Grayling Killers
I got a call today from Bruce Rich, Region 3 Fisheries Manager, in response to an email that I sent to Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks concerning the Monster Brown trout that was caught up there a couple weeks ago.
The email I wrote was in short, an inquiry as to why Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks had such liberal creel limits on Brown trout above Dickey Bridge on the Bighole.
Basically, my conversation with Bruce boils down to this. Over the past few years Brown trout have been making their way further and further upriver into native Grayling habitat. The upper Bighole is the only remaining native fluvial (stream) population of the species in the state and has been under siege in recent years primarily from low water issues. Rich agreed also to my suggestion that low flows and higher temperatures might be contributing to the Brown trouts movement upriver as well.
The current regulations were put in place to protect the intrusion of Browns into the Grayling habitat on the upper river. Since 1987, FWP and a coalition representing various groups have been involved in restoration efforts of the Bigholes fluvial Grayling population.
So Bob Kingston, the angler who caught the now locally famous Monster Brown and was being roasted for keeping it could on the other hand be considered as just doing his part for Grayling protection. There is no doubt this fish had a hearty appetite that was probably fueled in large by other fish and very little aquatic invertebrate “dainties”.
Rich also noted that fish this size are well past their prime reproductive years and that any representative genes that the fish might add to the collective gene pool had been done long before it was caught.
Not that I have anything against Grayling but I think after mugging it up on camera I would still have to return his awesomeness to the river.
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Coming from Europe, where brown trout and European grayling are happily living together in thousands of streams, I don’t see the problem. On the other hand: brown tout is an invasive species in this case and the Montana grayling hasn’t evolved together with the brown trout like the European grayling did. So there may be a problem.
I am bit amused by the uproar caused by the fact that the sportfisher who caught the monster brown trout, did not put his trophy trout back! This fish had lived a full life and probably made many contributions to the propagation of its species. It was in fact already ‘over the top’. What is the reason for catch & release then? Do we execute C&R just to give someone else the chance to catch the same tropy trout the next week or the next month?
Franklin Moquette
The Netherlands, Europe
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