Fish Lake, Pando, and the high country above Richfield.

Fish Lake is best known to anglers for trophy lake trout, the fish most people here call mackinaw. They are the reason serious fishermen make the drive: the big ones can top thirty pounds, and some accounts put the largest well past that. Alongside them the lake holds splake, a lake-trout and brook-trout cross, plus rainbow trout, kokanee salmon, and yellow perch, so there is something to catch at almost any depth and season.

The season shapes the target. In the warm months the rainbows, kokanee and perch are the easy, active catch, while the big lake trout and splake fish best in the cooler water of spring and fall and go deep and slow in midsummer. Perch here have no harvest limit and anglers are encouraged to keep what they catch, which makes the lake a good place to teach a kid to fish without much pressure.

Winter is a season of its own. Once safe ice forms, usually around the New Year, Fish Lake becomes one of the busiest ice-fishing destinations in Utah; the state has reported some recent years drawing more anglers through the ice than in open water. Always confirm ice conditions and the current rules with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources before you head out, because early and late ice is the dangerous kind.

The landmark building on the west shore is Fish Lake Lodge, a great log hall raised in the early 1930s from spruce cut nearby. It is described as one of the largest all-log structures in the country, a long, dark-timbered lodge with a dance floor and a stone fireplace that has drawn families up to the lake for generations. Even if you are not staying, it is worth walking through for the sense of an older Utah vacation that has not changed much.

Three privately run resorts spread along that shore: the lodge and its cabins, Lakeside Resort, and Bowery Haven. Between them they offer cabins, RV sites with hookups, marinas with boat rentals, general stores and tackle. They are independent businesses on Forest Service land, not the government, so each keeps its own schedule.

Two honest notes for planning. Full services, including food, run on a summer season that is roughly Memorial Day through Labor Day, and the sit-down dining at the lake has been limited in recent seasons, so confirm meals and lodging directly before you count on them; the nearest reliable restaurants are in Loa or Richfield. And the whole basin has little to no cell or internet service, which is part of the appeal and a thing to plan around.

About a mile southwest of the lake, on the slope above State Route 25, stands the reason Fish Lake shows up in science books. What looks like an ordinary aspen forest is Pando, a single organism: roughly 47,000 tree-like stems spread across about 106 acres that all grow from one connected root system and share identical genetics. The name is Latin for "I spread," and it is nicknamed the Trembling Giant for the quaking aspen leaves.

Because botanists count the whole clone as one living thing, Pando is often described as the largest single living organism on Earth by mass, at an estimated 6,000 tonnes, or roughly 13 million pounds. That superlative deserves an honest asterisk: it holds by weight, but a honey fungus in Oregon covers far more ground, and researchers debate both how to define a single organism and how old Pando is, with age estimates ranging widely into the thousands of years. What is not in doubt is that it is one connected clone, and an astonishing one.

It is also fragile. Studies have found the clone struggling to replace its older trunks, in large part because deer and elk eat the young shoots before they can grow, so land managers have fenced sections and are working to help it regenerate. Visit on the trails, leave the fences alone, and come in autumn if you can, when every stem turns gold at the same moment because they are, genetically, the same tree.

The road that carries you in is a destination itself. State Route 25 runs about ten miles from its junction with SR-24 up along the west shore of Fish Lake, and it is part of the Fishlake Scenic Byway, designated in 1990. It climbs through aspen and meadow to the lake basin, and in late September the aspen along it, Pando included, light up gold across the whole plateau.

Fish Lake is the giant, but it is not the only water up here. Past the lake the road continues to Johnson Valley Reservoir, a shallower, quieter water at the north end of the basin, and small lakes like Mytoge sit on the plateau above the east shore for those willing to walk. Together they make the Fish Lake Plateau a cluster of high water rather than a single lake, which is why the fishing and the camping spread out.

This high country is a summer and fall place. The basin holds several developed Forest Service campgrounds, among them Bowery Creek, Doctor Creek, Mackinaw and Frying Pan, and miles of forest road and trail on the surrounding plateau. Snow lingers late and comes early up here, so the practical window for the trails and the far campgrounds is roughly June through October.