High water chronicles 2024, vol. 3, the fisheries are in our hands

Our trout streams in western Montana or the Idaho Panhandle have a lot in common.

Whether you fish the St. Joe in Idaho or the Blackfoot, Bitterroot, or Rock Creek in Montana, you'll find the same trout species, the same insect hatches, the same general topography, but with infinite local variations that can differ slightly as you move from one run to another on the same body of water, much less into a different watershed.

It's theme and variation. Each stream has its own character, its own nuances. Wherever we fish, we fish mostly for the same species of trout: wild rainbows and browns, and our own native Westslope cutthroats. The best hatches on each stream might be different, but generally we see the same bugs wherever we fish. That's the way our major drainages work.

My home river is the Bitterroot. What I write about the salmonfly hatch here on the upper Bitterroot might also be true of the Blackfoot and Rock Creek. The hoppers I see on the main stem here in midsummer will also light things up on Flint Creek, the upper Clark Fork and the lower St. Joe. The pale morning duns and blue-winged olive mayfly hatches will have their regular appearances everywhere. You get the idea.

So when I write about the Bitterroot, or travel to one of these other places, what I have to say about the place I'm fishing can apply, generally, to the whole area.

There are exceptions, though.

There are things that have happened on the Bitterroot that I don't want to see happen anywhere else. The fact that they could is cause for all of us, wherever we fish, to take action.

For one, FWP data over the last few years indicates roughly a 40% decline in native cutthroat populations on the upper Bitterroot. As I said once before, let that sink in.

When I first arrived here, nearly 40 years ago, the fishery was in dismal shape. I felt like I had been hoodwinked into moving here. Water that should produce an abundance of good-sized wild trout simply didn't.

In that era, the late 1980s, one outfitter had a "Wall of Fame" program to award any angler taking a trout over 18 inches on a dry fly. There might be 20-odd recipients of that award in a season. There was a slot limit - fish between 12 and 18 inches had to be released. And fish that made it into the slot limit category was a rarity - a fugitive from the law of averages.

Citizen outcry resulted in catch-and-release regulations being adopted, and the fishery rebounded. Ironically, the river was in much better shape, then. Over the years the habitat has taken a real beating.

I watched the good people in two counties on the Big Hole band together and push for streamside setbacks to preserve the essence of the Big Hole River. Simply put, you can't build a barn or a trophy log mansion so close to the Big Hole that you ruin a chunk of its riparian habitat.

Ten years ago I started writing in earnest about the West Fork of the Bitterroot, where foreseeable damage to the fishery was apparent in the overuse it was experiencing then. I asked for letters to the FWP, and those letters resulted in the formation of a committee, endless meetings and a compromised set of regulations that, in hindsight, didn't go far enough. The West Fork, and with it the upper Bitterroot, is in worse shape these days than when I started writing about its problems 10 years ago.

We are losing spawning habitat, and with it, Westslope cutthroat numbers are declining. There are brave efforts from Trout Unlimited to restore spawning habitat in several places.

And on the Blackfoot, thanks to the Blackfoot Coalition, led by my friends Travis Thurmond and Kathy Schoendoerfer at Blackfoot Anglers in Ovando and the late outfitter and conservationist Paul Roos, native Westslope cutthroats and wild rainbows on the Blackfoot have enjoyed a resurgence.

Simply put, the future of our fisheries is in all of our hands. What happens on one affects us all, and what we can do for one points the way for what can be done on others. The Blackfoot was in trouble. Today it's the Bitterroot. The St. Joe might be next.

Wherever you fish, you have a stake in the health of our fisheries.