Slightly above average precipitation for northwest Montana in 2006 made fish biologists very happy. That tells you how hard drought has hit the state the past 5 years. However, that precipitation came in roller coaster cycles that had everyone on edge. Winter started with good snowfall, then the storms stalled. Late season snows brought snowpacks up, and then rains started in late April. Rain-on-snow events produced some real gully washers in parts of the region, especially around Hungry Horse Reservoir where the main westside road was washed out in several places. Lake Koocanusa is supposed to be managed under a variable outflow regime but the Army Corps, which manages Libby Dam, gambled by holding reservoir levels higher to provide sturgeon and salmon flows downstream. The rains brought out runoff in a rush, forcing spill over the dam for 19 days. Water spilling over the dam carried air into the depths, forcing nitrogen gas into the water. The nitrogen in turn was absorbed by fish, causing gas bubble disease similar to the bends suffered by divers. By the time spill ended, nearly all the fish downstream from the dam showed gas bubble disease. Little direct mortality was observed but biologists won't know if fish numbers were affected until population estimates are completed next spring. The spill also caused millions of dollars of flood damage downstream. The variable flow regime (known as VARQ) would have avoided spill and Montana is pushing hard to see it is followed in the future. The summer was fairly dry but groundwater maintained reasonable stream flows and held off any drought related fishing closures. Fall brought more torrential rains that washed out a number of areas including parts of the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier Park and a section of Libby Creek that had newly-installed stream habitat structures. All that stream damage had agencies and private landowners hopping to do repairs and kept fish biologists and conservation districts busy reviewing and approving streambed permits.
The high flows in some streams left trees piled like jackstraws, blew out culverts and bridges, moved stream channels and built huge gravel bars. However, high flows also cleaned out fine sediments that had built up in spawning and rearing gravels during drought years. Fish like bull trout are resilient and they took advantage of higher flows and clean gravel to spawn in record numbers in some places. Fishery crews counted bull trout spawning beds or redds in most of the South Fork Flathead tributaries and found record high numbers. Wounded Buck Creek, which has held only single-digit redds in the past few years, was one of the streams most heavily damaged by flooding yet it produced an incredible 47 redds. High redd counts also indicate the past two years of recreational bull trout fishing in Hungry Horse Reservoir and the South Fork Flathead have not impacted the fishery.
The Swan drainage also produced very high bull trout redd counts although there are clouds on the horizon for that fishery. Lake trout showed up illegally in the Swan a number of years ago. Expanded netting this fall turned up nearly 200 lake trout from 10 inches to 16 inches so it looks like the lakers are poised to take off. Similar introductions in other waters have had drastic impacts on bull trout, kokanee and other fish. A multi-agency working group, and a graduate student project, are evaluating whether the lake trout can be controlled.
Bull Trout redd counts in the Middle and North Fork Flathead tributaries jumped more than 50 percent. Morrison Creek in the Middle Fork was blocked partway up by a beaver dam complex. Low flows have allowed beavers to block many spawning tributaries during drought years. Morrison counts were down but it looks like many of those fish may have spawned in adjacent tributaries. Coal Creek in the North Fork has shown few or no redds in the past few years but produced 17 redds this year. Keeping a broad distribution across their range is key to long-term species survival.
Most Kootenai tributaries had average or below average redd counts but the Wigwam River in Canada, the primary spawning stream for Lake Koocanusa, had a record high 2,300 redds which represents as many as 6,000 adult bulls. The high count is particularly good news since a landslide nearly blocked the Wigwam last year and produced low redd counts. The Koocanusa bull trout fishery is one of the largest in the U.S and has produced a very popular fishery the last two years.
2006 produced a number of record fish in Region 1. Josh Emmert started the trend with a 14-3/8 inch, 2.39 pound yellow perch from Lower Stillwater Lake in February. In case you wonder what it takes to produce a perch that big, the fish was aged at 11 years old. It had two 2-1/2 inch crayfish and one 6-inch perch in its stomach along with an estimated 120,000 eggs. Ten year old Nathan Bache of Libby caught the next whopper, a 9.5 inch, .96 pound pumpkinseed from Upper Thompson Lake in July. Nathan was fishing for bass with a green-headed jig when the sunfish hit. "I casted over by some weeds and the fish bit hard" he said. "It fought like a two pound bass." I never saw a sunfish that big," said Nathan who had the fish weighed on a certified scale. "I was happy when I found out it was a record." Nathan plans to have the fish mounted. Flathead Lake kicked out two records in August with a 1.12-pound peamouth caught by Stacy Ross and a 10.46-pound lake whitefish caught by Tom McDonald. The big whitefish capped off a very good whitefish season that saw anglers catch thousands of fish from late July to early September.
All that good fishing makes you wonder why some people persist in illegally moving fish around Smallmouth bass showed up in a number of waters in rapid succession including Echo, Flathead, Dickey, and Marl Lakes and the Eureka Kids Pond. A largemouth bass was caught in Little Bitterroot Lake. Illegal crappie were removed from a private pond in the Swan with the pond owner paying $500 in costs. A lake trout was caught, and unfortunately released, in the Kootenai River downstream from Libby Dam. All those introductions pose great risks to existing fisheries. Fish crews spent a lot of time and money to remove illegal fish from Blue and Kilbrennan lakes this year to restore fisheries. In a related move, the South Fork Flathead Westslope Cutthroat Conservation Project received final approval this year. The project proposes to remove nonnative rainbow and Yellowstone cutthroat from 21 lakes in the drainage over the next 10 to 15 years and replace them with pure westslope cutthroat. The South Fork contains nearly 10 % of the pure westslope in Montana and represents half of the big interconnected westslope fisheries in the state so maintaining genetic purity is essential. The nonnative fish were planted legally nearly 50 years ago before species management was a concern. They are slowly dribbling down toward the main drainage and removal of nonnative trout will help preserve one of the largest intact native fisheries in the state. The project will be preceded by a great deal of public involvement hosted by the Region 1 FWP Citizen Advisory Committee before work starts next fall (2007).
In other native fish news, Flathead Lake is co-managed by FWP and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The state and the tribe produced a Flathead Fishery Co-management Plan in 2000 with the goal to reduce lake trout through sport fishing to enhance bull and cutthroat trout while maintaining recreational fishing opportunities. A lake trout boom fueled by Mysis shrimp in the 1980's crashed kokanee and reduced native fish. After a 5-year review, in 2006 the daily lake trout limit was increased to 50 fish and an increased emphasis was placed on fishing events that provide incentives to anglers to harvest smaller lake trout. 2006 also saw a lot of work by Avista Corporation on Cabinet Gorge Dam and PPL Montana on Thompson Falls Dam to build fish passageways for bull trout and other fish.
Not all the news was native fish. After 7-years of environmental reviews tiger muskies were approved and introduced into Horseshoe Lake near Happy's Inn to control suckers and northern pikeminnows. Ironically, a recent outbreak of viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS), a particularly nasty fish virus that affects almost all species, resulted in a ban on importing all fish from the midwest, including tiger muskies. Tiger muskies produce popular fisheries in all western states so fish and hatchery managers will work to identify a new source.
Rapid population growth continues to put a crunch on fishing access in northwest Montana. FWP obtained a permanent easement on DNRC land on Echo Lake and started construction of a fishing access site, which should be ready by spring, 2007. This will be the only access to this popular warmwater fishery. To illustrate how quickly access can change, the private boat ramp on Crystal Lake where public use had long been allowed changed hands, and was quickly closed to the public. FWP has land on the lake and is scrambling to provide access but boat anglers will likely be shut out in 2007.
Fishery biologists are closely watching several mining proposals. The Revett Mine in the lower Clark Fork has been working through the permitting process for a number of years. Fisheries concerns are whether mine shafts under the Cabinet Wilderness would dewater several mountain lakes and potential impacts downstream on Rock Creek, one of the few bull trout spawning tributaries to Cabinet Gorge Reservoir. There are several proposals to mine coal, extract coalbed methane and mine gold in the headwaters of the North Fork of the Flathead in British Columbia. Impacts to water quality and fish habitat could reach all the way down to Flathead Lake. A state task force is pushing for more baseline data to better assess the potential impacts of these proposals.
