Montana's fisheries were hit by powerful floods the spring of 2011. Flooding put small towns underwater, washed out Fishing Access Sites and closed roads. FWP stream protection permits flew out the door later that summer as the repair work began.
A major oil spill on the Yellowstone River also affected fisheries.
On the Missouri River near Wolf Point, biologists doing larval fish sampling found a genetically confirmed wild pallid sturgeon larva, the first such find in the Missouri River Basin.
For these and other stories of Montana's fishing waters, see FWP's 2012 Fishing Newsletter.
The stocking of many of Montana's high mountain lakes is a legacy of our grandfathers and their friends who strapped on packs with milk jugs full of fry to transport them to secluded lakes. Stocking today is done by helicopter.
Mountain Lakes in the South Fork Flathead drainage like Woodward Lake are part of a broad-scale conservation program aimed at restoring westslope cutthroat trout populations in 21 headwater lakes that were historically stocked with nonnative trout. To date 16 lakes have been restored.
Leslie Nyce, FWP conservation technician in Hamilton, is holding a large brown trout caught while electrofishing on the Bitterroot River. Fish caught in this annual sampling process are released and Nyce assures us this beauty slipped happily back into the river. Some lucky angler may get their own close look at this brown trout.
Last spring the flood control reservoirs upstream of Lewistown performed as intended when hit by high spring run-off, but when the emergency spillway on East Fork Reservoir let loose flooding occurred in some areas and washed out the East Fork access road. For a full report on how fish did in the area see FWP's 2012 Fishing News Letter.
FWP fisheries crews were unusually busy last year. A late spring melt followed by extreme high water and an associated oil spill on the Yellowstone River consumed much of the season.
At Fort Peck Dam spillway anglers had a great angling experience in 2011 and a great view of a very rare event. Large numbers of adult paddlefish migrated up the Missouri River and congregated at the base of the spillway. When the spillway shut off, FWP rescued 18 paddlefish that were trapped in a channel between the river and the spillway and returned them to the river.
FWP's Aquatic Invasive Species Program was granted authority to conduct mandatory watercraft inspections, and provided $1.14 million in funding by the Montana Legislature. The boost enabled FWP to more than double its summer watercraft inspection program. Stacy Schmidt of the AIS Program is shown here doing AIS monitoring below Holter Dam near Helena.
The fall of 2011 provided a bumper crop of high quality kokanee eggs for 2012 stocking. Three million eggs from Lake Mary Ronan and 500,000 from Little Bitterroot Lake were spawned by the Flathead Lake Salmon Hatchery.