Some of the biggest lake trout in Wyoming are found in one of the most scenic lakes in America—Jackson Lake.
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When it comes to Lake Trout fishing in Wyoming, there’s plenty of choices to launch your boat, but when you combine spectacular scenery with spectacular fish, it’s hard to beat Jackson Lake in Teton County. It’s here where the state record lake trout shares the honor with Sweetwater County’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir…at 50 pounds! Keeping that standard means keeping tabs on these guys and making sure they’re still growing. On this day the Wyoming Game and Fish Department set a series of nets on the lake to check in on those “large lakers” that are so prized by anglers. Jackson Fisheries Biologist Clark Johnson:

“Based on the number of fish that we catch per hour of nets that we have in the water, we can get a catch rate that can kind of tell us a little bit of the relative abundance of those fish, and we can come back every year and compare those catch rates to see if we’re getting more big fish, less big fish, or if the fish are trending towards the fatter end or the skinnier end, which tells a little bit about how fast those fish might be growing and the food base that they have in the reservoir.”

Weights and measurements are recorded along with a location of where the fish was caught, and those fish that are emerging into trophy-size category are tagged, which is where anglers come in to help Game and Fish with data collection

"The benefit of having these fish tagged as well is we can track that growth through time as we re-capture those fish, so if an angler is to catch one of these tagged fish, we encourage them to take a length and weight if they’re able to, and either clip the tag off or get a good picture of that tag number, send it to us, and then we can pull up the history of that fish, how many times it’s been caught, and the length and weight that it’s been through time.”

As these studies have been ongoing for years, some fish have been caught a few times—others go for years before being caught again, so being able to record their progress—or lack of progress—gives biologists important data to inform future management decisions to ensure a healthy fishery. Good fishing and good scenery are synonymous in Wyoming—take a trip up to Jackson this summer and see for yourself.

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