NEW REGULATIONS IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
In the 2013 fishing season in Yellowstone National Park, if you fish in the Lamar River drainage; which includes Slough Creek and Soda Butte Creek you must kill all non-native fish, including rainbow and brook trout.
Sounds good to me! I know some will get their panties in a twist, but I wish I could go to YNP this year.
I very simply do not fish waters that require me to kill fish. There are so many other rivers out there that allow me to do Catch & Release. Larry ---sagefisher---
I can understand that....
But I can also understand trying to restore other fish, over those which really don't belong.
And I like the taste of trout, when I can take it legally...especially smoked
I normally camphost in that area. I find that Brookies are more and more taking over Cutthroat habitat. 10 years ago, I very seldom used to catch a Brookie ,in the The Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone, on the other side of the Pass, now its becoming 1/2 and 1/2 Brookies and Cutts. I doubt though that keeping non-natives will make a real impact on the total problem.
Killing rainbows and especially brookies above the barriers in Soda Butte (Ice Box Canyon) and Slough (the canyon above the campground) makes perfect sense. What is a REALLY big problem is the fact that you can keep as many non-native fish as you want in most of the rest of the park. We are selling a lot more licenses to local meat fisherman than usual and they are already putting a thrashing to some predominately nonnative fisheries, especially the Gardner. Pretty much every fly shop in the area is raking the park over the coals about this and we hope we can get an emergency regulation change that would return things to 5 fish (or preferably less) where cutthroats are not the dominant trout.
I think a note that cannot be overlooked, much like in a host of other locations in the recent past.....this push to kill off naturally reproducing trout in waters where they have been "declared" non-native, where in fact essentially devoid of fish prior to the original stockings. I find it odd that folks would rather have 12 "declared native" fish per mile in a stream, instead of healthy populations of wild reproducing trout. Well guess what.....when they kill off the non-native trout?....they'll still only have the same 12 native fish. And the surroundings will still look exactly the same....minus the fishermen. The Alpine lakes in Washington had ZERO fish in them. They were stocked more than 100yrs ago. BUT, they were eating a native newt. So what do we have now? Barren lakes with lots of newts. When is the last time anybody has visited those lakes in order to "view or catch and release the newts?" Nothing essentially has changed there now, except there are no longer fishermen. Now they are doing the same in many streams in PA. Declaring the wild reproducing browns that have been in the water for 100yrs non-native....because it's been declared brook trout waters. SO in the end we will still have an unfishable population of brookies in the very same creek. Makes perfectly good sense to me. I think groups lose there sense at times with their "causes".
OK, I'm done now. :)
Okay now this is a double edge sword as people have been describing. The problem is that if the "non-native" fish population gets to high and the natives are so called threatened who's to say the government doesn't come take control over the water flows, destroying the agricultural sector. It brothers me that it comes down to it. In my neck of the woods you can't keep a Cutthroat period. I'm good with that but worry the government will intrude. My two sense anyways.
Brandon
There are already Native and wild fish in the YNP. So those "Folks who want to catch only native and wild fish while they are at YNP" already have the opportunity in which to do just that.
John:
Every prominent angler in the area I have spoken to or otherwise heard from is opposed to this (Craig Mathews, Bud Lilly, Bob Jacklin, John Bailey, and Richard Parks among them) and the park's chief of resources admitted to me that they hadn't thoroughly thought through the effects of the regulations on rivers like the Gardner and Gallatin, which have long had thoroughly mixed populations of fish and no clear way of keeping non-natives out (the whole lower Gardner is only about 10 miles long and there are no fish barriers below this) rather than rivers like Slough Creek, with a preponderance of cutthroats that face threats that have developed recently and areas where fish barriers can be constructed.
Don't all of these people run shops/guides, and have a vested interest in the "more fish is better" philosophy?Quote:
Originally Posted by Longs for Cutts
And I like the "place for natives" philosophy...considering that's what the NPS was set up for...preservation
"The National Park Service will preserve and protect the natural resources, processes, systems, and values of units of the national park system in an unimpaired condition to perpetuate their inherent integrity and to provide present and future generations with the opportunity to enjoy them." National Park Service Management Policies 2006
And to quote my #2 son who is a Aquatic Wildlife Biologist ...
"I'd be more worried about tourists knowing the difference between a cutthroat and rainbow."
We will be there in September again to test the waters.
Why is it that only those "opposed" to this regulation are labelled a "special interest group"?
Maybe I'm not as prone as others to simply throw my dog in the hunt based on a "Scientific Based Management", since I've seen too many debacles with that banner being waved. Far too often those "other groups" (including the biologists) are as much or more prone to be driven by special interests than any outdoorsman group involved.
John I think it is safe to say we have very different World views... ;) And I will leave it at that.
Well played! ;)
Happy Fadder's Day! :)