Big Hole River Fishery Report

Help WestSlope TU and Montana FWP catch fish for science!

THE MEETING PLACE HAS CHANGED TO THE MISSOULA PUBLIC LIBRARY @ 10am!

WestSlope Chapter of Trout Unlimited's Website
Join Trout Unlimited

George Grant Chapter of Trout Unlimited Banquet TODAY!!

The George Grant Chapter of Trout Unlimited's annual banquet is a mere 1 week away! This year, the event will be at the Butte Plaza Event Center 3100 Harrison Ave, in Butte, Montana.

There are plenty of raffles, giveaways, a silent and live auction with tons of great stuff to bid on. The food is catered by Casagranda's Steakhouse and is fantastic.  The Clark Fork Watershed Education Program will be there with their live aquatic bugs for you and your children.  There are kids games and a bar.  Everything benefits GGTU and their mission to protect and restore Southwest Montana's cold water fisheries.  I don't know if you could ask for anything more.

Click here to buy tickets and while you're on the GGTU website, be sure to become a member of Trout Unlimited today!

Southwest Montana fisheries improvement meeting on Monday in Butte

Silver Bow Creek cutthroat trout

Next Monday, January 11th 2015, there is a public meeting to discuss the improvement of Southwest Montana fisheries. At 6:30 pm Ron Spoon, State Fisheries Biologist, will give a presentation on the Jefferson River Project, a restoration project which is helping make the Jefferson River into a world-class trout fishery. 

Also, Josh Vincent of Water and Environmental Technologies (WET), a local environmental engineering firm, will discuss how he, Pat Munday, and Steve Luebeck utilized a grant they received on behalf of the George Grant Chapter of Trout Unlimited which they used for habitat improvements on German Gulch, the most important tributary (for trout) to Silver Bow Creek. 

The meeting is at the Butte Business Development Center at 305 W. Mercury Street in Butte, Montana.  This is the old Boys Central School Building.

See you there!!

Info from The Montana Standard

Bitterroot Water Forum Holiday Party

Superstition Ball - A fundraiser for the Clark Fork Watershed Education Program

The Clark Fork Watershed Education Program is a great organization!  They are holding a formal Ball as a fundraiser in the Grand Hotel in Butte, Montana this Friday, November 13, 2015.

"The Clark Fork Watershed Education Program (CFWEP) has been a leading provider of environmental and restoration education programs and services in western Montana since 2005. Based at the Montana Tech Institute for Educational Opportunities in Butte, Montana, CFWEP offers multi-disciplinary science and history programs for schools, teachers, and students in and around the Upper Clark Fork Basin. CFWEP also offers public education and outreach services such as tours, events, and publications that connect the public with the science and history of the amazing landscape of western Montana.
The CFWEP is fully equipped to provide education and information regarding watershed health, ecosystems and biota in uninjured, injured and restored stream reaches, anchored by historic and environmental context. Along with our staff of science and education experts, volunteer scientists and environmental experts working in western Montana design research and monitoring programs and provide up-to-date information, often working directly with students, teachers and citizens who want to learn more about the natural world around us.
The CFWEP staff is supported by an Advisory Board of education, science, and local experts. CFWEP also works extensively with government agencies and community groups around western Montana.
If you are interested in learning more about the history of CFWEP, past successes, and some of the educational programs we provide, download the “CFWEP: Place-Based Science-Inquiry Education in a Superfund Site” PowerPoint Presentation."
-From cfwep.org

Clark Fork Coalition hosting Modesty Creek restoration presentation in Missoula (updated)

Photo from clarkfork.org

Next Tuesday at 12:00 pm, the Clark Fork Coalition will be having a presentation about the recently restored/reconnected Modesty Creek as part of their "Walks and Talks" series.  The presentation will be at their office in Missoula at 140 S. 4th St. W.  The  restoration site is upstream from the town of Deer Lodge.  Modesty Creek is a tributary to the Upper Clark Fork and has been diverted and disconnected from the Clark Fork for a long time.

Visit the Clark Fork Coalition's website for more information on the project and the field trip.

Tell Congress to sustain funding and reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund

"Please tell Congress to sustain funding for trout and salmon conservation and to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) What are the issues? Federal budget: conservation programs that benefit trout and salmon are at risk."

Click here to be linked to an email template which is automatically sent to your state's representatives!  This is quick and easy.

If you are not a TU member, just delete that part of the pre-written message.  Also, if you are not a TU member, you should seriously consider becoming one!!

RBM presents, Death by a Thousand Cuts: Restoring Stream Connectivity and Flows for Native Fish in the Land of Irrigation Diversions

The above picture is a map made by Trout Unlimited of the irrigation diversions in the Little Blackfoot Valley in Montana.  We used this info to perform the Upper Clark Fork Fish Passage Assessment for the MT Natural Resource Damages Program.

Tomorrow at 4:00 pm, I will be giving a public presentation on the conservation and restoration issues posed by the insane amount of irrigation diversions on Montana streams.  The presentation will be in the Chemistry and Biology Building on the Montana Tech campus in Butte, Montana tomorrow, Sept. 9th 2015.  Come and learn how these diversions affect our native fish and how folks are coming together to restore stream connectivity and stop fish entrainment in irrigation ditches.

Crown of the Continent and the Greater Yellowstone Magazine - Wow, this is an amazing magazine!

Read this and get a big, heaping head-full of the awesomeness that is Montana, USA.  This publication from the University of Montana gives me serious school pride!  Not a stupid-ass sports team.    

"Three Rivers" - An old movie by Montana FWP about Lilly, Bailey, and Grant

Grab some popcorn and a beer and watch this classic from Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks

Exciting volunteer opportunity with the Clark Fork Coalition

Get off your ass and help the rivers we use and love!

Planes and trains in the Clark Fork River

Old Clark Fork train wreck

Yet another train has derailed and dumped its load into the lower Clark Fork.  This train had denatured alcohol and airplane fuselages.  Most of the trains that pass through here carry crude oil and open coal cars.  It is only a matter of time before one of these toxic trains derails into the Clark Fork!!  After everything the Clark Fork has been through and the money and resources spent to clean up historic disasters, here we are again, risking it all.

This picture shows an old derailment downstream from Superior.  A couple of years ago there was another which spilled tons and tons of lumber (again lucky!!).  Last year one derailed upstream of Superior at the first big swirly hole down from Forest Grove.  And now this.

Here is the Missoulian article about the derailment.

Celebration at the Rock Creek confluence!!

Why the celebration?  Check out this older post.

Happy Earth Day!

Please take some time today to reflect on the history and future of the conservation and environmental movement.  As fisherpeople, we are land and water stewards who routinely reap the benefits of wild lands and unpolluted systems.  There are a lot of good, hardworking people who have gone through hell to protect earth's systems and creatures.  Some have given their lives.  There is a lot more work to do.

The movie A Fierce Green Fire premiers TODAY on American Masters on your local PBS station.  Check your local listing schedule here.

An excerpt from "Thinking Like a Mountain" by Aldo Leopold

"My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes - something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."

Read the entire version here.

This is also a chapter of  A Sand County Almanac: and Sketches Here and There, one of the greatest books of all time!  

The Hellgate osprey are back!

Iris and Stanley are back on their nest in Missoula's Hellgate Canyon.  Click play to watch them live, 24 hours a day.

Soon they will start mating.  They'll do it every 30 seconds or so.

The AXIS P5534-E camera, computer infrastructure and internet connection were donated by the Riverside Health Care Center. Real time High Definition TV - available in Riverside HCC's lobby - was donated by Raptors of the Rockies. Logistic support provided by Northwestern Energy. This camera is also supported by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and their Bird Cams Project.

Check out The University of Montana Biogeochemistry Labratory's website for more information.

Major earthworks begin at the confluence of Rock Creek and the Clark Fork Rivers (updated 4/2015)

Remember that long, ugly berm that you drive past as soon as you cross the Clark Fork River on Rock Creek Road?  It's the one with the mullein forest growing on it that has served as a recruitment area for noxious and invasive weeds for the past couple years.

Well, it's being torn down and there is a big story behind it...

At the mouth of the Rock Creek Valley there is a beautiful, 200 acre swath of land. The borders are defined by the mouth of Rock Creek, the Clark Fork River, Rock Creek Road, and an adjacent property.  This property was almost destroyed - for ever- by an out of state developer who (origionally a Montanan).

The first known European settlers of the property were Paul and Anna Rinaldi, Italian immigrants who worked for the railroad and ranched the land.

The Rinaldi's Cabin?

The land continued to be utilized for agriculture for the next 100 years or so until it was purchased by Michael Barnes, an Oregon-based real estate developer.

It was Michael's plan to develop a 36 plot, Mcmansion filled subdivision on the property complete with a large, stocked trout pond!  Everyone knows that the one thing you need when you live right next to one of the world's finest wild trout streams, is a pond full of stupid stockers.

In 2006, Mr. Barnes went right to work tearing up the property with heavy machinery and installing infrastructure without some of the necessary permits.  He dug a massive, 5 acre pond and used the diggings to create that berm that went along the road.

Mr. Barnes' subdivision idea did not sit well with the locals and conservationists. Remember all those "No Rock Creek Subdivision" stickers?  Local groups formed and expressed their discontent to the Missoula County Commissioners who delayed and then tabled the plan.

Then in 2008, the housing market crashed and the property went on the market.

In 2012, Five Valleys Land Trust bought the property and have since:

• Worked with adjacent property owners to put over 500 acres of land under permanent conservation easement. 
• Removed tons of garbage, fencing, and huge agricultural equipment.
• Built a public access, parking, and trials to the Clark Fork River.
• Installed a bunch of bluebird boxes.

They've also worked with Trout Unlimited and the University of Montana's Wildland Restoration Program to develop an ecological restoration plan for the berm, pond, and the severely eroded banks of the Clark Fork River.

The major restoration work has just started.  Yesterday, I headed out there to check it out and talk to Grant Kier, the Executive Director of Five Valleys Land Trust.   

Tearing down the berm (ripping)

Tearing down the berm (grading)

The pond

Mr. Kier says that eventually, the entire property will be opened to the public; complete with trails and access to the confluence.

This is one of the rare cases where conservation won over development.  In this case however, I guess we owe a thanks to Wall Street bankers and their sub-prime mortgages for crashing the market.

I also went fishing (F-ing duh).  The creek is still pretty big and wading was sketchy.  Some big fish have moved up into the system with the elevated flows.  Most of the fish are hanging in side channels and winter-style water.  The big brown trout made a greater than average showing and the rainbows were especially hot.  The water is warm enough now that they're starting to perform big acrobatics.  I saw many skwalas and numoras, as well as a solid march brown hatch.  There were some rises but not enough for me to cut off my super productive nymph rig.