SALT LAKE CITY – Thousands of tiger muskies were released into three Utah reservoirs Thursday in the hopes they can curtail chub populations.
The fish were imported from South Dakota, and the tiny creatures will grow to be up to 4-feet long in the next five years.
Justin Hart is the aquatic program manager for the southeastern region, and he said chubs are a big problem in some areas. He said the fish they introduced should devour many of the chubs.
“Joe’s Valley for a lot of years has had a Utah chub problem,” he said. “Utah chubs are a large minnow that get 12, 14-inches long. They’re problematic in trout fisheries. They overpopulate themselves, and the trout just can’t compete, so the tiger muskie at Joe’s Valley we stocked to be a predator on Utah chub.”
Experts said the tiger muskies are a hybrid species that cannot reproduce, so they won’t overpopulate like the chubs have.
