A week after the Wyoming Game and Fish Department asked anglers to stop catch-and-release fishing on the Snake River and Flat Creek every afternoon, the reaction from the people who make their living on those waters has been close to unanimous. They agree with it. Several of them think it did not go far enough.
The request, issued 29 July, covers the Snake from the Yellowstone National Park boundary down to Palisades Reservoir, plus all of Flat Creek. It is voluntary. It carries no penalty. And it is the first time the department has ever asked for one on the Snake.
"It amounts to a final warning," Darren Rhea, the department's Jackson regional fisheries supervisor, told Wyoming Public Radio. "If people behave accordingly and practice good ethics, we can avoid a closure."
Rhea has the authority to shut the river outright and has been open about not wanting to use it. He told Buckrail that Wednesday's guidelines were "pretty unprecedented" for the Snake, and explained the mechanics simply enough: "When we are dealing with trout - the primary concern is that there is just less oxygen in the water when it is warmer. So they are already stressed, they are already dealing with marginal conditions, and then you hook one and fight one and try to release it. And it just takes a much longer period of time to recover."
Monitoring data backs the timing. At the Moose gauge, Snake River afternoon highs have run above 65 degrees since 11 July. Below Flat Creek the river has touched 70 or higher eight times since 19 July. Flat Creek below Cache Creek peaked at 73.6 degrees on 20 July.
Mike Dawkins, president of WorldCast Anglers, saw it coming after his guides started reporting high readings in early July. "It was just a matter of time from our perspective," he said. His public reaction has been part relief, part unease: "It is scary because it is foreign territory and it is happening now in our backyard. [But] this is not the apocalypse. It is better for our trout friends and our sustainability."
Dawkins expects retail at his Victor, Idaho, operation to take a short-term hit. The longer-term reading worries him more, because the heat that used to be a lower-elevation problem has reached the headwaters. "I think that is the bigger picture piece that really worries people," he said.
Not everyone thinks a request is the right instrument. Jean Bruun, an outfitter with Wyoming Angling Company, told Wyoming Public Radio she is "really happy" about the warning but wants the state to follow Montana, where hoot owl restrictions legally close listed waters between 2pm and midnight. Her thermometer, she said, has been reading above the state's recommended threshold routinely for several summers.
"Not anything that will be unique this year," Bruun said of the closures. "I think it is going to be a new norm in certain years, especially during a drought year."
The closures have kept spreading since. Game and Fish recommended a full closure on part of the Bighorn River near Thermopolis on 3 August, and voluntary afternoon closures are now in place on stretches of the Green River, the New Fork, North Horse Creek, the North Platte below the Lusby ramp and Deer Creek.
In Casper, guide Bradey Hall said the threshold is not really debatable among working guides. "Most of the guides, when we are out fishing and the water starts hitting 70 degrees, we are done," he told Cowboy State Daily. "Trout are cold-water fish. When the water is warm and they fight so hard, they just fight themselves to death."
Trent Tatum, co-owner of the North Platte Lodge in Alcova, is still running cooler water - high 50s to low 60s - and is watching the dams. "We are pretty diligent. We have guides taking water temperatures every day," he said. "If you get into water that is 68 degrees or higher, that is no bueno. My concern will be in August. If they decide to lower our water flows below the dams on the North Platte, the water temperature could become an issue."
Rhea, for his part, is betting on the anglers. "The majority of folks here, they are really engaged," he said. "They appreciate the resource, and they do not want to impact it."
Boots Allen of the Snake River Fund, who also guides for Snake River Anglers, put the case for compliance plainly: "Snake River Fund would urge anglers to really heed this. The biologists at Wyoming Game and Fish do a lot of work on this. They do not take these types of announcements and closures and advisories lightly at all."
Game and Fish says the recommendation could run through August. The department will keep watching temperatures, and for dead fish.
