Amid Colorado River cuts, a fishing guide hopes the ‘leftovers’ are enough
A grinning fisherman often needs two hands to hold a massive lake trout on a sunny day at the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which straddles the Wyoming-Utah border. Jim Williams has been a guide here for more than 30 years, and said some of the best trophy fish in the Rockies call these waters home. … But this habitat has seen some drastic changes in a short amount of time. In the past two years, the reservoir has dropped to its lowest level since the 1980s. Marinas and river channels are running dry. … One of Flaming Gorge’s primary uses is storage for the rest of the Colorado River Basin. The Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees federal water management, released an extra 500,000 acre feet of water from the reservoir last year.