The cutthroat trout population in the Hoback River in the Bridger-Teton National Forest has rebounded since the Wyoming Game and Fish Department stopped stocking the river in 2005.
Fisheries Biologist Diana Miller says the state had been supplying the river with trout for 50 years prior, because biologists believed the species wasn’t weathering the harsh winters and ice there.
“What we believed happen was when we were putting fish into the river, the hatchery fish were taking up all of the space and all of the food that wild fish could have been utilizing.”
Miller says hatchery fish had trouble surviving the winters and migrated away from the Hoback River. But since the competition was removed, the wild cutthroat population has remained and grown.