Montana has over 59,000 miles of flowing streams and rivers, and hundreds of thousands of acres of lakes, reservoirs and ponds. These are home to more than 90 species of fish, of which 56 are native species. Montana’s fisheries are extremely diverse, ranging from wild rainbow trout, cutthroat trout and Arctic grayling that reside in western Montana’s cold rivers and streams, to paddlefish, sturgeon, and sauger that reside in eastern Montana’s large prairie rivers. Rainbow trout, yellow perch, bass, walleye, and lake trout are among the fish found in different lakes and ponds throughout the state. These diverse and ever-changing fisheries require continuous monitoring to keep track of different populations, to evaluate the effectiveness of regulations, and to monitor the impacts of illegal fish introductions, whirling disease and other aquatic nuisance species.
Management of these diverse fisheries requires information from a variety of sources, including from anglers themselves. Montana maintains a Fishing Log program where anglers voluntarily keep track throughout the year of where they fish, how often, and what they catch. These data are provided to Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks (FWP), and are put into a long-term database that biologists can use to supplement more formal monitoring and data collection efforts. This newsletter was originally developed to provide information to Fishing Log holders about the status of Montana’s fisheries, and was titled the Fishing Log Newsletter. We recently changed the name and look, but the newsletter is still the same interesting publication it has always been. We hope you like it and thank you for supporting Montana’s world-famous fisheries. And we are also always looking for more anglers willing to keep a log of their fishing activities and catch!
The Annual Fishing Report is also also available to download in a PDF version.
