Fishing on the South Fork of the Sun River in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Fishing is a popular activity in the Sun River watershed, and there are many rivers, creeks, lakes and reservoirs available. Every two years, the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks conducts a statewide survey to determine how much fishing goes on in the state. This survey is done through the mail by sending questionnaires to a random sample of people who bought fishing licenses. The amount of fishing on a particular body of water is expressed as “angler-days”. An angler-day is defined as one persons' fishing trip for the day. Typically, a fishing trip involves spending about 4 hours on the water. Therefore, an angler-day basically means one person fishing 4 hours on a particular body of water.

The Sun River watershed supports an average of around 48,000 angler-days of fishing each year. About one-third of this occurs on rivers and creeks and the rest is on lakes and reservoirs. The most heavily fished body of water in the Sun drainage is the Sun River itself, which supports around 10,000 angler-days per year. The most popular reservoirs are Nilan, Willow Creek, Pishkun, and Gibson. The Sun watershed supports a lot of recreational fishing use, but the most popular fishing areas in Montana like Canyon Ferry Reservoir, the Missouri River, the Madison River, or Fort Peck Reservoir each can support more than 100,000 angler-days every year! Some of those places, like the Missouri River below Holter Dam, can get very busy, or even crowded on nice summer days.

Economists have estimated that the average resident angler spends about $37 per day to fish on rivers and $53 per day to fish on reservoirs in Montana. Non-residents spend about $194 per day to fish on rivers and $84 per day on reservoirs. These expenses include transportation costs, food, lodging, guide fees and miscellaneous trip costs but do not include the costs of items like fishing equipment, licenses, boats, and vehicles. Using these estimates, recreational anglers probably spend around $2.5 million per year on fishing trips in the Sun River watershed.

So, recreational fishing adds a substantial amount to the local economy. Anglers spend quite a bit of money on food, gas, fishing gear, boats, and other equipment. Non-resident anglers spend money on lodging, restaurants, guides and outfitters as well, which all helps support local businesses and diversifies the economy. If the fishery of the mainstem Sun River could be restored to a more natural level, the river could easily support 3-4 times as much fishing use as it currently does. This would probably result in additional angler expenditures of around $2 million per year (or more) for goods and services, which would further help local businesses in the watershed.