Before a planned poisoning of a Jewel Basin Lake, Fish Wildlife and Parks are lifting fishing limits.
Lower Big Hawk Lake, (or Big Hawk Lake,) is slated to receive a dousing of rotenone in September. The action is part of the larger South Fork Westlope Cutthroat Trout Project: a 10-year effort to rid the South Fork Drainage of hybridized cutthroat trout.
Through September 20th, 2008 FWP is allowing licensed anglers unrestricted harvest of cutthroat trout in Big Hawk Lake. Anglers can catch, and keep, as many of the cutthroat trout in the lake as possible. Big Hawk Lake has westslope and Yellowstone cutthroat hybrid trout currently.
In the fall of 2007 FWP biologists treated Black and Blackfoot lakes in the South Fork drainage with rotenone. They restocked with a genetically pure strain of westslope cutthroat trout brought in from the fish hatchery in Anaconda, and continue to survey the insect, plankton, and amphibian life as it comes back. Big Hawk is scheduled for the same treatment.
For more information on the South Fork Westslope Cutthorat Trout Project, go to the FWP Region 1 web site at http://fwp.mt.gov/r1/default.html and click on the WCT link.