Scofield Reservoir

Overview

Scofield Reservoir sits high on the Wasatch Plateau in Carbon County, an impoundment of Fish Creek a few miles north of the old coal town of Scofield, reached from US-6 by way of Highway 96. It is roughly 2,800 acres and five miles long, big enough for boats and open enough that wind matters. Utah lists it as a Blue Ribbon fishery, and it is one of the state's most popular trout waters rather than an overlooked one. The story of the last twenty years is Utah chub. Chub overran the reservoir, DWR treated it with rotenone more than once, and in 2005 biologists introduced tiger trout to eat them. The tigers took to Scofield: the Utah record, 19 pounds 2 ounces, came from here in 2013. Cutthroat were added for the same reason, and in 2017 DWR went further and stocked tiger muskie and wiper, with sterile walleye to follow, after an angler survey backed more predators. Today the catch is cutthroat, tiger trout and rainbows, with the predatory cutthroat and tigers hitting minnow imitations, streamers and leeches. The best fishing of the year comes in the first weeks after ice-off, usually late April or early May, when big fish cruise the shallows; DWR notes the insects are not active yet, so a brown or green sparkle leech is the fly. Fall is strong, and Scofield is usually the first major Utah water to freeze, often with safe ice by Thanksgiving. Upper Fish Creek, the main tributary, is a wild cutthroat stream in its own right.