Flaming Gorge Reservoir

Overview

Flaming Gorge Reservoir backs up the Green River for about 91 miles from Flaming Gorge Dam in Utah's Daggett County north into Wyoming, past the Cedar Springs and Lucerne marinas in the canyon country and Buckboard in Wyoming, where red rock gives way to open sage desert. Between them the two states have taken eleven state-record fish from this water, and the lake is best known for lake trout: it regularly produces fish in the 30 to 40 pound range with a real chance at 50. That trophy potential is now under pressure from the fishery's own success. Wyoming Game and Fish reports an overabundance of lake trout under 25 inches which, together with reservoir drawdowns, has driven kokanee numbers down and left the big lake trout leaner, so both states push anglers to harvest small lake trout; Utah sets no limit on lake trout of 28 inches or less and allows only one over. Burbot, illegally introduced in the late 1990s, are the other management problem: there is no limit, and every burbot caught must be killed. For fly anglers the realistic targets are smallmouth bass on the rocky points, humps and ledges once the water warms, rainbows, browns and tiger trout in the top 50 feet in spring and fall, kokanee where they ride a shallow thermocline in spring, and lake trout only when they feed shallow in early spring or stage in fall. Linwood Bay closes to night fishing from mid-October into December. The Green River below the dam is a separate, world-class tailwater and deserves its own days.