Mid-March update for Bitterroot River

Mid-March update for Bitterroot River

Tucker Crossing on the middle Bitterroot, looking southeast at the Sapphire Mountains

This month has been good for the snowpack. The Bitterroot Mountains have been receiving and storing snow at the higher elevations. There have been some teaser warm days, but the current week (third full week of March) will be cooler in temperatures and more snow is in the forecast.

Sunday (3/18) Evening’s First Alert Forecast: Slushy Snow Tonight for MISSOULA COUNTY
By Adam Painter
Meteorologist

NWCC – Montana MAP with SNOTEL Current Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) % of Normal 

Stream flow data in the middle Bitterroot River

 

Shields on the Big Hole and the Blackfoot Rivers in August

Shields on the Big Hole and the Blackfoot Rivers in August

Brown trout caught by Jim

Jim and Naomi fished with Jack a few weeks in July. Now these photos are from August when they came back to fish the Big Hole and the Blackfoot rivers. What is great about the Shields is that they have fun no matter what the weather or the fishing have to offer. But, as you can see here, they always catch really nice trout. I have to say either Naomi catches more trout, or Jim takes more photos…not sure which. Jack sure had a good time fishing with them.

See more photos in the slideshow below.

Dr. Fauci fishes the Blackfoot River with Wapiti Waters

Dr. Fauci fishes the Blackfoot River with Wapiti Waters

Dr. Fauci with a trout from the Blackfoot River
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci MD, director of
NIAID for the NIH since the early 80’s, spoke August 11, 2011 at the Performing
Arts Center in Hamilton, Montana just 50 miles south of Missoula. The Division
of Intramural Research (DIR) is a branch of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and more than 20% of DIR’s research is
conducted in western Montana at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in
Hamilton.
When Dr, Fauci came to visit, he also
got to fish. Marshall Bloom, associate director of RML, set up an afternoon of
fishing with Jack Mauer, fly fishing outfitter for Wapiti Waters in the
Bitterroot. This is the second time in the last few years that Fauci explored
western Montana rivers with Bloom. Fauci knows that the beautiful Bitterroot
and surrounding areas are parts of the draw for RML’s talented scientists. He
wanted to see some of it for himself. In fact he said to the Journal of Clinical
Investigation (JCI)  that “over the
last 20–25 years, the potential liabilities of the physical separation between
RML and Bethesda have morphed into assets, where the beauty of western Montana and
the collegial working environment couple with state-of-the-art facilities to
make RML highly attractive to world-class researchers and an integral part of
the DIR.”



Read more about RML and the campus
at “Rocky Mountain Labs: NIAID’s Montana campus”
by Karen Honey published February 2, 2009 in the Journal of Clinical
Investigation (JCI).

Read more about Tony Fauci at the Director’s Page on the NIAID website. He has
dedicated his career in public health to becoming a top 10 expert in the world
about AIDS policy and research His research in includes learning more about the
understanding of how HIV destroys the body’s defenses leading to the
progression to AIDS. You can read more by visiting Anthony Fauci’s biography on Wikipedia.com.
Rainbow trout – an entirely synthetic fish. Learn more Feb 7 in Missoula, MT

Rainbow trout – an entirely synthetic fish. Learn more Feb 7 in Missoula, MT

Written by Merle Loman for Bitterroot Trout Unlimited.

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

An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World (Hardcover)

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.

Other Montana events for this book are:
Book Signing at Country Bookshelf Bookstore
, Bozeman, MT on Monday, February 7, 2011 at 4:00pm. Click here for more information about the Country Bookshelf Bookstore.
Book Discussion at Montana State Univ., Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, MT Monday, February 7, 2011 at 6:00pm. Click here for the website for Museum of the Rockies
Plenary Address at the Montana Chapter of the American Fisheries Society Annual Meeting, Great Falls, MT, Wednesday, February 9, 2011 at 9:00am. Click here for AFS information http://www.fisheries.org/units/AFSmontana/

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.

Fly fishing the Blackfoot River with Judy and Irv

Fly fishing the Blackfoot River with Judy and Irv

Judy with her trout from the Blackfoot River, Montana. This was her last fish of the day!

Irv is at Stanford University School of Medicine as a professor, researcher, and Director of Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. He is also from Great Falls, Montana and maintains his Montana roots. He has a home on the Bitterroot River and generously invites students, colleagues and friends to visit. On this fishing day, Irv and Stanford and scientific colleague, Judy, fished with Jack. Irv needed to get to the airport in the late afternoon so they chose the Blackfoot River on a stretch close to Missoula. It was a good choice both for timing and fishing.

Judy has fished with Jack for many years but I think this is the first fishing photo we have gotten. It is a nice one! I also think Judy will be asking Jack to fish the Blackfoot River again. She was on fire. The fishing and the catching went very well.

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