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Mark Freeman's Commentary His own personal den of exploitation ST. GEORGE, UTAH � High above the red-blushed sandstone moonscapes of Zion National Park lies a lush plateau thick with mule deer, aspen groves and rainbow trout. When afternoon winds bend the thick grass and ripple the surface of Kolob Reservoir, the piggybacking bouquet smells more like the Colorado high country than the Dixie desert of St. George, a dusty south Utah town an hour�s drive away. "I defy you," Morril Stout says between drags on a cigarette and slurps of a root beer shake, "to go on a 50-mile drive anywhere that�s more beautiful." For the first half of his 60 years, Stout knew this plateau as his own personal den of exploitation, where he shot porcupines out of trees for kicks and sold mule deer bucks to California hunters unwilling to go home empty-handed. But one night 24 years ago, a near-stranger shot Stout with his own rifle during a drunken brawl overlooking Kolob Reservoir. As he lay among the aspens, bleeding in buckets from his slug-torn left arm, Stout thought little of his future but much of his past. "I laid there, helpless, and I thought about all the animals I had shot and wounded and left run around, hurt and helpless," Stout says. "It changed my life." There he laid to rest his old self, the man locals called "Immoral" Stout. And he armed himself with a new desire to protect, enhance and share the mountain riches that he once selfishly exploited. The moral Stout now sings the praises of the aspen, the grass and the mule deer of the plateau overlooking Zion�s watercolor canyons. But most of all, he has become the unofficial godfather to a rainbow trout fishing haven called Kolob Reservoir. "Truth is, this is not the best fishing on earth," Stout says. "But you�ll be hard-pressed to find a prettier place." He has studied Kolob�s cool, shallow waters and the thick pods of trout within them. He�s even rented porta-potties that dot the shoreline for anglers and campers to use at his expense. Stout also has released every fat Kolob rainbow he�s caught on flies, and he has helped install new regulations that ensure more anglers catch fish and release them, the moral Stout way. Above all, he�s come to appreciate introducing the lake and its poster-quality surroundings to all who inquire � much to the chagrin of local anglers who don�t share their piece of heaven. "Piss on it," Stout says. "This is a nice place, and people deserve to know something about it." Inquiring minds will find Kolob as a blue dot in the red map of the desert. It is the water supply for St. George, a town about the size of Ashland that was once the site of failed Confederate attempts to grow cotton in the Utah rocks. Kolob is like a Utah highlands version of Diamond Lake, a shallow and picturesque lake loaded with stocked hatchery fish. Utah�s version traps high-elevation snows within a 100-acre impoundment secured by an earthen dam. Kolob is home to hordes of rainbows, mostly 13-15 inches long that grow from fingerlings planted by state fish biologists annually. Stout has played with Kolob rainbows since he was a kid growing up in nearby Hurricane, and as a young adult he joined friends in leasing the hunting rights on huge swaths of private lands that included the lake�s far shores. Stout took well more than his share from these lands and waters as a youth, offering bucks he shot under a set price list � $50 for forked horns, $75 for three-points, and for four-points, "the price was negotiable," he says. On one drunken trip to celebrate his 36th birthday, Stout invited a man who picked him up hitchhiking to join him and a case of whiskey along Kolob�s shores. Later, the pair argued and Stout thought he was about to engage in yet another drunken brawl. But the stranger took Stout�s hunting rifle and shot him. Stout survived, but the shooting resulted in more than a weak and bent left arm. He swore off hunting, giving his guns to his children. Stout began to devote more time to fishing, then moved away to a string of different careers before returning to St. George in the mid-1990s. Stout rediscovered Kolob, took up fly-fishing and helped get the lake�s regulations changed. It�s now fishing only with flies and lures, with a limit of two trout over 18 inches a day. All others must be released unharmed. The new regulations proved to be a tough sell at first to southern Utahans who consider catch-and-release fishing akin to playing with their food. "It�s a macho thing," Stout muses. "It�s kill every fish they catch and take them home." But the lake�s blossoming fishery has made believers out of trout killers. Kolob now sports a bevy of trout easily taken on woolly buggers and leeches all day. Midge hatches can make some mornings a fly-caster�s dream, while afternoon mayflies direct feeding trout to the surface. "The trouble with Kolob," Stout says, "is that it has too many rainbows in there for the amount of (natural) food." That, Stout says, likely keeps the fish�s average size down. But the lack of spectacular quality is counter-balanced by their quantity. Forty-fish days are common, and Stout regularly plugs his home waters to listeners of his outdoor show on local radio and the free monthly outdoor newspaper he started publishing last spring. "I like to help people, and watch more than anything nowadays," says Stout, now 60. The old hoarder now gets flak around town from locals who scoff at Stout�s trout-fishing generosity. "They think this is crowded," he snarls. "These people here have never been anywhere that�s crowded." Stout travels five times a week from St. George past Zion�s heavenly canyons to the aspen groves and wind-dappled waters that continue to carve new wrinkles in his persona. The man who once laughed as he looked down a rifle barrel at the sight of exploding porcupines now finds his heart tugged even by catch-and-release fishing. "I feel bad sometimes for sticking a hook in their mouth and pulling them up to the surface," Stout says. "I must be getting old." (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at: [email protected] ) Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.