Fishing has a particular romance and resonance in Montana. This is a place made famous by blue-ribbon trout streams and abundant lakes and where literature, artwork and films have been devoted to fishing’s power and mystique.
“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing,” reads the opening line of Norman Maclean’s iconic Montana story, “A River Runs Through It.”
The number of anglers in the state rose 11 percent to roughly 185,000 from 2006 to 2011, according to a national survey based on the latest census.
Yet as the popularity of fishing continues to increase so does the challenge of managing and protecting the state’s fisheries. Working with tightened budgets, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is grappling with complex and contentious situations in all corners of the state. A new, six-year statewide management plan aimed at strengthening preservation efforts and improving fishing habitat and opportunities has been released for public review. FWP is accepting input on the preliminary plan through Oct. 12.
The expansive plan is 479 pages and goes into exhaustive detail about every fishery in the state, excluding those in national parks. The plan will not be a replacement for regulation setting. Instead FWP officials are describing it as a road map guiding future management decisions and establishing overarching goals through 2018.
“Transparency is what we’re trying to do here,” said Jim Vashro, fisheries manager for FWP’s Region 1 in Kalispell. “We make decisions and people aren’t always clear why we made those decisions.”
Several problematic situations exist, specifically in Northwest Montana, that officials are hoping to quell through new management strategies.
The illegal introduction of nonnative fish has become a serious problem, especially in this area. More than 600 instances have been identified in roughly 250 bodies of water across the state, and more than half of those occurred in Region 1, Vashro said.
“We are really plagued in Northwest Montana with illegal fish introductions,” he said.
These illegal introductions have “caused untold damage” by hurting the native populations and their habitat. For example, Lake Mary Ronan was once one of the best lakes in the region for rainbow and cutthroat trout and kokanee salmon, Vashro said. Since 1992, when yellow perch were illegally introduced, the fishery has morphed dramatically, and presently more than 70 percent of the lake’s fish is perch while other populations, especially kokanee, have dropped “significantly,” Vashro said. Restocking efforts were increased but became too costly and cutthroats are no longer replanted in Lake Mary Ronan.
FWP plans to step up enforcement of illegal introductions, but the new management plan will also try to limit incentives. For example perch or crappie derbies could be outlawed as well as harvesting.
“We basically won’t reward bad behavior,” Vashro said.
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Fishermen on the Flathead River. file photo by Lido Vizzutti | Flathead Beacon |
The battle between lake trout and native fish, like cutthroat, is proliferating in more and more lakes, including the state’s largest, Flathead. The proposed management plan follows most of the existing strategies, including allowing gillnet studies like the one on Swan Lake. The subject remains a sensitive one, though. A co-management plan on Flathead Lake between FWP and the Bureau of Indian Affairs has expired and FWP has formally withdrawn from the process while the tribes study environmental consequences of a proposal to reduce non-native lake trout in Flathead to benefit native fish populations.
Another troublesome situation involves the hybridization of cutthroat and nonnative rainbow trout throughout the entire Flathead River drainage. Hybridization, occurring when the two similar species breed, can contribute to the decline or even extinction of native fish, including subspecies of cutthroat.
“The question is what do we do about it?” Vashro said. “It’s not a good long-term trend. At some point we could potentially lose pure cutthroat in the Flathead.”
Closer to Libby, FWP is trying to help slumping populations throughout the Kootenai drainage. Fishing below the Libby Dam was once “world class” but populations have dropped 90 percent in the last eight years, Vashro said. FWP blames the aquatic invasive species didymosphenia geminate, also called rock snot. The algae can cover riverbeds with a thick layer that eliminates nutrients and harms the habitat for insects and juvenile trout.
“Fish and the angling opportunities they provide are incredibly important to the people of Montana and their visitors,” Fisheries Chief Bruce Rich said in the introduction of the proposed statewide plan.
The FWP Commission is tentatively scheduled to vote on the proposed management plan on Dec. 20 after considering input from the public. The entire plan can be viewed online at www.fwp.mt.gov, or copies can be picked up at the Kalispell office at 490 North Meridian Road.