Beautiful afternoon and a mystery fish

[gaardvark]

My wife has wanted to get out of the house, and my son has wanted to go fishing for something other than catfish, so we headed up to the mountains today for a couple of hours before he had to be to work.
We drove to a high elevation lake, and found lots of other people had the same idea.
After walking to the far side, we set up and threw out some worms and lures. It was really pretty slow, but we were there midday, so not a big surprise.
My son kept getting taps on a worm, but couldn't hook anything so downsized, and finally hooked a monster. It was all of about 4 inches long and the mouth faced downward, somewhat like a sucker.  It was not a trout, and I didn't recognize it, so I'm hoping someone here might know what it is. He caught a second one, but they were the same size and species.
On a side note, the wildflowers were in full bloom, a riot of colors and shapes, well worth the drive even if we didn't get into fish.

[cworsley62]

Utah Chub probably...

[Jig-fisher]

It looked to be a species of dace. I did a search and it looks to be a speckled dace.

Growing up near the Weber river we would catch dace and I would use them all over in my fishing adventures. The big browns and cutts in the Weber loved them. Caught some nice cats out on the Bear with them. Would use them ice fishing and were a great bait all around. In the end they are a soft minnow and very desirable as a prey species for the fish that reside in the lakes and rivers where they exist.

[gaardvark]

Thanks for the ID. With the name you provided, I did a google search and I am firmly on board with that assessment.
I considered using some cutbait at the lake, but the only other thing in there, so far as I am aware, are 8-9 inch planter bows. I could be wrong, as I didn't know about the dace, but nobody on the very busy lake was catching much anyway.

[catchinon]

Shawn (did I get that right?) I used to trap those minnows for live bait in Colorado. Worked great on walleye and everything else. Four inches sounds like it might be a new state record. Did you get a weight? ;-}

[gaardvark]

Shawn (did I get that right?) I used to trap those minnows for live bait in Colorado. Worked great on walleye and everything else. Four inches sounds like it might be a new state record. Did you get a weight? ;-

You got the name pronunciation, just not the spelling...

Would the state accept weights for a fish that small in terms of "more than a 1/8oz jighead, but less than a 1oz casting plug"?