# tiger trout in the Uintas



## campfire (Sep 9, 2007)

I was very surprised (see "not a good idea" in the flyfishing section) to find out that there are tiger trout in McPheder lake in the Middle Basin of the Stillwater Fork of the Bear River. I cannot fathom that lake being stocked anyway other than by air and then only by pilots with very large cahoonies. To my knowledge only brook and cutthroat have been stocked by air. When did the DWR start stocking tigers by air and how many other high lakes have been stocked with tigers? Is this just an experiment? How do the tigers fair being dropped by air compared to brook and cutthroat? Will this mean a major change in stocking practice. (Being steril, tigers may not overpopulate and stunt like brook sometimes do.) It all sounds very interesting and exciting to me. Does anyone have good information?


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## RnF (Sep 25, 2007)

They started doing this fairly recently. You can access the DWR stocking reports and get a good idea when they started the program. As to why? No idea. It's interesting for sure. There have been several reports popping up of people finding tigers in lakes up there.

One other thing I have noticed on the stocking reports are the Grayling stockings. They seem to be putting those things all over the place as well over the past 3 years or so.

It would be nice if someone in the know could chime in on this. I am not sure how I feel about it yet. I would rather see Cutts being stocked more personally.

You do make a great point about the tigers not overproducing (since they are sterile) and getting stunted, there would be potential for some big trout to grow.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

last 5 years worth:
http://wildlife.utah.gov/stocking/

I'm not sure if all the aerial plantings are in the report.

Tigers are in much of Middle Basin and Smith's Fork headwaters among others.

I agree with Rnf, more native cutts would be nice.


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## campfire (Sep 9, 2007)

I agree, wyogoob, that some aerial stockings do not seem to be included in that link. I don't want to change the subject but I am curious about some of the abreviations, namely: RTESTP,RTES,RTGR,and RTGH. I assume these are rainbow trout of different varieties and reproductive capabilities but can anyone tell me what the abreviations stand for? And if you can don't forget to chime in about stocking tigers by air in the Uintas.


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## threshershark (Sep 7, 2007)

+1 on native cutts. I think the tigers have gotten the nod in areas like Boulder Mountain and the Uintas attempting to succeed where brook trout fail: Namely areas prone to stunting from the tendency of brookies to overpopulate.

Using a sterile fish that is also thought to be a little more predatory towards minnows is probably an attempt to control the fish population and provide better quality. My 2¢.


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## Rook (Sep 20, 2007)

When I saw your post I was curious to see what types of fish the DWR stocks by airplane. I found a few articles on it, it looks like they've been stocking 6 species of fish by plane, rainbows, cutts, brooks, tigers, splake, and Artic grayling. This first article was written in 2004 so obviously they've been stocking Tiger Trout since then by plane, it doesn't say how long they've been doing it:

http://wildlife.utah.gov/news/04-09/hatchery6.html

This one is a simliar article that mentions Tiger Trout being stocked by plane. It's a PDF and has some pictures of the drops, I didn't see a date on it:

http://wildlife.utah.gov/wr/0709fishsto ... ocking.pdf


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