BOZEMAN — The number of fish in the three rivers that make up the Jefferson River has been going down for several years.
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is working to find out why.
FWP has been studying the fish in the three rivers that form the Jefferson River and some of the early results are in for a couple sections of the Big Hole.
While the results are still well below historic averages, they are slightly above last year and the makeup of those fish is encouraging.
“For the most part, the increase in fish numbers we have seen are in two-year-old fish. So, what that tells us is or what the possibility is there is we had a pretty good water year last year and that most likely helped the survival of those new fish coming in to the population," explained Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Morgan Jacobsen.
Rainbow numbers around Melrose are up slightly while brown trout show significant increases over last year. For hogback, rainbow numbers continue on a slight decline, but brown trout again more than double than last year.
These are mostly encouraging numbers, but the work is far from finished.
“As we've talked about earlier we've tagged fish in these four rivers and so we'll continue to look for angler reports as they catch tagged fish in the Big Hole, Beaverhead, Ruby and the Lower Madison this year. When people do that, they're helping gather important data that helps us better understand fish movement, fish survival and other factors that play into overall fish population health in these rivers,” Jacobsen said.
FWP is working closely with researchers from Montana State University to try to learn what has happened to the fish in the three branches of the Jefferson River, and hopefully help return fish numbers in those branches to closer to historic levels.
