Strawberry Reservoir

Strawberry sits at about 7,600 feet on the high plateau east of Heber, and since Soldier Creek Dam joined the old Strawberry and Soldier Creek basins in the 1980s it has been one big, windy, many-armed lake of about 17,000 acres. The state treated it in 1990 and rebuilt the fishery around Bear Lake cutthroat, which eat the chubs that crashed it before, with sterile rainbows and kokanee alongside. The cutthroat are the point: the slot keeps every fish from 15 to 22 inches in the water, so the lake is full of fish in that window and big ones above it.

For a fly angler it fishes best in the weeks after ice-off, usually late May into June, when cutthroat cruise the shallow bays and points and eat chironomids, leeches and damsel nymphs close to shore. Strawberry Bay, Haws Point and the Soldier Creek arm are the usual starts, from a float tube, a pontoon or the bank. Through July and August the fish drop deeper and the wind comes up most afternoons, so mornings and evenings matter and an intermediate or sinking line earns its place. September and October bring the cutthroat back into the shallows, often the best fishing of the year. Kokanee may not be kept from Sept. 10 through Nov. 30, and the tributaries are catch and release with a spring closure to protect spawning fish.