Hoot-owl restrictions are on again in southwest Montana. All the major rivers in an arch sweeping from the Clark Fork east to the Gallatin, as well as a handful of others, are covered by the emergency regulations.
For those who don’t know — and in this age of angry summers this has to be a diminishing, if not non-existent class of Montanans — hoot-owl restrictions close waters to fishing from 2 p.m. to midnight. River temperatures are highest in the afternoon and evening and when rivers warm to the mid-70s, survival becomes a challenge for cold-adjacent trout.
Tempt a trout to eat your fly in 75-degree water, then play it to exhaustion, before netting and releasing, and that may be a death sentence no matter how gingerly you ease the fish back into the current or how earnestly it swims away.
We may forever debate the reasons for our warming planet, but warming it is. When I first moved to the Bitterroot in the early ’90s, hoot-owl restrictions were rare. At least that’s what my sometimes-unreliable memory tells me. These days, if we’ve celebrated the Fourth of July, there’s nothing unusual about hoot-owl restrictions going into effect on the Big Hole River.
The Bitterroot is a little different. The slugs of cold water released from Painted Rocks Reservoir keep the river fishable further into the summer. This is early for those in-stream flows, however. A biologist friend once told me Painted Rocks’ water was used to get Bitterroot trout through the hottest week or two of the summer, usually late July or August.
This heatwave seared its way across the West a week ago. I left California last week and noted the temperature soar as I crossed the Mojave Desert. By the time I reached Baker, a travel stop along I-15 and home to the world’s tallest thermometer — actually an electric sign, not a 134-foot-tall, mercury-filled-glass tube — which read 122 degrees.
Despite growing up in the Southwest, I’d never felt 120-degree heat before. So of course I stopped, for the experience and all. It’s something to tell the grandkids.
Also, thank goodness for modern automobiles and air conditioning. The temperature gauge on my truck barely moved from its usual spot as I zipped across the desert. Fifty years ago, 122 degrees would have left I-15 lined with overheated jalopies draped with empty canvas bags that had once been filled with extra radiator water.
Because of the heat, I queried the Outdoor Writer, who for years has published a newsletter on upland game in Southern California. It’s supposed to be a banner year in the Mojave for quail and chukar after consecutive El Niño winters, but I wondered if the heatwave might undo everything the rain provided.
No, or at least not yet, he answered. But he’s headed out to the Mojave next week for some scouting.
These sorts of challenges seem to be the new normal. If you’re a fly-fishing guide in Montana or a shop owner, widespread hoot-owl regulations this early in July will put a major dent in your income, when it should be peaking. Hoot-owl means full-day trips are out, as is the holy grail of guiding, a long-summer day with three half-day trips.
And I’ll worry about those birds in the southwest until I get reports from folks hunting them this fall. Desert quail and chukar are adapted to summer heat, but 122 degrees is rough on chicks. And despite the last two winters, the long-term trajectory in the southwest is hotter summers AND drier winters. That will be no better for quail than 75-degree water is for trout.
One consolation may be the thriving introduced quail population in the Bitterroot. The way things are going, southwest Montana may someday be a quail hunter’s paradise. Unfortunately, we’ll probably have to travel to the Northwest Territories to fish a trout stream after your stream-side lunch.