Montana Fish Wildlife Parks proposed 2009 regs

Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks has published its proposed changes for the 2009 fishing regulations. At the bottom of the page is a mailing address and also an email address to submit your comments. All comments must be submitted by Sept. 12th.

Personally, I am getting really weary of all the rhetoric about the “endangered” Bull Trout. Creston Hatchery near Kalispell produces thousands of the damn things yet none are going into streams? Unless I missed the apple falling from the tree (or it missed me), in the case of fish, you stock a species and eventually they do or do not take. So, whats the flipping hold up?

Anyone that knows a bit about Bull Trout knows that they are the Char version of a Pike, in their feeding habits that is. They will eat everything. So, lets say we get the Bull Trout going again, what happens to the rest of the fish in the pool. Oh, they are an “indicator” species too. Basically, if they aren’t making it the whole damn watershed is a mess. But all their freshwater counterparts are thriving, Cutthroat, Rainbows, Cuttbows, Browns and Lake Trout to name a few. All of them but the Bull Trout.

In B.C. you can actively fish for, when I say actively, I mean pursue in the purest fishing sense, a Bull Trout. No big deal except that B.C. holds the headwaters of the Flathead river and Flathead lake where if you get caught catching a Bull Trout on the U.S. side you can be ticketed for “targeting” Bull Trout if your particular method or device doesn’t fit MTFWP protocol. Say a big streamer that could be used for a lot of things besides a Bull Trout.

In the meantime, all of those guys in B.C. are whooping it up on the headwaters catching fish that I could get busted for “targeting” or, I have to consider that he may be last of his kind possibly making the last voyage upstream. I guess if I want to “freely” fish for Bull Trout I’ll have to get a passport and do it in another country.

It doesn’t look like B.C. has an endangered Bull Trout problem to me, eh? I’d say the real landscape has a hell of lot less to do with Bull Trout than the political one, eh?.