or lakes on this mountain are definitely showing signs of overcrowding by brook trout is reasonable. Especially when the State Of Utah has such a great website enjoyed so frequently by so many viewers. Their website is the perfect medium to inform the public of addendums to the general fishing proclamation and that it is OK this season for a licensed angler to keep an unlimited number of brook trout from a particular lake or lakes provided the trout fall into the correct slot / size range. The brook trout pictured at right is approximately 13 inches long. This brookie may seem large to some anglers who have been conditioned to believe that this is a big brook trout. But it is not. Too many trout this size in a small lake is the root cause of stunting due to overcrowding!

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