Artic Grayling
November 3, 2008
High elevation lakes in Utah hold a unique sport fish ready to test your best fly presentation. Arctic grayling are an iridescent trout found deep in the mountain ranges well above nine-thousand feet -- where better to escape summers’ heat?
These fish are remarkable, but how they get to these lakes perhaps defines their hardy demeanor. “A lot of people like to put something different in their creel,” says Ted Hallows, Kamas hatchery supervisor. “Bringing in an arctic grayling gives them variety over the brook, rainbow and albino rainbow trout that they usually catch in the high mountain lakes, especially here in the Uinta Mountains.”
For Bob Powell, grayling were the perfect complement to a five mile hike through the pines to a remote lake on the north slope of the Uintas near the Wyoming border. “We fished with two flies on one line. From my experience I have always had to move the fly on the line or you couldn’t hook them. With these fish, you could throw out your fly, let it sit and sometimes catch two fish.” Bob said it was also not uncommon to hook a second grayling on the second fly while reeling in to shore. “It’s fun to have a variety of fish to catch.”
Anything but newcomers, Arctic Grayling were first stocked in the Uinta mountain range over 100 years ago. Early fisheries managers transported the fish in metal milk cans carried on horseback. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources began a regular schedule of stocking this member of the trout family into high elevation lakes. “Today we can put them on a plane that has seven compartments with oxygen and stock up to seven lakes at a time,” Hallows said. “What used to take us all summer we can do now in two to three hours.”
On a summer stocking effort in July, Kamas hatchery personnel prepared over 70-thousand fingerling-sized grayling for their aerial journey. Turquoise-blue plastic raceways held the next generation of fish for anglers. Four troughs each measuring just 18-inches wide by twenty feet long and six inches deep, acted as a watery nursery for the first two months of life. At a meager one inch in length the fish were big enough to survive their freefall to a high elevation lake.
Arctic grayling are stocked in 30 to 60 lakes throughout the Uinta and Boulder mountain ranges in southern Utah. They are also stocked in the Manti-LaSal range and in some parts of Fish Lake National Forest. Because of the surplus produced over the past two years, biologists have scheduled stocking for some high altitude lakes along the Wasatch front as well.
Successful culture practices have made the difference in their production. Fingerling ready for stocking each year have doubled from 35,000 to over 70,000. “We go to Wyoming in the Grays river area to spawn the grayling,” Hallow said. “We have found that if we start feeding the fish brine shrimp first it gives them a better diet to get started. Their survival goes way up and their growth is better too.” The eggs are collected in mid-May. By the end of July the fish are ready for stocking. The fish grow rapidly in two short months.
Two summers after they have been stocked these grayling are ready for anglers. “Most of the fish will grow an inch per month in the cold water,” Hallows explained. “They will be five or six inches by next summer and then nine to ten the next summer.” It is not uncommon to find some fish that are three or even four years old in the same drainage system offering anglers even more to pursue with bigger fish.
All of these fish stocked in remote lakes means some will become self-sustaining over time. Natural reproduction will help ensure that more fish will survive for anglers hardy enough to hike the distances needed to reach these remote lakes.
Aerial stocking has become the de facto method in a Cessna 185, especially with a ninety percent survival rate. Fingerling-sized grayling and other trout species are dropped from an altitude of about 150 feet above the water’s surface. Their small size allows them to flutter down to the water reducing the risk of injury. Ted Hallows explains, “If they’re too heavy they hit the water too hard and burst their air bladder. So we have to keep them less then three inches to survive the fall.” 
Today fish are stocked far more efficiently than ever before. But even now, some fish are still transported by horseback from lake to lake. In an effort to broaden their range, Colorado cutthroat trout are captured from streams in the Boulder Mountains in southern Utah and placed in coolers on horseback to travel the rugged terrain to a new natural lake. Other fish are loaded onto ATVs for a short jolting ride up impassable roads to remote lakes to help bolster existing populations.
Arctic grayling have found a unique place among the trout at higher elevations, not unlike their native roots in the arctic regions of Alaska and Canada. “They generally survive better in lower oxygenated waters in the high country. Some of the waters don’t hold the brook trout, rainbow and cutthroat as well, so the grayling survive better and have a niche there,” Hallows said.
As their name implies arctic grayling prefer very cold water. They thrive in high mountain lakes and streams. Grayling grow best in water temperatures ranging from 48 to 52 F. In just four years they are full grown. Some grayling have been measured at 20-inches but the average one measures only about 10-inches and tips the scale at well under a pound. The current state record is slightly over 17-inches and one pound.
Arctic grayling have a unique large dorsal fin and their translucent colors seem to glow underwater. Grayling will also quickly change colors to match their surroundings. From an early age these fish have an appetite for insects and other terrestrials. That’s why they will so quickly take your fly or lure. These fish are tenacious, strong and colorful.