FISH LAKE
A lake, not a reservoir
The federal dam register has a record called Fish Lake. It is a different lake, 158 miles north. This one has been full since before anyone built anything in Utah.
Every other water Fathom has written up in Utah is a reservoir. Fish Lake is not. It sits in a graben, a block of ground that dropped between two faults, and it has been full since long before anyone built anything here. The Federal Highway Administration, describing the byway that runs along it, calls it a lake "formed by the shifting of the earth's faults" .
There is no dam on it. That is worth saying plainly, because the federal dam register does contain a record called Fish Lake, and it is a different lake. Record UT00109 is in Summit County, on the Dry Fork of the Weber River, owned by the Fish Lake Reservoir Company, finished in 1927, twenty one feet tall, 1,295 acre feet . It sits at 40.765186, -110.932396, which is 158 miles north of here.
No agency states in so many words that Fish Lake's outlet runs into Johnson Valley Reservoir. Three federal records point that way together: the USGS gauge between them is named Fremont River below Fish Lake , Johnson Dam impounds the Fremont River , and the Fremont Irrigation Company is both the 1889 counterparty and the present owner of that dam. That is an inference across three sources, not a quotation from one, and it is printed here as an inference.
On 11 March 1889, according to the Forest Service's own history of this forest, the Paiute Indian Tribe and the Fremont Irrigation Company signed an agreement over the water here. The tribe, in the Forest Service's words, "sold all rights and title to the Fremont Irrigation Company for the right to fish the outlet forever along with 9 horses, 500 lbs. flour, 1 good beef steer, and 1 suit of clothes" .
Ten years later, on 10 February 1899, President William McKinley set aside the Fish Lake Forest Reserve, 67,840 acres, "to protect the Fish Lake and Fremont River watersheds" . That reserve is the seed of the Fishlake National Forest the lake sits in today.
The company on the other side of that 1889 signature still owns the dam downstream. Fremont Irrigation Company is the recorded owner of Johnson Dam today .
The numbers, and the survey nobody has done
Three maximum depths that cannot all be right, a hand traced outline measured against a federal polygon, and four agencies who sample this lake and publish no conclusion.
There is no agency bathymetric survey of Fish Lake that could be found. What exists is three numbers with very different weight behind them.
| Maximum depth | Where it comes from | What is behind it |
|---|---|---|
| 89 ft about 27 m | Marchetti and others, 2018, indexed in the USGS Publications Warehouse, with a USGS co author | A published limnology paper. The only one of the three with a scientist's name attached. |
| 120 ft | State tourism marketing | No method, no survey, no citation. Not printed on this page as a fact. |
| 175 ft | An encyclopedia infobox | Uncited. It is nearly double the published figure. |
This page uses 89 feet, and says where it came from. If you are planning anything that depends on the number, the honest answer is that the lake has not been surveyed to a standard anyone publishes.
The shape at the top of this page was traced by hand for a print. Before it went on a page with federal numbers beside it, it was checked against one.
The outline was scaled on both axes to the extent of the USGS National Hydrography Dataset water body polygon for Fish Lake, permanent identifier 79206951 , and then its area was computed directly from the traced coordinates.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Federal polygon extent | 5,508 m by 7,046 m, which is 3.42 by 4.38 miles |
| Traced outline, scaled to that extent | 10.95 sq km, 2,705 acres |
| Federal polygon, published area | 10.447 sq km, 2,582 acres |
| Disagreement | The drawing is 4.8 percent generous |
| Aspect ratio, traced against federal | 0.749 against 0.782, off by 4.1 percent |
| Longest chord, measured off the drawing | 5.22 miles |
| Mean width, area over length | 0.81 miles |
That is the widest gap of any lake outline Fathom has published so far. It is printed rather than hidden. The drawing is a drawing. Use the federal polygon for anything that has to be right.
The area figures themselves disagree too. The federal polygon says 2,582 acres. The Federal Highway Administration says 2,500 . Those are 3.3 percent apart, and both are agencies.
The 2018 limnology paper is the only real characterisation of this water anyone has published . Four findings from it are worth carrying:
- It is dimictic. The whole water column mixes twice a year, in spring and autumn, and stratifies in between. That is normal for a deep temperate lake and it is why the deep water stays oxygenated.
- Residence time is roughly 15 to 30 years. Water that arrives as snow this winter is still in the lake when a child born now finishes school. Whatever goes in stays a long time.
- It runs on snowmelt, and it loses a lot to evaporation. The stable isotope signature says so directly.
- Dissolved silica falls by two orders of magnitude between the inflowing streams and the summer lake. Diatoms are taking it out of the water. That is a productivity signal, and it is the reason a lake at 8,843 feet grows fish the size it does.
Where everything is
Fourteen places, one campground shut for the whole season, three boat ramps no agency will give you a coordinate for, and one organism covering 106 acres up the road.
| Site | Elevation | Sites | Fee | Season |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doctor Creek | 8,848 ft | 30 | 20 dollars | May to September |
| Mackinaw | 8,885 ft | 4 group plus singles | 20 dollars | closed for 2026 |
| Bowery Creek | 9,000 ft | 42 listed on the federal booking system | see booking system | May to September |
| Frying Pan | 9,000 ft | 11 | 20 dollars | May to September |
| Mallard Bay overflow | 8,850 ft | not published | 20 dollars | opens only when everything else is full |
| Tasha Equestrian | 9,013 ft | group plus singles | 14 dollars | May to September, horses required |
| Twin Creeks | 8,800 ft | 1 group site | 60 dollars a day | day use only, no overnight camping |
| Paiute | 8,800 ft | 48 pull through | 10 dollars | May until snow closes the road |
Mackinaw is shut for the whole 2026 season. The Forest Service page carries the status and the reason: "Mackinaw is closed for the 2026 camping season due to construction in the campground" . The work is Forest Service project 64978, Bowery Creek and Mackinaw Campground Improvements . No schedule, cost or reopening date is published.
Fees above are the amounts currently posted on the Forest Service facility pages. The Forest Service labels them subject to change seasonally and publishes no 2026 fee schedule, so treat them as the posted rate rather than a guaranteed 2026 price.
There are three marinas on Fish Lake. All three are privately operated under permit on National Forest land. The Forest Service runs the campgrounds, the restrooms and the parking; it does not run a boat ramp here.
| Marina | Operator |
|---|---|
| Bowery Haven Marina | Bowery Haven Resort |
| Lakeside Marina | Fish Lake Resorts LLC |
| Fish Lake Lodge Marina | Fish Lake Resorts LLC |
All three are named, with their operators, in the state restoration record for the project that rebuilt them . That record puts it plainly: "There are three private resorts with public boat ramps located at the lake." The marinas date to the 1960s. Utah committed 1,551,000 dollars across 2019 and 2020 and estimated another 1,432,000 for 2021 and 2022 to rebuild parking, drainage, toilets, dikes and rip rap .
Utah Highway 25 is the way in, and it is the Fishlake Scenic Byway, a designated national scenic byway. The Federal Highway Administration puts it at 29.6 miles, running from Highway 24 to Highway 72 past both Fish Lake and Johnson Valley Reservoir, minimum forty five minutes to drive, no fees .
The Forest Service, on winter: "Access to the lake on Utah Highway 25 is maintained through the winter, though it can be limited temporarily by heavy snowstorms" . Utah's transport department publishes a list of nine state roads that close seasonally. Highway 25 is not on it .
Pando is a single male quaking aspen. Not a grove of them. One organism, connected underground, sending up trunks that look like separate trees and are not.
| Measure | Forest Service | Peer reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Area | 106 acres | 43 hectares, which is the same 106 acres |
| Stems | over 40,000 | about 47,000 ramets |
| Mass | nearly 13 million pounds | not stated |
| Age | started at the end of the last ice age | thousands of years, but not older than 14,000 |
| Location | about 1 mile southwest of Fish Lake on State Highway 25 | 38.52439, -111.74911, converted from the paper's UTM |
The 2018 study put numbers on it. Mule deer were browsing 24 percent of aspen suckers against a 20 percent sustainability threshold. Self replacement had been falling for thirty to forty years. Of three treatment areas, only the seven hectare block fenced in 2013 came back; the 2014 fence and the unfenced ground showed almost no successful reproduction .
The Forest Service publishes no coordinate for Pando. The one on this page comes from the study that surveyed it, converted from UTM zone 12 north, and it lands 0.64 miles from the southwest end of the lake, which is consistent with the Forest Service description. It is a lettered source on this page for that reason.
North of the lake, past Frying Pan and Paiute, the Fremont River is impounded behind Johnson Dam. The Forest Service calls the result "a relatively shallow impoundment located just a short distance north of Fish Lake" . There is a boat ramp for small motorised boats, vault toilets, and no fee.
It also carries a warning worth carrying with it. The Forest Service states that whirling disease parasites occur in this reservoir, and asks anglers to clean waders and gear before fishing anywhere else .
Ten species, and the state record book
Eight of them were put here by DWR this year. Two of them reproduce on their own and appear in no stocking record at all.
Rainbow trout
The workhorse. DWR put 446,535 of them in during 2026 across eighteen separate trips, from an inch and a quarter up to nearly eleven inches.
446,535 stocked in 2026Kokanee salmon
A sockeye that never went to sea. DWR started stocking them in spring 2015 and the first spawning run came in autumn 2017. It is the only kokanee run in the southern half of the state.
383,367 stocked in 2026Splake
A lake trout crossed with a brook trout. Fish Lake holds all three Utah records for them, and it is not close. 91,314 went in during 2026.
Three state records, all hereCutbow
A rainbow crossed with a cutthroat, so it carries both marks: the pink stripe and the red slash under the jaw. 73,916 in 2026.
73,916 stocked in 2026Tiger trout
A brown crossed with a brook, sterile, stocked to eat other fish. Both 2026 plants went in on the same day in July, 31,900 fish.
31,900 stocked in 2026Brook trout
Char, not trout, whatever the name says. Pale worm tracks on the back and red spots ringed in blue. 25,285 in 2026.
25,285 stocked in 2026Brown trout
The one salmonid here nobody calls a hybrid. A single plant of 15,360 on 1 June 2026, at under four inches.
15,360 stocked in 2026Cutthroat trout
Utah's state fish. One plant in 2026, 13,839 fish on 6 May, at about seven and a half inches.
13,839 stocked in 2026Lake trout
Present, and in no 2026 stocking record at all. The mackinaw here reproduce on their own. The Utah spearfishing record for the species came out of this lake.
Not stocked. Spearfishing recordYellow perch
Present, in no stocking record, and the only fish in Utah that Fish Lake sets no limit on whatsoever.
No limitDWR publishes every stocking event it runs. Pulled for Fish Lake, Sevier County, and added up through 4 August 2026, the year so far looks like this .
| Species | 2026 to date | Trips |
|---|---|---|
| Rainbow trout | 446,535 | 18, April to July |
| Kokanee salmon | 383,367 | 8, March to April |
| Splake | 91,314 | 3, June to July |
| Cutbow | 73,916 | 3, April to July |
| Tiger trout | 31,900 | 2, both on 9 July |
| Brook trout | 25,285 | 5, June to August |
| Brown trout | 15,360 | 1, on 1 June |
| Cutthroat trout | 13,839 | 1, on 6 May |
| Total | about 1,081,516 | 41 trips |
Those totals are arithmetic done here on the DWR line items. DWR publishes the individual events, not a per water total, so the addition is this page's and the events are DWR's. The DWR tool serves the current calendar year only, so there is no way to show you 2025 from the same source.
Fish Lake is not the lake trout lake. That is Flaming Gorge, and it is not close: the Utah catch and keep record lake trout is 53 lbs 15 oz, Chance Scott, 2020, out of the Gorge .
What Fish Lake is, is the splake capital of the state by the record book. All three splake records came out of this water, and so did the spearfishing record for lake trout.
| Record | Species | Figure | Angler | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catch and keep | Splake | 17 lbs 4 oz | Stacy S. Willden | 2006 |
| Catch and release | Splake | 34 inches | David MacKay | 2020 |
| Spearfishing | Splake | 16 lbs 7 oz | Daniel James Boyd | 2012 |
| Spearfishing | Lake trout | 32 lbs 7 oz | Bruce A. Boyd | 2008 |
All four from the DWR record list . A splake is a lake trout crossed with a brook trout. It is stocked, not born here, which makes a nineteen year old seventeen pound state record a statement about the lake rather than about the hatchery.
Fish Lake carries the Blue Ribbon flag in the guidebook, and its own entry is three lines long .
- No limit on yellow perch. None. Take what you can catch.
- One trout or salmon over 24 inches, regardless of species. The statewide limit of four trout, kokanee and grayling combined still applies underneath it. This caps the big ones.
- Through the ice, the hole may not exceed 18 inches. The statewide rule is twelve. There are exactly three exceptions in Utah and this is one of them, alongside Bear Lake and Flaming Gorge.
- Spearfishing runs from 6 a.m. on the first Saturday in June until official sunset on 9 September. Outside that window it is closed here, which is written into the rule itself .
There is no Fish Lake splake limit and no Fish Lake lake trout limit. Both count against the same statewide four . And a caution for anyone reading the rule book directly: R657-13 also lists a Fish Lake (Summit County). Different lake, 158 miles north, the one with the dam on it .
DWR put the first kokanee into Fish Lake in spring 2015. The first spawning run came in autumn 2017. The state's own restoration record for the viewing walkway built here says it plainly: this is the only kokanee population and spawning run in the southern part of the state .
In September and October the fish leave the lake body and turn the colour in the drawing above. Males grow the humped back and the hooked jaw. They spawn, and they die. That is the whole life cycle, compressed into about three weeks in one shallow corner of one lake at 8,843 feet.
The Forest Service lists tiger muskellunge among the species at Fish Lake . No DWR source does. It is in no DWR stocking record for this water and there is no tiger muskie rule for Fish Lake in the guidebook .
Tiger muskellunge are documented by the Forest Service one water downstream, at Johnson Reservoir .
This page does not resolve that. It prints both positions and draws neither fish. If you have caught one in Fish Lake, DWR is the place to say so.
What to watch for
Cold water at 8,843 feet, a recovery that took a day, and one that took twenty eight years.
The lake surface sits at 8,843 feet by the federal polygon . The Forest Service says about 8,850 , the Federal Highway Administration says 8,850 , and the 2018 paper says 2,696 metres . They are all describing the same thing and none of them is a low number.
That elevation changes three practical things.
- Cold water year round. A lake this high, this deep, that turns over twice a year does not warm up the way a desert reservoir does. Cold water shock is the mechanism in most sudden immersion deaths, and it does not care how well you swim.
- Any dive here is an altitude dive. Standard sea level tables and standard computer defaults are wrong at 8,843 feet. This page is not dive instruction and does not give you a schedule. It just says out loud that the altitude is not optional to account for.
- Weather changes fast and the water is a long way from a hospital. Richfield is about forty miles.
Neither of these has a primary agency release that could be found. Both are carried here from news reporting, and both are marked with lettered chips because of it.
22 October 2021. Christopher Winslow, 36, of Cedar City, and his thirteen year old son had been fishing overnight. At 3:14 in the morning they dropped a friend at the Fish Lake Lodge marina and went back out. The boat capsized. Neither was wearing a life jacket. Father and son held opposite ends of the overturned hull until the boy let go and went under; his father could not bring him back up. The father was rescued. The boy's body was recovered about 8:30 the following evening by the Utah DPS dive team, working with Utah State Parks, the Wasatch County Sheriff's Office search and rescue, Sevier County and the state fire marshal's office .
1997, and then 2025. David M. White, 44, of Washington City, is believed to have fallen from his boat at Fish Lake in 1997. A multi day search recovered nothing. On 16 May 2025 someone walking a dog on the Fish Lake shoreline found a shoe with bone inside it . On 6 August 2025 DNA confirmed the foot bone was his, twenty eight years after he went missing .
The Forest Service warns that whirling disease parasites occur in Johnson Valley Reservoir, a few miles up the same drainage, and asks anglers to clean waders before fishing elsewhere . Boats, waders, nets and boots move things between waters. Clean, drain and dry is the whole answer and it takes a few minutes.
No harmful algal bloom advisory for Fish Lake could be found published by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. The state does sample this lake, in Widgeon Bay . The absence of a published advisory is not the same as a published all clear, and this page will not turn one into the other.
A lake that has been here since the ice age, sampled by four agencies, and not one of them publishes how deep it is.
Fathom Restoration is a Utah 501(c)(3) that runs volunteer dive cleanups and is built to pull what does not belong out of Utah water, statewide.
Donate to Protect Fish LakeEvery figure on this page is quoted from the source named beside it.
Sources
How these were checked
Numbered sources are agencies. Lettered sources are everything else. Four things were checked before they went on this page and four premises did not survive it. The dam register record named Fish Lake is a different lake in a different county. The state record lake trout is not from here. This is not one of the waters with extra ice fishing lines; its winter rule is a hole size. And the claim that sources disagree over which tribe signed in 1889 could not be substantiated, so this page prints only the account the Forest Service publishes. Where agencies disagree with each other, all of them are printed: that happens over the surface area, the elevation, and whether tiger muskellunge live here at all.National Hydrography Dataset, water body permanent identifier 79206951, reach code 14070003000749. Surface area, elevation and the polygon extent this page measures against
Fish Lake limnology and watershed aqueous geochemistry, Fish Lake Plateau, Utah. Marchetti, Anderson, Donovan, Harris and Huth, 2018, index 70200893. The maximum depth, the volume and the residence time
Fremont River below Fish Lake, site 09329000. Daily record 1 June 1939 to 29 September 1945, then discontinued
Fish Lake Utah SNOTEL, station 1149:UT:SNTL, at 8,780 feet, reporting since 1 October 2010
Fish Lake Recreation Area, including the species list, the winter road statement and the ice timing
Pando. The acreage, the stem count, the weight and the decline
Discover History. The 11 March 1889 water agreement and the 1899 forest reserve
Mackinaw Campground, carrying the 2026 closure notice
Doctor Creek Campground
Bowery Creek Campground
Frying Pan Campground
Twin Creeks Picnic Area, which states in as many words that there is no overnight camping
Mallard Bay Overflow Rec Site
Tasha Equestrian Campground
Paiute Campground, which the Forest Service places on Highway 25 north of the lake, not on it
Lakeside Fish Cleaning Station. The only coordinate any agency publishes near the marinas
Project 64978, Bowery Creek and Mackinaw Campground Improvements
Johnson Reservoir Rec Site, including the whirling disease warning
National Inventory of Dams, record UT00153 Johnson. The dam that actually holds water in this basin
National Inventory of Dams, record UT00109, filed under the name Fish Lake but recorded in Summit County on the Dry Fork of the Weber River
Utah Fishing Guidebook 2026. The Fish Lake entry, the statewide trout limit and the spearfishing season
Administrative Rule R657-13, taking fish and crayfish. The ice hole rule and the spearfishing closure
Record fish caught in Utah
Fish stocking report, 2026. Every stocking event at Fish Lake, Sevier County
Watershed Restoration Initiative project 4637, the kokanee spawning viewing walkway, which records the 2015 first stocking and the 2017 first run
Watershed Restoration Initiative project 4918, Fish Lake three marinas renovation, which names all three marinas and their private operators
Water Quality Portal station search. The four agency monitoring sites on this lake
National Lakes Assessment
America's Byways, Fishlake Scenic Byway U-25. The 2,500 acre figure and the 8,850 foot elevation
Seasonal roads. Utah Highway 25 is not on the list of state roads that close for winter
Mule deer impede Pando's recovery. Rogers and McAvoy, 2018, PLOS ONE 13(10) e0203619. Peer reviewed, not an agency. The 47,000 stem count, the browse rate and the fence result, and the only published coordinate for the clone
Fish Lake, Utah. The 175 foot maximum depth and the six mile length, neither of which has an agency behind it
Body of 13 year old boy recovered after boat capsized at Fish Lake in Sevier County, 23 October 2021
13 year old Cedar City boy drowns at Fish Lake, father rescued from capsized boat
Foot bone found at Fish Lake belongs to fisherman missing since 1997, DNA confirms, 6 August 2025
Bones found in shoe at Fish Lake may belong to fisherman missing since 1997, 16 May 2025
Bowery Haven Resort, one of the three private marina operators, whose own site also carries the 2026 Mackinaw closure
Why none of these is the lake
Nothing measures Fish Lake in real time. There is no water level gauge, no storage record and no temperature buoy. The only stream gauge ever operated on the outlet, USGS 09329000, ran daily records from 1 June 1939 to 29 September 1945 and has been silent since .
The three snow cards read a station on the ridge, not the water. SNOTEL 1149:UT:SNTL, "Fish Lake Utah", sits at 8,780 feet about two and a half miles southwest of the lake and has reported since 1 October 2010 . Snow water equivalent is how many inches of water are locked in the snowpack there. In summer it reads zero, and that is correct rather than broken.
Precipitation is a water year total. It accumulates from 1 October and resets. It tells you what the basin has received, not what the lake holds.
Why snow at all. The 2018 limnology paper found this lake is snowmelt dominated with substantial evaporative loss, and holds its water for roughly fifteen to thirty years . The snowpack above it is the closest thing to a live reading of the lake's water budget that exists.
The forecast is a point forecast from the National Weather Service for the middle of the lake. It is weather, not water temperature.