Yellowstone reveals plan to halt spread of invasive brook trout
The recent discovery of brook trout in a popular Yellowstone National Park creek has biologists hustling to remove the nonnative species.
ftw.usatoday.com
Killing Brook Trout in YNP
- Thread starter kmudgn
- Start date
ftw.usatoday.com
Gibbon is part of the Madison management zone, where exotics are allowed. Soda Butte/Lamar is part of the Yellowstone management zone where they (NPS) want only native species. In Slough Creek and lower Lamar you're supposed to kill any rainbow you catch if you can tell it isn't a cutthroat.
This news about eradicating Soda Butte brookies came out a few years ago.
Is that a new article, or a recycling of old news...?
Is that a new article, or a recycling of old news...?
RCF
Life of the Party
The article is dated 8/3/23
Well there you go, it's already two days old
It was in the news a few years back as well though. A lot of controversy at the time regarding poisoning the headwaters of Soda Butte creek to eradicate the brookies back then. There is a healthy population of Cutthroat in that creek. I also caught Browns there several years ago as well.
RCF
Life of the Party
Well there you go, it's already two days old
It was in the news a few years back as well though. A lot of controversy at the time regarding poisoning the headwaters of Soda Butte creek to eradicate the brookies back then. There is a healthy population of Cutthroat in that creek. I also caught Browns there several years ago as well.
I remember many of the heated arguments about the one a few years ago (2016).
Should Yellowstone eradicate trout in Soda Butte Creek in order to restore its native cutthroat population?
Soda Butte Creek in Yellowstone National Park is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful trout streams in the entire world. Throughout its reaches, anglers can fish for cutthroat and cutthroat-rainbow hybrid (cuttbow) trout, and its upper reaches holds brook trout that rise eagerly to dry...
www.hatchmag.com
Well there you go, it's already two days old
It was in the news a few years back as well though. A lot of controversy at the time regarding poisoning the headwaters of Soda Butte creek to eradicate the brookies back then. There is a healthy population of Cutthroat in that creek. I also caught Browns there several years ago as well.
The presence of Brown Trout in Soda Butte Creek would be news to YNP fisheries biologists. Brown Trout were NEVER introduced into the Yellowstone River watershed in YNP. They exist in the Yellowstone River only up to Knowles Falls where they migrated into the park from introductions into the Yellowstone in Montana. If they occurred in Soda Butte, then the Lamar and Slough would have browns as well. If indeed you caught brown trout in a small headwaters stream, it was most likely the upper Gibbon River drainage (Missouri headwaters) not Soda Butte as they are very similar.
Possibly Mike, it was quite a few years ago though and my memory about it may be skewed.
I do remember catching all cutthroat as I worked my way up the stream (I still feel certain it was Soda Butte) and being surprised when I caught the one Brown. Bucket biologists have raised heck in a lot of places including Yellowstone, so maybe someone put one or more in there at one time and they never took hold.
Cheers
The NPS started an eradication program in 2017 on the upper Gibbon. Unfortunately, they conned the public into believing they were restoring native Westslope Cutts into the watershed, when in fact they are not indigenous to the Gibbon above Gibbon Falls.
fatbillybob
Steelhead
Mike made the same comment to me on the other forum. I swear I have caught browns on Soda butte too! I'm an old guy fished the park for decades can't remember every fish I have caught. I just know there used to be great fishing all over the NW section of the park with big healthy fish. It's too bad the NPS will electro shock out the YCT and kill everything else. Why not transplant the non-natives? I got roasted on the other forum for thinking the non-native trout have value.
Thank you for commenting. It’s reassuring.
After sixty years of trout fishing, I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing which creek I’m fishing… and ID’ing trout species too.
Just read about a plan to rotenone rainbows out of the upper Slough Creek watershed...Buffalo Creek.
billingsgazette.com
A project that would poison rainbow trout on Buffalo Creek in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness and restock the stream with Yellowstone cutthroat trout has been approved by the Custer Gallatin National Forest supervisor. Work could begin next year.
Forest Service signs off on wilderness trout poisoning project
The agencies are cooperating to remove the nonnative fish because they have been one of the main sources for hybridization of cutthroat trout downstream.
A project that would poison rainbow trout on Buffalo Creek in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness and restock the stream with Yellowstone cutthroat trout has been approved by the Custer Gallatin National Forest supervisor. Work could begin next year.
