Utah Fish and Wildlife Stock Kokanee Salmon in Boulder Mountains Blind Lake

Have you ever taken over 4,000 fish horseback riding? That’s exactly what happened in the Boulder Mountains on May 25, 2022. State biologists have introduced kokanee salmon to Blind Lake on the North Boulder Slope of the Boulder Mountains. It’s a remote lake, but actually the deepest and the largest lake in the Boulder Mountains. The lake is actually technically a reservoir, created in the early 1900s.

I first discovered that the state had planted kokanee in Blind Lake when I was looking at the annual kokanee stocking reports (fun fact, 2022 the state of Utah stocked more kokanee than any other year). Every year I pull the stocking data and put it into a spreadsheet to look at trends and analyze what the state is doing and where the kokanee fishing might be hot in coming years. This is what I saw:

Water name	County	Species	Quantity	Average length	Date stocked
BLIND L NBS	WAYNE	KOKANEE	4012	2.32	05/25/2022
BLIND L NBS	WAYNE	RAINBOW	2014	2.85	07/07/2022

I’m a fisherman and a data analyst, a certified nerd. It’s a fun combo. While doing this, I discovered a new lake that hadn’t had any kokanee stocked in it before- BLIND L NBS. Naturally I reached out to my contacts at the DWR to figure out what that was (because google wasn’t any help), and what the story was behind it.

Blind L NBS is an abbreviation for Blind Lake, a small lake on the north slope of the Boulder Mountains (NBS is our abbreviation for North Boulder Slope). It is 52 acres in total area and 52 feet deep.   Kokanee were selected for that lake during a recent revision to the Boulder Mountain fishery management plan.

Stocking Salmon by Horseback

Because the lake was so remote, I asked the biologists how they stocked the kokanee, and if they’d used air planes to drop in the kokanee (if you haven’t seen the videos of this, it’s pretty cool to see, and I’ve put a video of that at the end of this article). Here is what they told me about how they stocked the lake:

“We normally stock that lake by plane but based on the date they were stocked they would have been the only plane load, which is inefficient (when we stock brook trout, grayling, and cutthroat by plane we load the plane up and stock a bunch of lakes that are near each other at once and we do plane load after plane load for 2-3 days until we are done…a single load of kokanee doesn’t meet that mold).  We also stock by carrying fish in manually, whether they are on a four wheeler, horseback, or buckets that are carried by people.” Horseback was the method selected, and the state was good enough to send me pictures from the venture. I wish they would have sent me an invite, but pictures are still good.

The Decision to Stock Blind Lake with Kokanee

So why the Boulders and why Blind Lake? “Essentially, we put together a group of ~15 anglers who represented diverse interests in the Boulder Mountains and we sat down with that group and put together a plan for managing the Boulder Mountains that reflects what we believe are the interests of the public. 

One thing this group wanted to provide was diverse angling opportunities.  Adding Kokanee into Blind Lake was viewed as a way that we could provide a unique fishing opportunity in the Boulders.  Our data shows that Blind Lake has a good zooplankton population (as you know, the vast majority of the diet of Kokanee salmon are plankton) and has a good inlet tributary that could support spawning.  As a result, we feel that this lake could support Kokanee and provide an opportunity that is not only unique in the Boulder Mountains but unique statewide (we don’t have any other high mountain, small kokanee lakes).  Our intention with Blind Lake is to not stock it annually.  We’ll stock it for 4-5 years and then stop stocking and let the population persist naturally.”

Accessing Blind Lake

Blind lake is accessible by hiking or by horseback, and is 2 miles from where you can park a car. You also go up about 500 feet in elevation in those two miles. It’s not a super difficult hike, but it isn’t one I’d want to do while portaging a kayak, that’s for sure. Fishermen generally only target these fish from boats or through the ice. It’s incredibly difficult to target them from shore, unless it’s during the spawn, which is highly regulated in Utah. Because the lake is smaller and more shallow, officials think that this lake will actually provide shore fishermen the greatest opportunity to catch kokanee from shore, even during the regular season, should the salmon gain a foothold and survive in the lake.

At the meeting where Blind Lake was selected, they also did look at the depth of the lake. At 52 feet deep, Blind Lake isn’t as deep as a lot of other kokanee fisheries in the state of Utah. State officials don’t think that this will be an issue. With that said, biologists view this very much as an experimental effort.  They stocked a relatively small number of fish and they don’t know how they will do in this kind of setting.  They intend to monitor how they perform and look at their return to anglers.  That data will let us know whether this was a worthwhile effort. Either way, its exciting to see this expansion, especially in the 100th year since kokanee were first introduced to the state of Utah.

Other Fish Species in Blind Lake

• Splake
• Grayling
• Rainbow Trout
• Colorado River Cutthroat
• Brook Trout

Stocking Fish by Plane Video