"What this tells us is that the predation rate has exceeded what it was last fall, which is what we want to see," Wilson said.

The survey did not produce many rainbow, and Wilson isn't sure just why. The number of rainbow being brought in by anglers, however, is staying pretty consistent, but the number of rainbow being caught in the nets has been going down the past few years.

"We'll increase our netting this fall to see if we can see where the rainbow are holding," Wilson said. "We know they're here, but it seems they're in places other than where our nets are. But then we may find we need to be more concerned with survival.

"We may have to change our stocking program and move to larger fish. What this means is we'll stock fewer fish, but they'll be larger, so we'll get better survival. With some anglers, it's how many fish we stock. And even though we may stock fewer of the larger fish, anglers will be able to catch more fish because of the higher survival rate."

The survey did show an overall increase in the size of the cutthroat, which again is an indication that the new management plan is working.

Wilson explained that the age class of 5-year-old fish, which makes up the bulk of the larger fish, was a weak one, which means there are fewer of the larger fish in the 20- to 21-inch class.

"But we have two very strong age classes following — 4- and 3-year-old fish, which make up the vast majority of feeding fish, and we're getting good growth," he said.

"We predict, through our modeling, that the overall adult population of fish in Strawberry is the best since treatment. We're predicting we have more than 200,000 cutthroat over 20 inches. There were years in the mid-1990s that our modeling predicted we had fewer than 500 of the larger fish in the whole lake."

And, as noted, the fish that were caught in the nets were fat and healthy. Fat ratings range from zero to 4. The vast majority of the feeding fish were in the range of 3 to 4.

"I really do think fishing is as good as it's ever been here in Utah, and here at Strawberry," said Jim Karpowitz, newly appointed director of the DWR, on a recent visit to the reservoir. "I remember coming here as a kid and catching nothing but chubs. My dad has fished here at Strawberry his whole life. We came here last year and caught a lot of cutthroat."

The results of the spring survey were generally what Wilson expected, which was good growth in the cutts, a slight drop in the number of rainbow netted and the appearance of some chubs.

All things considered, he said he's encouraged with the results of the new management strategy and that by all indications this should be a good summer for fishing at Strawberry, but added that 2006 and 2007 will be even better.

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E-mail: grass@desnews.com