Restoring Native Fisheries to Yellowstone A day on Yellowstone lake managing Lake Trout populations. An interview with Dave Hallac, former Chief Scientist of Yellowstone...
Then open commercial fishing for lake Trout. I was a Pacific NW and an Alaskan fishing guide, and I have boats I would do this if a commercial fishing was allowed.
I live in NH, where introduction of lake trout to Lake Sunapee almost a century ago extirpated an entire indigenous population of variant arctic char unique to Lake Sunapee. They were so abundant that in the fall when they spawned, entire gravel shoal sections of the lake would be orange-yellow with their vibrant spawning colors. The introduction of aggressive non-native lake trout wiped out the local char population in a matter of decades, and interbreeding took care of the rest through genetic dilution. The strain is extinct, thanks to man's ill-conceived interference.
Bucket Biology----Dopes put White perch literally everywhere, pike everywhere. They put white perch in Mooshead Lake, and sadly one of the people busted was a licensed maine guide. You can't stop these idiots, a car, a bucket, and a fishing rod can ruin a lake.
They are in Lake Sunapee. You can still fish for Maine Blueback char in a few lakes in Maine, which is genetically the same fish, but none are left in their namesake lake in NH@@Paulpoission
I have spent a lot of my life involved in the effort to control the sea lamprey in the Great Lakes in order to save the lake trout. The irony that this species is wreaking havoc so nearby is not lost on me.
Worked for the NPS in the park 5 summers in the early 70’s and fished the upper Yellowstone, Cub Creek, Clear Creek, and Pelican Creek often. It is beyond criminal that someone in the 80’s decided to illegally transplant lakers in Yellowstone Lake destroying a spectacular native fishery that had survived 10’s of thousands of years. At its peak the Yellowstone cutthroat population was over 2 million fish in the lake and the drainages feeding it. In less than 20 years the population had fallen to a couple hundred thousand due to laker predation. Beyond sad.
In Shoshone Lake decades ago, highly doubtful into Yellowstone Lake. Years ago the Park Service engaged in a plan to eliminate all non native fish (brown and rainbow trout, etc), so an intentional transplant of non native char into Yellowstone Lake makes no sense.
I also worked for NPS in Yellowstone several years in the early 70's. Opening day of fishing season at Buffalo Ford in mid-July just downstream of the lake was epic fishing for cutthroats. Curse the stupid 'bucket biologist' that caused this horrific damage to a spectacular wildlife environment.
@@markmendenhall7348I'd rather throw a cut plug lure in the lake, Catch the lakers, And eat them. They don't come back when you eat them!... not exactly...
I live in Erie Pa and love the spring lake trout season. Catching those giants less than a mile off shore makes for incredible days in the boat. There are hardly any other boats out after them. We troll in circles around North East, catching dozens of huge lakers and usually don’t even see another boat. Everyone keeps their boats dry until the walleye season but I always launch before April to bridge the gap between ice season and smallie season. We truly have it all in Erie. World class walleye, perch and smallmouth. Great ice fishing. Steelhead and lakers. It’s a 12 month fishermen’s paradise. A lot of people don’t even bother with the lakers which is insane to me. I have a 29’ stripper seaswirl, but you don’t need anything like that to get on the lake trout. A 16’ with a 9.9 will get you out there. But like I said, lake trout fishermen are few and far between, despite there being thousands of them just a few hundred yards from shore
Hi! I love fishing for lakers here in Michigan. I jig for them! It’s my favorite type of fishing. Lake Erie is great for lakers too? Can I give you my email address? I’d love to talk lakers !
I hope Yellowstone Lake has no limit on the number of Lake Trout that can be kept. One would think that given the amount of fishing pressure most lakes in the west are under, that removing the limit on Lake Trout would go a long way to help eliminate them from the lake, or at least reduce their numbers.
My understanding is that there is no limit on lake trout in Yellowstone Lake. On the contrary, it is actually illegal to release any lake trout you do catch. But this is in a National Park, nobody actually lives on the lake, and it’s not like there are marinas full of appropriately rigged boats with downriggers, lead core lines, sonar, and all the apparatus required to effectively fish for lake trout (they tend to live and spawn in deeper water, away from shore). There’s pretty much zero fishing pressure on the lake trout.
My Dad went with his buddy a couple of times in the years after he retired in September. You MUST keep the Lake Trout. He would catch 5-10/hr when the bite was heavy.
Great video, the Yellowstone Lake restoration efforts are one of my favorite subjects to learn about and study. Such an interesting but difficult challenge. Hope the cutthroat continue to rebound and that the lake trout are able to be controlled.
In the early ‘70s myself and two friends canoed across Yellowstone lake up the Shoshone River into Shoshone Lake. There we caught some Lake trout. The lake was so clear you could see them 50 feet deep when they were hooked. We estimated each trout to be 5 pounds
Awesome video, really highlights how one small change in an ecosystem can have far reaching consequences. The truth is, we will be spending a lot of time and resources trying to clean up poor decisions that were made in the past.
I did a lot of fishing on Yellowstone Lake in the late 90's. Unfortunately I did see quite a decline year by year... Hopefully we can bring my favorite fish back!
Growing up in the early '70s we used to fish Yellowstone every summer. At that time Lake Trout, Brown and Rainbows were very common in Lake Shoshone and Lake Lewis. We used to target Lake Trout when trolling. Cutthroat trout were less common. I was a bit surprised by his 1994 intro date. Lake Trout were obviously there 20 years earlier.
Yes, lake trout were introduced by fisheries managers into Lewis and Shoshone Lakes more than a century ago. They subsequently expanded downstream in the Lewis River drainage. Managers did not introduce them to Yellowstone Lake, ignorant anglers did.
@@jimr4084 Don't you think it is a bit disingenuous to blame anglers for introducing a species to the park when the Fisheries had introduced them decades earlier?
myopic, ignorant AND STUPID Manages were ABSOLUTELY RESPONSIBLE@@jimr4084 . or perhaps the term flooding and lake to lake transfer were alien words to them ??
My bet is the cutthroat has huge gigantic spawning beds and the lake trout that have been there for 40 years never took off due to spawning bed competition and smaller lake trout size. Once the cutthroats died off due to winter kill and other factors the lake trout took over mire spawning beds and just really took off. I don't think this was simply illegal introduction 10-20 years ago causing it all
Cutthroat spawn in tributary streams--NOT in the lake beds! There is no evidence of winter kill--please try to educate yourself before making uninformed comments.@@timtool3229
I live in Idaho and not only lake trout but brown trout, walleye and especially pike have become menacing problems that are costing taxpayers millions to deal with. Some of them were even stocked by a well meaning game and fish department when fish management was in its infancy. The predominant fish in the big panhandle lakes were bull trout (char), cutthroat and Kokanee. In many lakes and rivers these fish were totally or nearly wiped out. Restocking along with bounties and no limits on the predator fish are helping. Game and fish has also been operating an almost commercial size netting program on the bigger lakes for years. Still, the fisheries will never fully recover and the war will never end.
Whether it’s state biologists or recreational anglers doing it, I can’t think of one time where a non native fish introduction on a large scale helped the ecosystem in any way. I live in Vermont and back in the late 80’s and early 90’s Vermont Fish & Game introduced alewives into Lake Champlain as a forage for landlocked salmon and lake trout. What they didn’t realize at the time is that when landlocked salmon eat alewives it produces an enzyme in their liver than causes infertility. As a result, along with other environmental factors, land locked salmon fishing on Lake Champlain has been on a steady decline for decades.
Invasive species of all types can be an ecosystems worst enemy, Burmese pythons in the everglades is well known but one of the worst ecological disasters of the 20th century happened when a tree lover in Oregon brought over Chinese chestnut trees that also introduced the chestnut blight to north america, the American Chestnut had no immunity. American Chestnuts were not only the dominate canopy tree in the eastern and upper midwestern US until this point, also the major source of food for wildlife from deer to bears to squirrels, more than oaks and preferred by wildlife. in a matter of 30 years from the 1920s to the early '40s, the chestnuts were destroyed by the blight. Chestnuts were also a major foodsource especially in Appalachia adn their loss in the middle of the great depression was devestating. Who has not heard of Bing Crosbys 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire'. Chestnuts in the store now if you can find them are almost all Chinese chestnuts. They American Chestnut is now considered extinct w just a few small pockets here and there left. Restroration efforts are ongoing using blight resistant strains of these surviving trees, I have a small grove on my property here in the northeast that so far has shown no blight, fingers crossed my half dozen trees can grow to maturity and I can use those chestnuts to plant more trees to leave a legacy.
This makes me want to cry. Back in the 70s we went camping every summer. Fishing was incredible. The limit was 3 but they had to under 16 inches. You couldn't put a line in the water without catching a fish. You could fish all day and not catch 3 under 16.
The same unfortunate progression or regression is to be seen in many African countries, where the introduction of (for us) exotic alien invader species such as carp (Asian and common), largemouth and smallmouth bass and trout have gradually decimated the populations of indigenous species such as tilapia and barbs. Over the last few decades, other factors have placed pressure on the native fishes, such as water pollution, as vital related infrastructure is not maintained properly; and illegal and indiscriminate netting by poachers due to economic pressures. Paradoxically, despite the fact that the aliens are destroying biodiversity, and native fishes are becoming ever scarcer, most sport anglers practice catch and release instead of removing them from the waters. The admirable B.A.S.S ethos, which works on native fishes in America and Canada, doesn't pan out very well in regions of the world where the same fish are problem children.
Such a bummer especially for fishermen I once saw a man made basin filled with trout that people could feed I couldn’t believe the size of these trout.
They're spawning somewhere usually in a concentrated area at a certain time so I would suggest a trawler on the spawning beds during spawning season.did the job on n Atlantic cod right so your welcome lol
@@jimr4084 talking about before they get onto actual grounds like the channels leading to the spawning creeks and rivers as they migrate in to spawning grounds .they inadvertently wiped out n cod in newfoundland with that style of commercial fishing .
Lake trout do not spawn in tributaries. They spawn on rocky shoals within the lake. The first spawning concentration was located in the West Thumb basin around Carrington Island back in the 90's. A common strategy was to use gill nets and surround spawning beds.@@joesutherland225
I was there in the 90s. It might have helped if you let fisherman know that they could catch lake trout and keep them for no fee, Instead of charging them for a fishing permit, To Only fish flies on streams. Send the fishing pressure to the lake trout, And take it off the cuts throats.
@@TruthDragon. They always have to find a way to cash in! It's not bad enough that they still take the taxes that funded the parks, But defund the parks,and expect you to pay for them twice. That's misappropriation of federal tax funds! They should be in prison!
Is there any idea as to how the Lake trout were introduced? Could it be possible that Lake Trout were there all along, and the population simply had a major resurgence due to increased cutthroat trout numbers?
no, they were brought in by anglers who were not knowledgable but had a selfish idea. They arent native to that system whatsoever. We dont see things as they are, we see them as we are.
So sad, mankind destroying the planet in so many ways. But why were the killed Lakers just tossed back into the lake? Here in Minnesota, where lake trout occur naturally in many lakes, smoked Lakers are only about a third cheaper than smoked salmon.
Need to keep up the gill netting. Saturate areas with nets where sonar shows fish congregate. There is no one time fix, gill netting needs to be an ongoing process through out the year every year at least when it's not iced over. Either hire a crew that works for the parks or contract it out on a permanent basis. What are the spawning habits of lake trout? Do they spawn in open water or in tributaries? While there will be some bycatch of the non targeted species net mesh size can be regulated to let the smaller cut throats swim through. We have our fare share of exotics here in Louisiana both flora and fauna, most brought in as ornamental or to establish new industries to the detriment of our native species. This will never get rid of the lake trout it will take out a lot of the larger brood fish
It would most likely take predation pressure off of the cutthroats. Cisco and smelt are both deep, pelagic baitfish that are in the same area of the water column that lake trout are in. If they have them to eat, they hypothetically wouldn’t need to come shallow to prey on cutthroat.
The first one being thrown back was the cutthroat they're trying to save. The large amount of fish dumped over in the bucket were the lake trout (mackinaw) and are very high in toxins, mercury, etc. And from my opinion and many others dont taste good. You dont want to feed those to people.
I respect what I am learning but I do question how Lake Trout was planted into Yellowstone. The fish is a deep water species and it would be difficult to transport. I 11:43 suspect that the species has always been there and the lake environment has changed. I think we need to learn more about how the forage base beyond Cutthroat Trout has changed in Yellowstone.
Yeah they're quite easy to transport, they're a hardy fish. How do you think they got to the dozens of other western states where they're non native? Telekinesis? Lol They have not always been there. There is evidence of this and many more examples across the west. I will trust the biologists and scientists who have studied this for decades, and not some uneducated speculation in a youtube comment section.
It would not be very hard to transport. They are in plenty of nearby drainages and can survive in shallow water just fine. Of course they prefer deep water, but you can catch them in rivers given the right conditions.
They were transported over from Lewis Lake where they are easy to catch in shallow water during spawning season. They were not native to any waters in Yellowstone.
These are super smart gill nets that only get the gills of lake trout. With another couple hundred million dollars and another 80-100 years the lakers may be reduced another 5% in population.
What is a "lake" trout? There's rainbow, cut throat, brown, dolly vardon, steelhead, etc. I didn't recognize the lake trout in the video. Where are they native to? I can find the info, I was hoping it would be mentioned here in the video. I'll check in the description before I tap out.@@thisisyellowstone
There have never been Lahontans in Yellowstone. "Lahontan Lake Trout" aren't a thing. There are Lahontan Cutthroats, but those have never been in Yellowstone.
@@Honks34 Erk, yes. Clearly a cognitive glitch on that one. Think I confused those with the outsized cutthroats from Pyramid lake. Will check my sources on the lake trout in Yellowstone lake. Might have been a story by Charlie waterman or Russel Chatham
@@RoryLynott Hi Rory: Great, thanks. That fits with the story I remember reading. Was this from personal experience, or alternatively, what is your source on this?
Absolutely this. The contractors and gill netting are a complete waste of time once they are no longer producing population data and the program should transition to an incentivized harvest (bounty) system like what has been used in the Colorado River system by the NPS to reduce brown trout populations and in Idaho by their Fish and Game regarding pikeminnows. That said, the talking heads at Yellowstone are probably as reluctant to cede any authority or power as ever and the Secretary will probably have to force the issue if it comes to that.
We have the same issue in canada on spray lakes. It was a cutty creek then they damed it and make a lake and put lakers in it. U can still catch a cutty and they are huge but the lakers have taken over. U can catch more than 100 lakers in a matter of hours
@harlandeke there is a study on it, the path by water over the divide is a gentle slope with no waterfalls, lake trout fry and juveniles can easily make the journey. The removal is futile, they can only suppress the population. They will never eradicate, or even come close.
The catch and kill method is a waste of useful protein, I get they should be removed but catch and keep…and feed some folks who need it , this is a case where the government is already spending money on the environment and could also help people make ends meet cheaper than just food stamps , etc .
Yes it is ridiculous! New York state does something similar, New York has a fish hatchery in Altmar. In the fall as the salmon spawn they enter the hatchery and the eggs an milt are taken from the salmon. But instead of using the fish they are simply composted.
Weird thinking of lake trout as a destructive species. Just wait until smallmouth bass get in there. They have destroyed 1000s of lakes here in NW Ontario. The native species, especially walleye, have been decimated due to the bass. Smallmouth can live just about anywhere. I know of lakes as far north as 55 degrees latitude that have invasive bass in them!
Great video but not great news. Just another example of a few selfish men/women screwing things up for the rest of us. Fyi, Lake trout feed near the surface in the spring. I can't see how anything will change in Yellowstone Lake, the damage is done. In addition, is there a reason the caught lake trout are dumped back in the lake rather than being harvested? Just wondering.
Anyone else think this seems extremely futile and a waste of taxpayer money? I do care about the decline of native trout, it’s extremely sad and is especially prevalent where I’m from in Nova Scotia. But I can’t see this working out.
Lake trout are part of nature.why transplant them anywhere? Yellowstone trout are very pretty.my parents bought me Franklin mint trophy trout and the yellowstone was one of them.sister in law smashed them.
Need to interfere, that's taboo? Fishing derbies would be good. Electric boat motor only. Fish hatchery would be good. These lake trout are deep, boat nets just skim the upper profile. This will never decrease the lake trout.
The gill nets are set at a deeper level. Cutthroats tend to live in the shallower areas, so the nets are targeting the lake trout. It's close to 100% of the fish caught in the nets are Lake trout.
In 1970 I was 14. My uncle had a 22' boat and we had three families do a campout on the lake at a remote campsite. The fishing was fantastic. He took the boy cousins out, there were six of us for a few hours and we caught about 30 fish. Then he took an equal number of girl cousins out and they out fished us. The deal was the group that caught the least fish had to clean them all. As the oldest boy I was the lead and I remember cleaning upwards of 50 fish. I forget the limit but with the number of people we had fishing we were near the limit, but under. I relate all of this as first hand evidence of how plentiful the Cuthroat were. I believe the minimum size was 14". To catch these fish all we had to do was troll Mepps spinners. It's a crying shame some idiot introduced this non native predatory species into the lake. Shame on them.
@@Honks34 It actually has worked wonders on many other rivers and lakes. Will you eradicate them? Certainly not, but you will greatly suppress their population. Finding ongoing funds for these programs is usually the difficulty.
They “park” invited the lake trout when they put in paved roads, paved roads are the primary travel paths for the dysfunctional… there was once plans to build an amusement park on the shores… and don’t forget the zoo that once inhabited “dot island” and the EC waters ship wreck, the capitalistic man has been exploiting these waters since there arrival …. The best way to save the” park”is foot access only!!!
Capitalism is also whats funding the programs to save these fish. There is non native/invasive fish spread out all over America. There is high remote lakes that also have introduced populations of lake trout and Eastern Brook trout (another non native species to the west) that have never had road access or development. Your thought process is severely flawed.
Lake up a forest road, now has a trail to it , also non native bass and perch. Have yet to catch a trout. And human shit just behind the beach, when there’s an outhouse at the top
From viewing just the first few minutes of this video, it is quite clear that humans are the primary reason for the dramatic decline in the cutthroat trout population. The filming of the fish catches by anglers in the olden days demonstrates how these fish were over harvested. Perhaps the state didn’t have a catch limit, or the anglers just didn’t follow the regulations. Either way, that’s a human problem. Then we have some individuals who illegally or irresponsibly introduced lake trout to the lake. Again, a human problem. When it comes to respecting the environment, so many people suck.
Unfortunately, as long as there are idiotic individuals who can hold a fishing pole, this type of thing will continue. Too bad there is not an intelligence test required before issuing a fishing license.
You're called conservationists. Yet you just threw overboard large quantity of lake trout as garbage...lots of food! If this was in this video...how many more times has this act been done? And we are supposed to trust your judgement...
So just how has the climate changed in Yellowstone, and how did that change affect the cutthroat? I'm starting to hate these people. They are so cavalier and matter of fact, yet have no data. Bla bla bla, climate change.
Anyone who has been hanging in the rockies knows that the climate is changing. You'd be much better off arguing the reasons for climate change. Atleast there's some ambiguity there you can win an occasional argument on. But anyone with a brain knows the climate is changing, glaciers are receding, and average temps are increasing.
