Diamond Fork now offers good fishing  for browns and cutthroats, and it is expected to become a blue-ribbon stream   during the next few years. Issues concerning the stream are outlined in the letter below, and the response.

Last fall I had a wonderful afternoon fishing on Diamond Fork. As long as the sun was on the water the cutthroats were hitting hopper flies. It was a great day.

I know that the DWR is managing this river drainage now as a Bonneville Cutthroat restoration area. I wonder if you would consider doing an article sometime with comments from the DWR on how much effort it's putting into restoring genetically wild strains of trout, how their projects are coming along, and how they intend to improve the fishery on Diamond Fork now that the Monk's Hollow Dam seems out of the picture.

It seems to me that the Diamond Fork River has some potential to become one of the great native cutthroat trout rivers in the state if the stream flow can be stabilized.

Diamond Fork originates with Halls Creek which flows about three miles and is then joined by Chases and Shingle Mill Creeks. These two small streams come together about a half mile above where they empty into Halls Creek. This stream, Halls Creek, flows down the canyon till it reaches Three Forks, where it is joined by Sixth Water, Fifth Water and Cottonwood Creeks. Below this point the stream is called Diamond Fork Creek.

There are cutthroat trout throughout this drainage, but their origin and strain are still uncertain. Fish in Chases Creek and Shingle Mill have been identified as cutthroat, unknown strain, and cutthroat hybrids, not hybrid with rainbow trout. The cutthroat in Halls Creek are unknown strain, but likely the same as Shingle Mill and Chases. We collected additional cutthroat from these three streams in 1997 and are waiting for a report of the genetic tests.

Cutthroat in Fifth Water Creek are also of unknown strain we are also waiting for results of samples collected in 1997 from this stream. We have not seen any cutthroat in Sixth Water Creek since the treatment.

The fishery in Diamond Fork and lower Halls Creek is dominated by brown trout with some cutthroat and rainbow trout.

Our management plans include determining what strains are present and, based on that information, we will decide how to proceed with Bonneville cutthroat introductions. We may treat some sections of these streams and remove all fish and then reintroduce Bonneville cutthroat, but hopefully that won't be necessary in all streams. We do not plan to remove brown trout. Brown trout are an excellent fish and support an excellent fishery.

Our plan is to use cutthroat trout from Red Butte Reservoir for these transplants. The Red Butte cutthroat are pure Bonneville cutthroat, we established them in the Red Butte drainage for the purpose of then transferring them to other ancient Lake Bonneville rim streams. We now have a good population in Red Butte Reservoir and Creek and have completed two years of disease certification. We must complete one more year disease certification before these fish can be moved to other streams. If Red Butte Reservoir is not breeched and these fish pass the disease certification this year, we could move some of them this year following the test results.

Our first priority will be to move some of these Bonneville cutthroat into Sixth Water Creek and try to get a cutthroat fishery reestablished there. We hope to eventually reestablish pure Bonneville cutthroat throughout this entire drainage.

If we loose Red Butte Reservoir, that will set our entire program back at least three years as we will have to begin the disease certification on fish in Little Dell Reservoir which are also pure Bonneville cutthroat trout.

We established special regulations in the Diamond Fork drainage to protect the cutthroat that are present and establish public support for the reintroduction of Bonneville cutthroat trout. Because cutthroat are so easy to catch, special regulations are felt necessary to protect them and help them get established and be maintained. We feel that brown trout can support harvest and that harvest of brown trout will help reduce their numbers and hopefully enable cutthroat to become established.

We attempted to relax regulations on Sixth Water Creek from "Trout limit 3, artificial flies and lures only, 2 under 12 inches and 1 over 20 inches," to "8 fish no gear restriction," so that more brown trout would be harvested.

Representatives from Trout Unlimited opposed the change and the Wildlife Board approved the present regulation which allows "four trout," no gear restriction.

We feel this regulation needs to be more liberal to encourage brown trout harvest or we may not be able to get cutthroat reestablished.

We have worked very hard to get and maintain adequate flows in Sixth Water Creek. At present flows are set by the EIS at 25 cfs in the winter and 32 cfs in the summer. Resent work we have completed indicates that better flows would be 35 cfs in the summer and 75 cfs in the winter. These flows would be best for cutthroat trout and still be very satisfactory for brown trout. We will be working to achieve these changed flows.

When the next pipeline is completed, which will connect the Syar Tunnel to the present Diamond Fork Tunnel - which is the present preferred alternative with Monks Hollow eliminated - irrigation flows in Diamond Fork will be reduced and improved and we do expect the entire Diamond Fork stream will become a blue ribbon brown trout, cutthroat trout fishery.

I guess this really got long, hope it will be helpful to your readers and also help us gain support for our management plan.