Jim Murray and I hit the river for a little winter fishing yesterday. The sun was out, the temps soared, and the fish; well, there were fish in the river...We absolutely crushed 'em on streamers though. Yep, even with the sun we moved about 4 fish every 150 yards and landed a quarter of them--all browns. Of course, we didn't start throwing streamers until 150 yards above the take-out and the nymph fishing sucked up until then but it left us thinking, "Hmm, what if..."
I wade-fished Hauser Dam the other day and caught the fish in the pic above. If you look close at this fish, you can tell it was a hatchery fish because its fins are all jacked up. (Look at the pectoral fin. It's entirely missing.) It's got great colors and good size but it is a hatchery fish and it did come out of Holter Reservoir. The reason the fins are gone and the sure-tell sign it is a hatchery fish is because either through the process of holding the fish in the concrete runs or by transporting them in the wire mesh tanks, the fins were wore down.
I used to fish below the dam a few times every spring and it always bothered me to see people keeping trout but I've since changed my tune. These fish were stocked by FWP for harvesting and quite honestly, what that does is attracts people that want to keep fish to this area and away from the wild fishery downstream so they keep the fish that are there for the taking and leave the wild fish alone.
There's a reason people come to Montana to fly fish. It's the scenery for sure but it's also the numbers of wild trout. At some point, the biologists figured out that if you left the fisheries alone, the trout that were there would start reproducing naturally and we would generate healthier and livelier fish. It seems to be working. Go toe-to-toe with a few of these wild trout and you know what I'm talking about. These are the trout we want to protect and having the option to keep a few hatchery fish in places like stretch below Hauser Dam helps.
The only draw-back to having these hatchery fish is some of them do spill over the dams and they can contaminate the gene pool and even skew the fish counts. It's why we have fall spawning rainbows. (Which really might not be a big deal.) It's also why you often see jacked up fish in the lower river when you're fly fishing and if I was going to be completely honest, a good number of the fish caught in the upper stretches of the Lower Missouri near the dam are these hatchery fish. They're still fun to catch and if you want to take a couple and try them out on the BBQ, go for it. They actually eat better than the wild trout.
Conservation is a pretty big deal out here because tourism and fly fishing specifically, brings in a lot of money. I heard somewhere around $54 million were generated last year on the Missouri River alone. That's a lot of folks spending a lot of money to catch these wild trout. That means a lot of pressure on the fish and it's not going to slow down anytime soon unless the fishery takes a crazy turn for the worse.
Another attempt you may have heard of to preserve wild trout is this #keepemwet movement. What this movement is promoting and what I've heard from some outfitters out here is that they aren't going to allow their guides to take grip and grins of fish with clients. If they want a picture, the client is going to have to get out of the boat and hold the net with the fish still in the water and guides are suppose to do everything they can to not bring the fish into the boat.
I'll probably get in trouble for this but I heard about #keepemwet yesterday so we took a picture of a whitefish in the #keepemwet "approved" pose and posted it on twitter. It was a little snarky...not going to lie but here's the deal; I agree, we don't want to put unnecessary stress on the fish and we don't need to take a picture of every fish a client catches but at the same time, I'm not going to tell a guy who paid $500 to see his wife or kid catch a trout that he can't take a picture of them holding one. And the reality is, is there's no science to support the idea that fish are getting too stressed out because of a picture. That doesn't mean dropping them in the boat and kicking them around or not being careful. It means that we all have a responsibility to minimize the stress but let's not get crazy.
I know, I saw the fish counts and one could wonder why the Mo has gone from 7,000 fish to 4,000 per river mile in one year but the truth is, that's not because of mortality, it's because of an error in methodology. Two years ago we went from 4,000 fish to 7,000. Do you think we just naturally produced a jump like that in one year? No, it's because of the way they count fish and not account for high water and fish being concentrated in certain areas. (It might even have something to do with all those hatchery fish...hmm.) I'm not saying we don't have a responsibility to take care of the resource but let's call for a little balance and let's not persecute folks for wanting to take a picture or two.
Keep 'em where they live...
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