A few years back, I wrote about a float trip on the Stillwater River, a float that included catching a brown trout near where the Stillwater joined the Yellowstone River. It was a nice way to cap a great float with an old friend; someone I used to work with at the Kalispell Target before we both moved away.
Shortly after, I received a polite email from someone at Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP), double-checking to make sure I meant the eastern Montana Stillwater River and not the Stillwater that flows through Kalispell.
Brown trout are amazing fish, cherished by many anglers. They grow larger than most trout, and are aggressive, predatory fish, which makes them a prime target for fly fishers who want to throw big streamers in rivers and catch 20-inch (or better) wild trout.
That doesn’t mean any of us should be happy to learn FWP has since confirmed there are brown trout in the Flathead River drainage. There are already plenty of non-natives swimming around the Flathead.
I realize this could be categorized under the “That Ship Has Sailed” label. The Flathead is already a mess when it comes to introduced fish. Lake trout run rampant in the watershed despite heroic efforts to reduce their numbers; millions of Lake Superior whitefish swim in Flathead Lake, and even smallmouth bass now fin away in the Big Lake. Of course, rainbow trout are everywhere in the system, hybridizing with cutthroats, which puts the native trout on a trajectory to be replaced by cuttbow mutt-fish.
And don’t get me started on northern pike. I know those fish have a large fan club, but they are a menace to native fish anywhere outside their historic range.
Stopping the spread of non-natives might seem a hopeless task, but that doesn’t mean we should give up. There remain protected places where we should do what we can to keep natives alive and flourishing. This also means that anglers have a duty to stop spreading around the fish they like.
Sure, who doesn’t want to pull a tank of a brown trout off a bank of the Madison or the Yellowstone, but those waters are not too long a drive and the browns there are essentially naturalized. But we don’t need them in Church Slough or the main stem of the Flathead River.
I’m not terribly thrilled with FWP’s dubious proposal to expand its pheasant-stocking program beyond the customary and entirely appropriate youth-day hunts. Those birds are released before the general season opens, and the few that survive a week until the general season opens are soon removed from the gene pool. After the youth hunt, wild birds should rule in states such as Montana.
I haven’t hunted pheasant in Montana in a long time, but I hear they are down. Guess what — pheasant numbers are down all over pheasant range in the U.S., because this is what happens when drought happens. We’ve had a lot more abnormally dry years than wet ones the last decade or so.
I’ve hunted pen-raised pheasants before and think there’s a place for them. My first pointing dog spent a lot of time on those birds, because both that dog and his handler (me) were just learning how to hunt upland game birds. I’ve hunted nothing but wild birds since that dog was 2 years old, however, and that was 20 years ago.
Pen-raised pheasants don’t pose the threat to native birds the way introduced fish can, because pheasants — like brown trout — are not native to Montana or the North American continent. They’re here because we brought them here, and because we like them. I don’t think we need to eliminate either species, but Montana is wasting money raising and releasing game birds to replace declining wild populations.
Wild always, and native whenever possible, is Montana’s legacy to the rest of the country.