Photo courtesy of Clayton Stewart

Beau Stewart of Las Vegas, Nev., caught this big ‘bow on a fly at Utah’s Minersville Reservoir.

A good case of spring fever had set in long before I loaded up my family and pointed the old Suburban south toward Utah’s Dixie. Our ultimate goal was the tiny hamlet of Gunlock near St. George, and the annual gathering of extended family who awaited us.

But I just had to stop somewhere along the way and cast a line. It didn’t matter where I fished, so long as there was open water and a few hungry trout that I might goad into taking my bait.

I asked around and was directed to Minersville Reservoir near the town of Beaver. The place had a reputation for big trout. The water was open, and it wasn’t very far from the Interstate.

What more could an angler want? So Minersville it was.

While my wife and kids waited in the truck, I baited up and went to work. Within just a few minutes, my line suddenly went taut. The rod tip dipped hard. I set the hook, and the battle began.

When I landed the fish, its length measured about 16 inches and change. While no monster by some standards, it was certainly big enough to make an impression on a guy who grew up fishing the Wasatch Front for pan-size planters.

Nearly two decades have passed since that chilly morning excursion to Minersville Reservoir. And during that time, some significant changes have come to this high-desert impoundment. Originally built to store the winter runoff from the nearby Tushar Mountains for irrigation purposes, the lake has become a primary destination for serious flyfishermen looking to land trophy rainbows -- a place where 22-inch fish are the norm, and 16-inchers are looked upon as a bit of a nuisance.

This is due in part to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and its management of Minersville as a trophy fishery where an angler’s take is limited to a single trout more than 22 inches long, and anglers are required to use only artificial flies or lures.

These special regulations, which went into effect in the early 1990s, had a twofold purpose. One was to create a quality trout fishery. The other was to allow the trout to grow large enough to withstand heavy depredation by fish-eating birds and to successfully compete for forage with an overpopulation of Utah chubs.

The state was also treating the reservoir with rotenone approximately every five years. Without it, good fishing lasted only about three years.

“I like the trophy regs,” said Kyle Moss of Beaver City Sport & Pawn, a 32-year resident of Beaver who has seen the water’s ups and downs as a fishery.

“Since the day they put them in, (Minersville) has been a great place to fish. Lots of people catch 24- and 25-inch fish. In the spring, you can catch fish just about as fast as you can get it out there.”

Moss said that one group of four anglers caught 298 fish in one day. And if that wasn’t enough, the group did the same thing the very next day. Not bad for a body of water that was drained completely in 2004 and refilled in 2005, following repairs to the dam!