Protect

STRAWBERRY

Reservoir
Fathom Restoration
40° 10′ 10″ N
111° 10′ 48″ WUSGS SITE 09282500
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Utah's first federal reclamation dam is under this water . Every figure here is quoted from a federal or Utah agency. Where a fishing detail comes from anglers rather than an agency the chip is a letter, not a number, and no rule is printed on that tier.
17,160Acres at max capacity
1,106,500Acre-feet
242 ftOperating depth at the dam
7,603.6 ftMax water surface
1974Soldier Creek Dam finished
Conditions right now
The forecast is pulled live from the National Weather Service on every page load. The water level is not, because there is no working federal gauge on this reservoir. The card below says so rather than showing a number from somewhere else.
loading
Forecast at the damNWS
–
contacting the National Weather Service
Wind, next 12 hoursNWS
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at the dam, not out on the open water
Reservoir levelSTATE
state page
The Utah Division of Water Resources publishes reservoir levels. Check it before you go.
About  ·  01

What Strawberry is

Utah's first federal reclamation project, rebuilt in the 1970s to four times its original capacity, with the original dam left under the water.

The original Strawberry Dam was "an earthfill dam 72 feet high and 490 feet long containing 118,000 cubic yards of fill", holding a "283,000-acre-foot reservoir" with "a surface area of 8,400 acres at total capacity" .

Then Reclamation built Soldier Creek Dam "7 miles downstream from Strawberry Dam", finished in 1974 as part of the Bonneville Unit of the Central Utah Project. It "eventually will raise the water surface of Strawberry Reservoir by about 45 feet" . The enlarged reservoir "will cover 17,160 acres at maximum capacity" with "a capacity of 1,106,500 acre-feet" .

Reclamation is plain about the geometry. Soldier Creek Dam sits 7 miles downstream of the original Strawberry Dam, and the new pool rose about 45 feet . The old dam stood 72 feet tall .

So the original structure, the first federal reclamation dam built in this state, is under the water you are looking at. This page does not put a marker on it, because no agency publishes a coordinate for it and a reservoir outline on its own does not tell you where the old river channel ran.

If a published coordinate or a survey exists for the original Strawberry Dam site, that is the single most interesting thing that could be added to this page.

The Strawberry Tunnel "is 3.8 miles long. It has a capacity of 600 cubic feet per second" and moves water "through the divide to Diamond Fork, a tributary of the Spanish Fork River" .

The project "comprises about 45,000 irrigable acres centered around Spanish Fork, Utah", growing "alfalfa, corn, small grains, fruit, and some vegetables" .

This is a trans-basin diversion. Water that would drain east toward the Colorado River is moved west into the Great Basin instead. That is the reason the reservoir exists at all.
Science  ·  02

The dam, the size, and what is actually measured

Reclamation publishes the structure in detail. Nobody publishes a live level, and this page says so instead of filling the gap.

FigureValue
Structural height272.0 ft
Crest length1,290 ft
Crest elevation7,612.0 ft
Hydraulic height, normal operating depth at the dam242.0 ft
Maximum water surface elevation7,603.6 ft
Outlet works capacity2,830.0 cfs at 7,603.6 ft
Construction materials3,206,000 cu yds
Original construction1970 to 1974

All from Reclamation .

Reclamation gives the enlarged reservoir as 17,160 acres holding 1,106,500 acre-feet .

Scaling the outline on this page from that acreage puts the reservoir at 10.35 miles across its long axis and 7.67 miles across its short one. Unlike the other pages in this series there is no published length or width from an agency to check those against, so the scale here rests on one figure rather than three that agree.

On depth: Reclamation publishes a normal operating depth at the dam of 242 feet . That is the depth against the structure, not a maximum depth for the reservoir, and this page does not turn one into the other.

USGS site 09282500 is named "STRAWBERRY RESERVOIR NR SOLDIER SPRINGS, UTAH" and looks like exactly what this page needs. It is not. The site holds discrete samples from 1949 to 1958 and reports no continuous data, no daily data and no field measurements .

A statewide query of active USGS lake sites reporting reservoir elevation in Utah returns one site, and it is Bear Lake. Strawberry is not on it.

The Utah Division of Water Resources publishes reservoir levels on its own page . Check the level there →

Recreation  ·  03

Getting on the water

Two full service complexes and a run of day use areas, each one on a real Google map with satellite and street view.

The reservoir carries two full service complexes and a run of day use areas. Strawberry Bay and Soldier Creek are the complexes, with Renegade and Aspen alongside, and day use at Haws Point, Mud Creek, Chicken Creek East and West, Soldier Creek Bay and Soldier Creek Dam .

The whole reservoir
USGS GNIS feature 1446189. The point falls in the narrows joining the two basins.
Open in Google Maps →Directions →
Fishing  ·  04

Fishing Strawberry

The DWR names three fish at Strawberry, cutthroat, rainbow and kokanee. A fourth turned up in 2023 and should not be here at all.

What each one is, and what people throw at it.

Bear Lake cutthroat trout

The Bear Lake strain, stocked here

Slot restriction applies

Rainbow trout

Reported to 24 inches

Counted in the trout aggregate

Kokanee salmon

Spawns up the tributaries

Closed Sept 10 to Nov 30

Walleye

Illegally introduced. Report it, do not release it.

Not part of this fishery
Drawings are illustrations of the named species, not photographs of fish caught here. Trout and kokanee count together against one aggregate limit, so these three cards are one limit, not three.

"The DWR was contacted on Dec. 21, 2023 by an angler who reported catching a walleye at Strawberry Reservoir."

"Only one walleye has been reported thus far, but the DWR is asking anglers to continue to report any that they may catch or see at Strawberry Reservoir."

"We have not caught or detected any walleye in our netting and monitoring efforts so far." and "We will also be collecting water samples to look for walleye DNA that may be present."

"Walleye will simply not meet the angler demand at Strawberry, as walleye catch rates are typically much lower than trout and salmon catch rates."

The DWR asks anglers to report "any walleye, or any other illegally introduced fish species" . That is why walleye is on the card grid above with a red edge instead of a limit.

Confirmed from the guidebook. "At Strawberry Reservoir, Scofield Reservoir, Lost Creek Reservoir and Panguitch Lake, you may not fillet trout and salmon, and you may not remove their heads or tails while in the field or in transit."

The slot limit NOT CONFIRMED AT THE AGENCY TIER

Strawberry carries a cutthroat slot restriction. An angler source states it as four fish with trout and kokanee counted together, no more than two cutthroat under 15 inches, no more than one cutthroat over 22 inches, and all cutthroat from 15 to 22 inches released immediately .

Those numbers are not printed here as a rule. The Strawberry entry sits deeper in the guidebook PDF than we could read, and a bag limit is not something to take from a tourism page. Open the guidebook and check before you keep anything →

Utah's first federal dam is on the bottom of this reservoir.

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.

Donate to Protect Strawberry

Every figure on this page is quoted from the source named beside it.

FATHOM RESTORATION
Shoreline geometry traced from OpenStreetMap, ODbL. This page is a reference for the public and is not a navigation chart. Read the Utah Fishing Guidebook before you keep a fish.