I had a chance to do some fishing on the Green River below Flaming Gorge Dam in Northeastern Utah a couple of weeks ago, it is a fantastic fishery. The fishing was great and with the clear water you can see fish everywhere in the river. Last spring I bought an inflatable kayak and used it to float the river from just below the dam to the first takeout point 7.5 miles down river at Little Hole, did this eight times.
I do not like eating trout much, but my wife loves them, so on my second float I kept a nice brown I caught just above the takeout at Little Hole. Upon cleaning the fish I found it was full of little snails and having read about the Zebra Snail I kept them and showed them to the owner of the Fly shop in Dutch John. He is a long time resident of the area and has published a book about the Green River Fishery. He told me they were Zebra Snails and wanted to know exactly where I had caught the fish so he could report it to the Biologists who monitor the river. He was very concerned about this new infestation and said it could eventually ruin the fishery as the fish begin to feed almost exclusively on the snails, which they cannot digest, and eventually starve to death. Have any of you on the list experienced this problem in your local fishing spots and what, if anything, is being done about these critters? Thanks, JoeL
