River in Peril

There's an overwhelming consensus that the Fork is in serious, dire trouble."The worst I've ever seen it." "There's hardly any fish left." "I've caught nine good fish since July 1st." These are the quotes from the seasonal regulars, some of whom fish it or attempt to fish it on a daily basis, June-Sept.

I just attended a 90-minute talk in West Yellowstone from Rob Van Kirk, the biologist in charge for the Henry's Fork Foundation.  He began his talk saying, "We did not have a fishery on the ranch this summer." Toward the end he said, "We didn't get any fishing this year, and we're not likely to get any next year."

The main culprit affecting the dry fly fishing as we know it is turbidity of the water coming out of Island Park Reservoir.  It gets drawn down to filthy water.  As drawdown progresses, nothing is left but warmer dirty water. As flows increase, the water in the river actually becomes warmer.

Rob did not address fish numbers specifically, but did say the turbidity would cause different fish behavior, including fish not rising for insects.  The hatches themselves are much lighter as well.  Water temperatures are higher than the threshold for pmds to live, as one example, and that has been the case for several years now.  Low winter flow is the culprit for reduced fish numbers.  Only so many fish can survive the winter.

He covered many other issues all leading to the same grim prognosis that I won't go into in depth, but every factor we need for a good healthy fishery is negative.  Cold, clean water with good winter flows for example. I wrote about it here years ago, and was even accused of crying wolf when I talked about the decline with some of the regulars.  It was easy to see coming a decade ago, even in the high water years.

So I spent a morning and two evenings at Last Chance and another morning on Millionaires before departing.  The water has been dropped and is pretty clear now, but bugs were non-existent and I counted four decent one-time rising trout.

I shall return, and maybe there will be some blue wings. The fish are not all gone, there were some in June, though nobody saw as many as in any previous season. As I told Fred, Ed, Larry, and Steve the other morning at the round table, if there's one trout left I'll wade out there and try to catch it.  

PS.  Hey, the next post will be upbeat and positive.  I'm on some fish just over the hill!

So Smoky the Sawtelle's are invisible

Log jam fish

And dredged up this one too

Smoky sunset

Slightly less smoky sunrise. 

More weeds/moss than any other season on record

This little guy is all I could find on Millionaires.