LOGAN – Walk out of any door in Cache Valley and you are within minutes of a place to bait a hook and drop a line in the water.
A file photo of Tyler White a biologist at the Division of Wildlife Resources stocking fish in Hyrum Dam.
The Logan and Blacksmith Fork rivers are both blue ribbon fisheries and other fishing spots in Cache Valley are great places to put a hook in the water, due to the Utah Department of Wildlife Resources fish stocking program.
The waters in the valley are heavily fished, but the DWR keeps most of them stocked with catchable trout and other species of fish.
DWR stocks triploid trout that do not reproduce and in the right conditions can grow faster than their native counter parts. They stock fish in Cache Valley and throughout the state multiple times a year. In 2024, they stocked over 12.8 million fish into waterbodies across the state and continue to try to boost fishing license sales.
A combined 1,238,903 pounds of different varieties of fish were stocked into 722 Utah waterbodies this year. That was an increase from the 10.6 million that the DWR stocked in 2023 and the 8.2 million fish stocked in 2022.
Over the past few years, DWR has made several changes to stocking to adapt to changing weather and drought conditions. They have stocked fewer but larger fish to increase their survival rate and more small fish in other locations with higher growth rates.
DWR has made a practice of stocking fewer fish in waterbodies with low water levels or that are projected to have low water levels during drought conditions and they have evaluated the fish species stocked at drought-impacted waterbodies, including stocking more warmwater fish species at some waterbodies
The practice of stocking fish in the Beehive State goes back more than 150 years, as fish were first formally stocked in Utah in 1871. At that time, fish were transported from other states by train and were stocked into lakes along the train route. In 1897, Utah opened its first hatcheries and started raising trout locally.
“These original hatcheries were really impounded streams where we put fry that we got from the federal government,” DWR Aquatic Section Assistant Chief Craig Schaugaard said. “We opened our first traditional fish hatchery — where we produced our own eggs and used raceways like we have today – in Murray in 1899.”
Utah waters have a variety of trout in the m.
Over the years, the DWR expanded its fish hatchery operations. There are now 13 facilities across Utah, with construction underway for a new hatchery in Loa that should be finished by 2027. The bulk of the fish stocked in 2024, 11,086,947 fish of the total 12,831,218 fish came from DWR hatcheries. The remaining fish were transported from disease-free certified hatcheries across the U.S.
“Our hatcheries are important because they provide the majority of the fish we stock in the state,” Schaugaard said. “Stocking is a crucial management tool that we use to provide Utahns with the numbers and species of fish they desire. Stocking fish helps create a better fishing experience and additional opportunities. Without stocking, fishing would be very limited. It also helps in the recovery of threatened or endangered fish. June suckers were downlisted from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2021 because of recovery efforts, which included stocking.”
The DWR stocked more than trout in 2024. They stocked several different species including:
- Arctic grayling
- Crappie (black and white)
- Bluegill
- Channel catfish
- Cutthroat trout
- Grass carp
- June sucker (listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act)
- Kokanee salmon
- Largemouth bass
- Splake
- Tiger muskie
- Tiger trout
- Walleye
- Wiper
Some DWR fish hatcheries produce multiple strains of some species, and some of the fish are stocks triploid or sterile. Producing sterile fish is an important management tool that helps control fish populations in various waterbodies.
The Utah Division of Wildlife Recourses stocks fish in multiple reservoirs multiple times a year.
Fishing license sales have remained constant over the years
Faith Jolley, a spokeswoman for DWR said in 2023, DWR sold 148,252 combination licenses and 241,017 fishing licenses. Fishing license sales have stayed pretty standard, except for the pandemic year which saw a record year for hunting and license sales.