The spring has been cool, very cool. That is keeping our ample snow-pack in the mountains and the Bitterroot River is not bumping up in cubic feet per second (CFS) very much. But, there are fish to be caught. Here are some photos of John and Jim who fished March 21 and 22. Below their fish are photos of the Bitterroot at Bell Crossing and then at Stevensville Fishing Access Site (FAS). If you dress right, you will have fun and catch some trout.
Join Missoula and the author for a reading and signing of Anders Halverson’s An Entirely Synthetic Fish. The event will be at Fact & Fiction, 220 N. Higgins Ave, Missoula, Montana on February 10th from 7 pm to 8:20 pm. For more information call the book store at (406) 721-2881. Click here for directions to Fact and Fiction downtown. About the Book
By Anders Halverson
$26.00 – ISBN-13: 9780300140873 Availability: Special Order – Subject to Availability Published: Yale University Press, 3/2010
Anders Halverson provides an in-depth account of the rainbow trout and why it has become the most commonly stocked and controversial freshwater fish in the United States. Rainbow trout have been proudly dubbed “an entirely synthetic fish” by fisheries managers. According to Halverson, his book examines the paradoxes and reveals a range of characters, from nineteenth-century boosters who believed rainbows could be the saviors of democracy to twenty-first-century biologists who now seek to eradicate them from waters around the globe. He discusses how the story of the rainbow trout is the story of our relationship with the natural world—how it has changed and how it startlingly has not.
Anders Halverson is an award winning journalist with a Ph.D. in aquatic ecology from Yale University. With support from the National Science Foundation, he wrote this book as a research associate at the University of Colorado’s Center of the American West.
A lifelong fisherman, he currently lives in Boulder, CO.
For fun, he posted this quiz on GoFishn.com. The winner received his book. The Rainbow Trout Quiz: Question #1 – GoFISHn on GoFISHn In 1996, IdahoDepartment of Fish and Game hatchery managers routinely taught their fish one thing before releasing them into the wild. What was it?
The answer: worms. Candy Craig got it right, and she’s the winner of a copy of the book. The reason the fisheries officials put the fish on a worm diet was to prepare them for the wild. They feared the fish would swim around looking for pellets when they were released, which is their normal fare in the hatchery.
I forgot to post this. Jack caught a big pike on the Bitterroot earlier this month. He is still on his mission of removing pike from our local coldwater fisheries.
Now that Milltown Dam is removed and the reservoir gone, maybe we can get the pike numbers down. The reservoir was a major rearing area for pike because it was good habitat for young pike. It had warmer, slow water and lots of smaller trout that young pike could eat.
Pike eat a lot of juvenile trout so we don’t mind harvesting these voracious fish.
Jim and Phil from Washington, DC came to Montana and fished with Jack on Sept 17 and 18. The Bitterroot was their river of choice and it paid off. There wasn’t a lot of time for fishing photos, but here are a few taken from the boat. I am including a few more that I (Merle) took on the morning of first day as they were getting ready to start the day. Click here to see all the photos in a new window.
Dave sent us a few more photos he took while guiding Susan and Carl Robertson on the Bitterroot River.
We appreciate getting the photos, forwarding them to the clients and posting them for our readers to see. Thanks again, Dave, Susan and Carl. These photos were taken in early September.
