The only recent post I could find about Piute Reservoir was by Orvis1 on March 11, 2012, and it said, "Puite still seems a year or two away from returning to form we saw little on the way of fish showing up on the finder and gave it 1-2 hours of good solid effort. It gave Steve the skunk job and I managed one fish."
Has anyone else been to Piute lately? Is it still recovering? A few years ago, we went down in the spring during the spawn and had a great time catching big trout. I was hoping to repeat that adventure this month.
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This is probably the reason why:
"The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources conducted a gill net survey at Piute Reservoir on April 11, 2012, in order to monitor the current state of the fishery. While we found rainbow trout ranging from 10 to 19 inches, they were not as abundant as we had hoped. Utah chubs, however, were very abundant, providing a clue as to why the rainbows are struggling."
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsfishin...l.html.csp
So what was the percentage of chubs to rainbows either in numbers or biomass? None of the recent reports on gill netting are listing this important statistic for any of the waters. Why? It would be interesting to know. The quote above "...they were not as abundant as we had hoped." could mean anything from 1. the bows are a little below desired targets, to 2. There is one rainbow to 1000 chubs.
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Just go to Otter Creek instead. Much better right now.
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I second what brookie guy said. One decent fish pushing 20 but for the 3 1/2 hours of floating not worth the effort. Hopefully it will come back.
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flyfish -- have you attempted contacting those southern region biologists and asking for that info?
They might not have it compiled yet. This time of year they are netting lakes nearly on a daily basis, which leaves little time to compile reports. While pulling nets, they may be able to observer that "...they [rainbows] were not as abundant as we had hoped. Utah chubs, however, were very abundant...".
My advice: call them and ask them. They're not trying to hide anything.
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Thanks for this information! I guess I won't plan on going to Piute this year. Too bad. A few years ago the fishing there was great--especially during the spawn when the fish were congregating near the shore. We had a lot of success fishing the rocky shorelines using wooly buggers on fly lines. Is there a time when the same thing happens at Otter Creek? The shoreline there is quite different, if I recall correctly.
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