Gillnetting lake trout will kill bull trout

I read with great interest the recent opinion regarding native fish by Chris Schustrom, the Trout Unlimited representative in the Flathead Valley. Schustrom's letter was long on emotion but short on real facts. I would like to clarify several issues, but please, go to the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park Web site and read the environmental analysis for Swan Lake and learn for yourself.

Schustrom mentions that there is an EA underway for both Swan and Flathead Lakes. If there is such an EA underway for Flathead, then I would like to see it, as I am following the Flathead Lake situation very closely and there is no such EA, at least where a private citizen can learn of it or read about it. Talk yes, but no actual EA at this time.

And when one reads the EA for Swan Lake, some questions are sure to arise, specifically in the costs and scope of the project, and certainly in the sure by-kill of bull trout. Schustrom describes the EA as a "three-year program to remove lake trout from Swan Lake." Yes, the project will certainly remove some lake trout, but the EA clearly states in many places that this is a 'suppression" and 'reduction" experiment.

This "experiment" is a three-year, $150,000 to $210,000 project with the goal that, at the end of the three years, "we will be better informed in the efficacy and feasibility of controlling lake trout in Swan Lake with gill nets."

While conducting this experiment, the nets will be killing bull trout, only to (hopefully) determine if the netting will reduce lake trout numbers, so that they can turn around and kill more bull trout while suppressing lake trout. In the EA's own words, it acknowledges that this will never eradicate lake trout from Swan Lake.

Schustrom also states that "Flathead Lake supports far less fishing today then it did before lake trout tipped the balance" I would love to see some data to support this, as would everyone in line at the boat ramps during the summer and during the spring and fall Mack Days tournaments.

There is a thriving and ever-growing lake trout fishery that brings people from all over the country to fish with area charters, and turnout at the lake trout fishing seminars held in the Flathead grows every year. In fact, there are many communities in the West that would love to have a fishery that brings these tourism dollars into their communities every year.

The reason lake trout have exploded in Flathead Lake and are prevalent in so many waters in the Flathead is due to the "legal introduction" of mysis shrimp upstream by FWP back in the 1980s. No area biologist will refute this, and at the time, this also was a well thought out plan that was going to "help save the kokanee." This was a management action that just didn't see the impact it would have 25 years down the road.

We owe our lake trout explosion to a plan that didn't account for all potential impacts, and I cannot support any plan that has a by-kill of fish everyone is 'supposedly" trying to protect. If we go the way of gill nets in Swan and Flathead Lakes, and we experience the resulting devastating side-effects that so many other lakes that have gill netted have experienced, who will be around to answer for this 25 years from now?

Lastly, Schustrom makes a very bold statement that "everyone who appreciates Montana's great outdoors also greatly values the native fish and wildlife resources of our state." As a fishing tournament organizer and guide here in the Flathead Valley, I can assure you that "Joe the Fisherman" mostly just wants to catch fish. I am sure there is that percentage of the population that are purists and want nothing but native fish in every water, but at what cost and in what waters and at the expense of which angling dynamic?

Mike Howe lives in Columbia Falls.