Colorado again offering up $10k for anglers to help save one non-native species from another | Hatch Magazine

This winter and spring, through April 30, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is offering up more than $10,000 in prize money to anglers who pull lake trout out of the Centennial State’s largest reservoir — Blue Mesa, situated just west of Gunnison. Officially dubbed the 2026 Blue Mesa Lake Trout Tournament, the event is in its fifth year, and, according to fisheries biologists, it’s helped the reservoir’s prized kokanee salmon population rebound of late.

To be clear, neither lake trout nor kokanee salmon are native to Blue Mesa or to the Gunnison River basin. The management of both fish is completely contrived, and based on angler preference rather than any solid biology. The native fish in the Gunnison, of course, is the Colorado River cutthroat trout — these fish are, today, found largely in the system’s headwater streams where introduced browns, rainbows, and brook trout have yet to colonize.

Regardless, every fall for decades, the Gunnison River has been home to what many consider the best kokanee salmon run in the country — thousands of these land-locked sockeye salmon run up the river from August into October. Their terminus is the Roaring Judy Fish Hatchery on the East River above its confluence with the storied Taylor River.

The Gunnison’s genesis is where the two rivers come together at the town of Almont, about 10 miles north of Gunnison. Once migrating salmon make it up the Gunnison and into the East to the hatchery, fisheries technicians collect the eggs and get busy raising the next generation of Blue Mesa kokanee. In the fall of 2025, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials collected almost 3.2 million kokanee salmon eggs, marking the best salmon return in six years.

Not coincidentally, anglers in 2025 turned in 2,770 lake trout heads from fish measuring under two feet in length (the target-sized fish of the now-annual tournament).

“This tournament has proven to be both popular with the angling community and incredibly beneficial in working to meet our management goals of the Blue Mesa Reservoir fishery,” said Giuloi Del Piccolo, an aquatic biologist with CPW. “We greatly appreciate the public’s help and support of this tournament.”

Anglers participating in the annual event compete for four prizes — $3,000 goes to the angler who turns in the most lake-trout heads; second place is worth $1,500; the third-place winner gets $1,000; and the fourth-place winner receives $500. Any angler who turns in lake-trout heads is entered in a raffle to win one of 20 $200 prizes from the CPW award kitty.

Why is one fish better than the other?

Blue Mesa is, for all intents and purposes, the brood reservoir for all kokanee salmon stocked in Colorado. The eggs and milt taken from the fish that make it back to Roaring Judy every fall are hatched and then reared at the facility. Come spring, the “subcatchable” fingerlings are distributed across 29 waters in Colorado (many are simply turned loose in the East River and left to migrate downstream to the lake). Economically, according to CPW, the state’s wide-spread kokanee salmon fishery is worth nearly $30 million annually.

The Blue Mesa run of kokanee is legendary, and has been since the fish were first stocked in 1967. Kokanee are prized by trollers who ply the waters of the massive lake, and fly fishers can get in on the action in the fall as the adult fish migrate — anglers in the know will target the Gunnison River’s big browns and rainbows that have learned to follow the salmon up the river. Occasionally, the migrating salmon, which are native to the Pacific Northwest, spill eggs prematurely, and the trout can key in on egg patterns during the run. Mostly, though, it’s a lake-centric fishery with the visual highlight starting in August when the bright red fish move up the river and can be seen in several “staging” areas along their journey to the hatchery.

Over that last decade or so, the kokanee fishery in Blue Mesa has endured some challenges, and those challenges include being gobbled up by the lake’s other prized fish — its lake trout. Other factors play a role in overall kokanee survival, including fluctuating water levels and an outbreak of gill lice. But CPW now has some data thanks to the 2025 salmon return that shows removing small lake trout (under 24 inches) is probably helping boost salmon numbers.

“A convergence of unfavorable conditions including low water level, abundant small lake trout, and gill lice produced a series of poor kokanee returns over the past few years,” Del Piccolo said. “I expected a higher egg take this fall due to improved reservoir conditions and successful lake trout management, but I was pleasantly surprised how much better it was. I am hopeful that reservoir conditions will remain favorable and next year will be even better.”

According to CPW, there are still an estimated 20,000 lake trout in Blue Mesa that have yet to top the 24-inch threshold, and those are the fish the agency’s annual tournament pays anglers to catch.

“Ongoing harvest of small lake trout continues to be needed to maintain kokanee numbers at appropriate levels while also benefitting trophy lake trout production,” Del Piccolo said. “Lake trout are prolific, and our research has proven that smaller lake trout 24 inches and smaller consume the most kokanee. That’s why we target those fish in the tournament.”

For anglers, it’s all relative

Like kokanee, lake trout are interlopers, intentionally stocked in the 1960s to provide anglers with trophy fishing opportunities. For more than 60 years, Blue Mesa has, indeed, been one of the best places in the world to catch massive lakers. In 2023, Gunnison angler Scott Enloe caught what many believe to be the largest lake trout caught in the world in Blue Mesa. It weighed 73.29 pounds, measured 47 inches long and 37 inches around.

For trophy lake trout hunters, Blue Mesa is among the best places in the world to catch these massive char, which are native to the upper Midwest, the Great Lakes region and most of Canada, from the eastern slope of the Rockies all the way to east to Labrador, including much of the Arctic basin. In their native waters that remain dependably cold all summer, lake trout can be caught by fly fishers all season long. In the Lower 48, they are generally a deepwater fish, really only venturing into shallow water right after ice out and again in the fall when water temperatures cool off during the annual spawn.

According to CPW, the removal of smaller lake trout will not only help Blue Mesa’s kokanee numbers, but also go a long way toward enhancing the lake’s trophy char catch — removing some of the competition and reducing overall lake trout numbers, the agency says, will result in more bigger fish for trophy-minded anglers. And, yes, a healthier kokanee population is good for big lakers, too.

“Ongoing harvest of small lake trout continues to be needed to maintain kokanee numbers at appropriate levels while also benefitting trophy lake trout production,” Del Piccolo said. “Lake trout are prolific, and our research has proven that smaller lake trout 24 inches and smaller consume the most kokanee. That’s why we target those fish in the tournament.”

For biologists, it’s a delicate balancing act for a fishery that is almost completely managed for the benefit of sportfishers. Even with the lake-trout tournament well under way in 2024, CPW documented an overall increase in lake trout numbers, mostly among smaller fish. That same year, the kokanee egg harvest was its lowest since 1975 — fisheries techs collected just 1.2 million eggs, which taxed the agency’s ability to distribute salmon fingerlings the next spring.

But last fall’s healthy egg-collection efforts are giving CPW new hope, and evidence that the annual Blue Mesa Lake Trout Tournament is having the desired effect. Only time will tell, of course, but for now, the balancing act continues.

And, at Roaring Judy, last fall’s eggs are growing and will become this spring’s fingerlings. Some of those fish, for certain, will end up on Colorado dinner plates. Others will feed trophy lakers, and please head-hunting anglers. Until the end of April, though, anglers in south-central Colorado can catch and keep lake trout under two feet long, all with a clean conscience.