Bucket biologists harm healthy fishing areas

Warren Illi recently wrote a column for the Daily Inter Lake on illegal fish introductions, claiming that fishermen are driven to illegally plant fish, AKA “bucket biology,” because Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials won’t respond to their complaints about poor fishing.

I would counter that much poor fishing is due to illegal fish introductions, and their real motivation is the sense of entitlement expressed in the column’s statement, “it’s public water and the public’s fish.”

What is not acknowledged is that there are lots of other publics who want different things from the same waters. And legal fish introductions have to deal with not only public demand but also policies and statutes — and that pesky biology.

FWP biologists have to complete environmental assessments that look at all the pros and cons, how a new species will impact the existing fishery and all the people that use it. Bucket biologists just look at fulfilling their own selfish desires. Ironically, the likelihood of a new species being illegally moved to nearby waters is one of the issues considered in an environmental assessment.

I kept an FWP statewide database on illegal fish introductions for the last 25 years. During that time, I recorded nearly 600 illegal introductions in more than 300 waters in every corner of the state. But this is a problem that either runs under the radar for anglers or is acknowledged with a wink and a nod.

Make no mistake, illegal fish introductions are costing you opportunity and money. In those 600 illegal introductions, I can only think of two where fishing really improved. Most fisheries have slumped or crashed due to illegal introductions, and the damage is irreversible.

About 20 years ago, anglers asked for crappie. FWP contacted the Idaho Fish and Game Department, which has many similar waters with crappie. Idaho’s take is that most crappie introductions fail, stunt out or go through boom and bust cycles. Idaho’s advice was “Don’t do it.”

Illegal crappie have now been reported in more than 20 waters locally, with three more just this past summer. The fish seem to be following the Idaho script pretty closely. And don’t think crappie are just a tasty and benign panfish. Crappie are highly predacious — the illegal introduction of pike and crappie in Blanchard Lake pretty well replaced the former perch and bass fishery.

Most fishermen seem to think you can endlessly dump fish into a water with no consequences. But fish are subject to carrying capacity, just like cattle or deer, and when you add a new species, an existing species has to decline. For example, a fisherman was reported dumping perch in Lake Mary Ronan in 1992. The state used rotenone poison in the cove within four hours, killing about three dozen perch but missing a few. Within 10 years, perch made up about 80 percent of the biomass in the lake, and salmon and trout declined similarly.

At the time, Lake Mary Ronan was the fifth most popular water in the region and in the top 25 in the state, so what poor fishing was the guy trying to fix? Just as important, Lake Mary Ronan provides the wild kokanee eggs to plant more than two dozen other lakes across the state. Perch guys are happy now, but trout and salmon anglers went elsewhere, and fishing pressure actually dropped more than 20 percent. Cutthroat disappeared, bass declined. Rainbow trout were self-sustaining, but now they have to be planted.

FWP has restored the kokanee fishery but only by stocking larger kokanee costing $40,000 a year more. That’s the equivalent of selling 2,200 fishing licenses just to maintain the fishery, not improve it. The adult kokanee are larger now but also fewer. Raising salmon bigger uses up hatchery space, and when stocked larger some salmon mature at an earlier age, dropping egg production so FWP can’t always meet its egg needs.

No problem, Little Bitterroot Lake is a back-up egg source. Except that someone illegally dumped smallmouth and largemouth bass in there, and they love to eat kokanee. Little Bitterroot usually ranks in the top 15 waters in the region and the top 75 in the state, so what poor fishing were the bucket biologists trying to fix?

Twenty-two years later, fishing pressure in Lake Mary Ronan has just returned to what it was before perch. Pike were reported in Lake Mary Ronan this summer; fortunately, subsequent sampling hasn’t found more pike but did catch a crappie.

About 80 percent of the illegal fish are warmwater fish — perch, bass, pike, walleyes, crappie, etc. Mr. Illi complains FWP hasn’t done enough to meet warmwater demand, but the state plants about 45 million fish each year into appropriate waters. Legal or not, warmwater fish have been introduced into just about all suitable waters — and many unsuitable waters. Personally, I like warmwater fish. But as a colleague noted, “They are good fish in a lot of bad places.”

Mr. Illi states FWP should follow the majority public opinion on illegal walleye in Noxon Reservoir and leave the fish alone. In the late 1980s, fishermen demanded that walleye be stocked in Canyon Ferry Reservoir and in waters west of the Divide. FWP commissioned an independent environmental assessment based on actual case histories in Western states that showed that introducing walleye on top of trout and salmon would hurt the salmonids because of walleye abundance and habitat overlap.

FWP ran opinion polls on Canyon Ferry, and the majority favored managing for rainbows and perch. Illegal walleye showed up within two years. The Fish and Wildlife Commission held hearings for west of the Divide, and the majority favored staying with trout and salmon, so the commission adopted a policy in 1989 saying no walleye.

Walleye first showed up in Noxon two years later in 1991. Walleye fans try to claim the walleye were mistakenly included in legal bass plants. But those plants are hand-sorted multiple times to avoid that, and walleye showed up in four other Western waters in 1991 and 1992. None of those waters got bass plants. Obviously, walleye anglers felt they knew better than all the biologists and didn’t care about public opinion.

Ironically, many of the walleye supporters hate wolves, claiming that that abundant and mobile top predator has really impacted deer and elk to the detriment of hunting, but they seem to think abundant and mobile walleye won’t have the same effect on fishing.

Noxon and the lower Clark Fork have been designated as critical bull trout habitat, and Avista Utilities has spent more than $60 million over the last 12 years to help bull trout. Walleye jeopardize that. Recovering Clark Fork bull trout would help get the species off the Endangered Species Act listing, which is impacting logging, mining and road building in the lower Clark Fork, so a lot is at stake.

Noxon is not great walleye habitat. This run of the river reservoir flushes a lot of walleye downstream to Lake Pend Oreille. Idaho has spent millions in recent years to recover the Lake Pend Oreille kokanee fishery and in turn help the trophy Kamloops fishery. Walleye threaten that.

Prey species in Noxon, including perch, have already declined by 60 percent. Perch are an important fishery in themselves, and when the food runs out, all the predators — bass, pike and walleyes — will suffer. Noxon is rated as one of the best bass fisheries in the state, and Noxon gets as much fishing on a per acre basis as Canyon Ferry. Where’s the poor fishing?

Walleye fans point to Canyon Ferry as an example of how walleye and trout can coexist. After walleye peaked, perch crashed and rainbows went way down. The perch fishery now has a catch rate of 3-4 perch per day averaging 10 inches.

FWP has brought rainbow fishing back, but only by doubling the size of planted trout from 4 inches to 8 inches to decrease walleye predation. Those larger fish cost $200,000 a year more to raise and use up so much hatchery space that the supply of catchable trout for other waters is limited.

Canyon Ferry was usually rated in the top 3 in the state. What poor fishing were the bucket biologists trying to fix? After walleye showed up, fishing pressure dropped 20 percent — it’s just back to pre-walleye numbers after spending $200,000 a year more.

The last example is one where FWP did follow public opinion in introducing mysis shrimp 48 years ago without doing an environmental assessment. Instead of growing bigger kokanee, as intended, the salmon either got smaller or disappeared. There wasn’t a single week over the 31 years that I was fisheries manager that someone didn’t complain to me about FWP doing what the public asked it to do.

Jim Vashro, of Kalispell, recently retired after 39 years with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks as a fisheries biologist and regional fisheries manager.