New Tools For Montana Fly Fishers

CHECK YOUR EQUIPMENT NOW

.. The essential tools for Montana fly fishers are similar in many respects to those used by fisher folks around the world.
.. Clippers are a must for tippets, fingernails, nose hairs, and other sundry small cutting chores.

.. The Orvis Zinger is mandatory for attaching implements of destruction that can put your eye out if released too suddenly. It now comes with a tape measure for accurate documentation of scale size on suspect species of fish.

.. The Multi-Tool is in fashion these days. The original multi tool is the Swiss Army Knife & it comes with a ruler and hook disgorger for those anglers asleep at the switch, it has a ring for your second zinger.
..Other available gadgets promise to confuse even the well initiated and will give genuine pleasure to the crowd at the pub as you divert the conversation away from your fishless day on the Firehole River. The one on the carabinier sports a titanium timepiece for timing chug-a-lug contests.

.. Hook Sharpeners are a staple and even come electrified for the progressive angler. Should you miss too many 'takes' you can always say that the batteries were dead.

.. Forceps are necessary and can be hung on your third zinger. Place them low on the side away from your casting hand, this aids in the necessary ambidextrous quality of an accomplished fly fisher.
.. They now come with flesh grabbing pincers to remove copious quantities of flesh as you try to get the hook out out of your companions ear.

.. Unique to the Montana gadget cluster is the addition of Dikes and Fence Pliers. The Montana legislature is currently wrestling with our constitution which allows access to the peoples' water.
.. Be sure to have both a good set of fence pliers for removing staples on offensive signs, and a good set of diagonal cutters for smartly clipping wire that may inhibit livestock from accessing water and dying of thirst. Both are now available with padded and cushioned grips.
.. Vise grip fence pliers are useful for holding together a broken strand of wire that you discover in your adventures. The quick release feature guarantees rapid egress in emergency situations.

.. A Copy of the Montana Constitution is useful for confronting belligerent shylocks. All necessary tools are compact and will fit nicely in the bottom of your lunch sack.

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.. It's noon, bright overcast, and time for brunch and a replay of yesterday's glorious sport on the Madison River, the fish have awakened with a vengeance. Go to the bottom of the page and practice on the map.

WOLVES = TROUT

Trouts Best Friend In Yellowstone

..Straight from Southwest Florida comes insight into the "bizarre ecological labyrinth" in Yellowstone National Park. We found this one of the most able statements of our surroundings in recent memory. We quote at length from the article in Gulfshore Life.

From the 1890s through the 1920s, in an effort to increase the elk herds and "protect the wildlife," the park service went about the business of eradicating the wolf from Yellowstone. The last wolf pack was killed off in 1926.

For half a century things were fine. The elk herds, lacking the wolf packs that historically preyed upon them, rapidly expanded. When winter arrived, knowing they had nothing to fear, the herds elected to browse the readily obtainable young cottonwoods and willows that lined the trout streams and rivers of the park. Ecologists began to note that there were always plenty of sapling cottonwoods and any number of mature, 70-year-old trees, but nothing in between.

Then the trout started disappearing. Lacking the intermediate-sized trees and heavy underbrush that had been consumed due to the elk’s overgrazing, the exposed banks of the rivers were now washing away in the spring freshets and the summer thunderstorms. Those streams, once crystal clear, were now silted over and murky. The trout, being sight feeders, either starved or swam off in search of cleaner water. The fly-fishermen of the Lamar, Yellowstone and Firehole rivers were also disappearing, much to the frustration of the local outfitters and hotels.

In an effort to reduce the overgrazing, the National Park Service, amidst a storm of local controversy, decided to capture 14 wolves from the wilds of British Columbia and reintroduce them into Yellowstone in 1995. Eventually three separate wolf packs were established within the park. With the wolves keenly aware of the elks’ tendency to browse along the riverbanks during the deep snow-packed months of winter, the wolves were inadvertently standing guard over the young cottonwoods and willows. Once the wolf packs began to thin the elk in these river valleys, the juvenile cottonwoods soon returned, the trout streams cleared, and there you have it: wolves = trout.

..The elk along the Firehole River have also adopted a couple of other interesting feeding behaviors since the fires of '88. They submerge their heads to feed on potamogeton, (which concentrates arsenic,) and they eat charcoal, (which buffers the digestive system and allows the delay and/or denial of winter kill from bark stripping, and pine needle eating .)

.. Elk will eat a willow right down to the ground and kill it. Moose, on the other hand are gardeners. They eat the tender tips of branches and cause the willows to branch and proliferate. Interestingly there are few moose or willows along the Firehole. There were more in the 60's and 70's. We intend to have a post in the future about the vanished willows of the Firehole River.

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The fish are working The Madison River between the lakes. We've started the annotations on the map. Report when we get back.

Lake Fish Hatchery

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PART OF A MISSPENT YOUTH

.. The Yellowstone National Park Web Page continues to grow. It's a bit less user friendly now. However, since the revamped site was brought into line with the rest of the NPS sites, (well most of them,) there have been additions of at least 2,000 new slides and the publication of on-line resources, including Yellowstone National Park Its Exploration and Establishment by Aubrey L. Haines.

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.. The early years of Yellowstone National Park saw an attitude of exploitation and sporting hedonism prevail. The park was the playground of those who could afford a train ride, a guided tour, and lodgings in grand, (and not-so-grand,) hotels.
.. Hunting was allowed, and fishing encouraged - nay, even exploited by commercial fishing operations.:

When Yellowstone National Park was created about 40% of its waters were barren of fish. Park administrators early expressed an interest in developing these areas for additional sport. Until 1883, both hunting and fishing were allowed in Yellowstone as the only practical way to feed visitors evolving from a frontier subsistence policy. By the early 1880s there were enough hotels and restaurants to allow a ban on hunting. At the same time, fishing was restricted to sportsmen and a few commercial enterprises who supplied the hotels. This continued until 1917.

.. In 1889, the United States Fish Commission began fieldwork in Yellowstone. A fish cultural station was in operation on Yellowstone Lake ten years later. "It was the beginning of a gigantic hatchery operation that in the next fifty seven years would yield 818 million trout eggs for use in other waters (mostly outside Yellowstone.)" In 1911, the Yellowstone Park Lake Station was made a substation of the Federal hatchery at Bozeman, Montana.
.. Facilities were primitive in those days. The fish hatching ponds were wooden troughs outside. These were consistently damaged by bears and the eggs destroyed. A permanent two story log hatchery building and another log building were constructed on hatchery Creek near the Lake Hotel in 1912, along with a collecting station at Clear Creek in 1913. The Columbine Creek collecting station was built in 1914 and a cottage for the superintendent a few years later. These buildings no longer exist.
.. As early as 1920, the Annual Report of the Director of the National Parks indicated the Lake Hatchery was replenishing the depleted fish supply in the National Park Service. In 1922, the scale of the operations was increased with a new hatchery being established at Fish Lake. The annual report for that year proposed "...that a Federal hatchery be established in other national parks whenever that is feasible."
.. This philosophy of using artificial means to replenish the fish of the National Park System waters was soon to be abandoned. The old U.S. Fish Commission had been combined with the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife to form the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "While on the one hand the National Park Service was suppose to be preserving native fish populations, on the other hand the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was supposed to mass produce trout."
.. The tension grew between the Fish and Wildlife Service and park managers. In 1957, the hatcheries were shut down. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel shifted their attention to research. In 1958, the artificial propagation of fish at Lake was halted and the catch limited to a figure within the natural regenerative powers of the species. In 1996 the National Park Service assumed responsibility for managing the park's fishery program. {excerpt from YELLOWSTONE HISTORY}

.. Additionally, there were railroad cars and boats used specifically for the fish planting and moving operations. The USFWS discovered "U.S. Fisheries # 40" in 1980 and had it restored. They have also restored some railroad cars that were used to transport across the country.

The first experimental transport of fish by rail from the east coast to the west was conducted by Dr. Livingston Stone of the U.S. Fish Commission in 1873. In charge of 35,000 shad fry carried in open milk cans, Dr. Stone changed the water every two hours where possible in order to deliver this shipment safe and sound for planting in California. By 1879, due to this first demonstration, fish were being successfully shepherded by railcar across the nation.

THE GOOD LIFE

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Yellowstone Fishing Map

WILL THIS WORK?

.. While perusing the neighbor's blog, we discovered a new tool for this site. It's a map that allows places to be delineated. The maps are from Google, and they are plenty detailed.
.. Not being shy about stealing a good idea, we've added the map at the bottom of the page. In the upcoming months we will annotate the map to fit with each post. We'll see if it works. Dial-up will be a pain for those of you without a quicker connection.
.. It looks like the fishing season in Yellowstone is planned for us. We will be concentrating on the Madison River, the Gallatin River, Nez Perce Creek, and Obsidian Creek. The votes from the poll indicated these rivers were of most interest to those voting. This does not mean that we will ignore other places, but it makes the decision of where to fish a bit easier.
.. The first places on the map will be: . . local fly shops . . good eats . . wader friendly lodging. Best call now for the early fishing dates.
.. As the season progresses, and places get added this should prove to be a useful tool for visitors. It will certainly be an interesting exercise.
.. Well, it's back to the bench.

PSSSSST! Wet Snow. Is Spring Near?

A GLIMMER OF HOPE

.. There are large fish in Beaver Creek, Cabin Creek, the Madison River, (between the lakes,) and jumping the culvert at Duck Creek.
.. There is very little snow on the ground and the ice fisher folks are talking about water and slush and moving their houses.
.. No, it's not spring yet - and it won't be for a month or so. But there are hatches of little black Caddis flies, and swarms of Snow Flies on the bright overcast days.
.. We've seen temperatures above freezing for two days in a row, and there may be rain in the forecast !!
.. The pine trees and the fir trees are shedding seeds from their serotinous cones, and the pack rats are sunning themselves along with the 'Dumpster Chickens,' (ravens to the foreign born.)
.. Soon the commercial orders will be done and we'll bring you the flies for the Spring Fly Box.

.. Well, it's back to the bench. Time to say goodbye to a friend of more than 40 years. It's hard to get good French Silver tinsel nowadays.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER CARP

FACE SMASHING CARP ATTACKS ANGLER

FISH FIGHT BACK
All Waters Threatened
is your river safe?

From "Stop Hitchhikers" comes a report of impending doom to the Great Lakes, The whole Mississippi River Drainage, and the possible demise of all fish in the United States:
-- EXCEPT CARP! --
Read the announcement HERE.
Read the story HERE.

Earth Be Warm - Ice Be Gone - Strange Be Found

RAPID COLONIZATION BENEATH VANISHING ICE
Montana Stream Access Still Under Attack

.. From beneath the Weddell Sea ice shelves comes a community of creatures straight out of your most vivid nightmares. Reuters reports about new Antarctic expedition.
.. Of the hundreds of animals discovered beneath what was previously over 5,000 square miles of ice are the possible 19 new species: 15 possible new species of shrimp-like amphipods and four possible new species of cnidarians, organisms related to coral, jellyfish and sea anemones.
.. The region has been characterized as one of the world's most pristine deep sea environments.
.. The ice shelves were at least 5,000 years old and collapsed in two stages over the last dozen years. One crumbled 12 years ago and the other followed in 2002. Global warming is seen as the culprit behind the ice shelves' demise.
.. Thick settlements of fast-growing animals called sea squirts, which look like gelatinous bags, which apparently started colonizing the area only after the ice shelves collapsed.

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.. Senate Bill 78, and House Bills 424 & 642 in the Montana Legislature are causing a stir. The access to streams in Montana is still under attack. K. Durham, in New West spells it out for those folks still unaware of the crisis. The current battle is not only about access but it challenges the concept that citizens of Montana own the water. This is a nasty grab by the wealthy.

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.. Speaking of the wealthy, read how the ultra wealthy are doing in Big Sky, Montana, (and elsewhere,) in the report by The Independent News & Media Limited. We leave you with a description of THE YELLOWSTONE CLUB:

The highest-end "destination club" in the world, is a private holiday resort set in 13,400 acres of countryside in the Montana mountains. By winter, The Yellowstone is a powder skiers paradise; by summer, there's a Tom Weiskopf-designed golf course, together with some highly regarded riding, walking and fly-fishing.

There are fewer than 300 members, recruited on an invitation-only basis. Their identities are a closely guarded secret, though regulars are rumored to include Bill Gates, Dan Quayle, and Brad Pitt. With an entry fee of $250,000 (£130,000), plus annual subscriptions of around $10,000. And you'll need to buy a house within the resort at somewhere between $2m and $155m.