New Yellowstone National Park Fishing Regulations

[Mike Cline]

Yellowstone has changed their fishing regulations for the first time in many years and have added a new wrinkle which some might consider unusual for the 21st Century. In what they are calling the Native Trout Conservation Area (most of the park except the lower Gibbon, Firehole and Madison rivers and Shoshone and Lewis Lakes), the limit on Brook, Brown and Rainbow trout is now NO LIMIT. In other words anglers can now remove as many Brown and Rainbow trout from the lower Yellowstone, Gardner Rivers and upper Gibbon as they want to throughout the season. The previous limit was 3/day. In the Lamar drainage, ALL Brook and Rainbow trout caught must be killed.

It will be interesting to see if NO Limit fishing has any impact on the quality of the fishing and whether or not it attracts more anglers interested only in meat fishing.

Strategy without Tactics is a Slow Route to Victory, Tactics without Strategy is the Noise Before Defeat - Sun Tzu

[Zach Matthews]

I like this. Browns and rainbows have proven to outcompete native cutties, and rainbows are doubly bad for hybridizing. I would have no problem whatsoever with Yellowstone initiating policies to wipe out any and all invasive fish species.

It would be one thing if Yellowstone had had no native game fish to begin with–then you can at least have a debate about whether the water is being used versus simply preserved. But cutties are an absolute blast to catch and there really is no reason why there should be anything else in the water. Lakers, rainbows, browns and brookies could all go and the cutties would fill back in so that anglers never even noticed a reduced catch–in fact, cutties being easier to catch as a rule–angling would probably improve.

Mike any idea what this means for the handful of native grayling in places like Cascade Lake?

[Mike Cline]

Mike any idea what this means for the handful of native grayling in places like Cascade Lake?

Today, Cascade holds only Cutts and Grayling, both natives so its all catch and release anyway. FYI, Cascade was fishless when the park was created and the Cutts and Grayling were stocked sometime in the early 20th century, thus the Grayling is not natural in Cascade as they were only native to the Madison/Gallatin drainage when the park was created (Cascade is in the Yellowstone River drainage).

Unfortunately, its only in the Lamar drainage where removing the few rainbows and brook trout that persist might be beneficial. The lower Yellowstone drainage will always be influenced by stocks of fish moving upriver from Montana so wantonly killing Rainbows and Browns in the Yellowstone and Gardner rivers isn’t likely to have much impact on Cutts. However, if by some chance meat hunters start targeting the lower Yellowstone and Gardner for spawning browns (and feeding rainbows that follow in the Fall), it is likely that whole angling experience in those rivers will be degraded.

Strategy without Tactics is a Slow Route to Victory, Tactics without Strategy is the Noise Before Defeat - Sun Tzu

[Tim Angeli]

Thanks for posting this, Mike. I find this to be a really intriguing topic and it will be interesting to see how it plays out over time. I fully support the conservation and management of native cutthroat species, and I agree with everything that Zach said above, including that they are an exceptionally fun target species. For me, the cutthroat fishing is one of the main attractions to Yellowstone and I would be happy to see cutthroats make up a larger population of the overall trout species in the park. However, I have had spectacular fishing for brooks, rainbows, and browns in the park as well, and a part of me will be sad to see those populations decline.

I would be very interested to see the background research behind these new regulations. Biological population dynamics are extremely complex, particularly when you have competition between multiple species and multiple populations within the system (e.g., lower-river vs upper-river populations). The trout populations in the park have a really fascinating population dynamic, and it will be very interesting to see how these new regulations affect the individual populations, and thereby affect the quality of the fishing. The overall fishing will undoubtedly decline in the short-term as the relatively large populations of non-native trout species are reduced through increased catch limits. It is obviously forecast that the native cutthroat will then fill that population void, and continue to fill the void of the ever-declining non-native populations. However, we will also be forever fighting a losing battle, as established stocks of non-native species will always be able to move upriver into the ‘native trout conservation areas’ to rejuvenate the populations of non-native species there (e.g., browns and rainbows will be able to move upstream from the lower Yellowstone River, into the upper Yellowstone and tributaries, which basically includes the entire Northeast corner of the park – Gardiner, Lamar, Slough, Soda Butte, etc.). Furthermore, the cutthroats in that system are already hybridized with the resident rainbows, meaning that they are, unfortunately, no longer the pure native species. I met a guy in the park a couple years ago that was involved with a study of the cutthroat population in upper Slough Creek, thought to be isolated from the downstream populations of rainbows. It was discovered that those cutthroats have actually already hybridized with rainbows, with many of the fish having some rainbow trout DNA (I don’t remember the exact results, but it was a startling amount of the population that had already hybridized). Hopefully the mandatory kill limit on rainbows in the Lamar system will help to prevent further hybridization and / or the complete elimination of that cutthroat species.

I would also be interested to know the population of catch-and-keep anglers in Yellowstone. In my experience, most anglers practice catch-and-release, so the overall impact of the new regulations could be somewhat minor. In that regard, the the effects of the mandatory catch-and-kill policy on the Lamar will be particularly interesting. Hopefully, as above, that will help to not only increase the cutthroat population in that system, but also help to prevent further hybridization.

There was an article in one of the relatively recent issues of The Drake that fits in very well with this topic. It has been a while since I read the article, but basically it talked about the decline of the Lewis River as a excellent brown trout fishery due to the increased catch-and-kill limits put in place on that river system, and I am sure that some of the new limits will have a similar adverse affect on the overall fishing quality in other water systems in the park, at least in the short term. Hopefully the long-term affects will prove beneficial.

Zach’s conclusion in his Yellowstone article is also quite relevant to this topic:
“…the cutthroat was almost olive-colored, and sinewy from its never-ending struggle against the pull of the current, the gravity of the Great Falls. It was a native, a survivor, the descendant of fish caught and eaten by mountain man John Colter when he discovered this beautiful spot. It was also a legacy…”

I have always been very interested in the fight to preserve native species in Yellowstone, and these new regulations are no different. It will be very intriguing to see how the effects play out over time, and hopefully they prove helpful in preserving the legacy of the native cutthroat species.

• This reply was modified 13 years, 1 month ago by Tim Angeli.

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