By Dave Sweet
I thought you all might be interested in a fishing report from Walt Gasson (Director, TU Endorsed Businesses) on a trip he recently made into the Thorofare to fish for native Yellowstone cutthroats with Dave Hettinger Outfitting. Please read his report at this link. Sounds like he not only had a great time, but also got to witness what can only be described as a remarkable number of cutthroats in the system. I know we sometimes get discouraged by the slow progress to recover this population of cutts in Yellowstone Lake; however, his report puts our work into context. Along with the sightings this spring of grizzlies again feeding on cutthroats, we now have further indications that our work is leading to success. And, it sounds like a significant number of other people made the same arduous trip to take advantage of the increasing spawning run. Not too many years ago, no one was going to the trouble of going into the Thorofare to fish! Walt is planning to write up his trip for an article submitted to Trout Unlimited’s magazine Trout. Hopefully, other publications will follow suit.
I would like to add my own observations from our angling days on Yellowstone Lake in June to catch lake trout for the telemetry study. Over 95 volunteers in 19 different boats were trying to catch lake trout in order to surgically implant the hydro-acoustic transmitters. We were targeting lake trout; fishing deep with big spoons. Yet, over the course of five days we repeatedly caught way more cutthroats than lake trout. In fact, the ratio was almost 3 to 1. This occurred over many different areas of the lake using what would normally not be thought of as cutthroat techniques. The results were quite surprising.
We should all feel a sense of pride that our efforts are paying off. Please share this report with anyone else you feel would like to read it.
Dave Sweet
Yellowstone Lake Special Project Manager, WY TU