By Michael Howell
Mike Hansen remembers fishing on the upper West Fork of the Bitterroot River, just below the dam, when he was a kid in the late 1950s.
“I fished all day and never saw a person,” said Hansen.
Hansen’s roots here go back seven generations. His grandfather was a cross-cut sawyer. Several of his relatives worked on the dam creating Painted Rocks Reservoir. Since returning from a dozen or so years in the Navy to family property up the West Fork, he has fished it a lot. He loves to fish. It’s always been a big part of his life.
Hansen remembers as a child when most people fished for subsistence purposes. You ate what you caught and you caught enough to feed the whole family if you could. When extended family came to the Bitterroot to visit from Anaconda and California, they would go up the Skalkaho and hold a family fish fry.
“You can’t do that anymore,” said Hansen. With all the regulations and the limits a few guys can’t go out and catch enough fish to feed the whole family. Hansen isn’t dreaming that we could bring back the past. And he’s not against regulations. He is a catch and release fisherman, himself, these days. Occasionally he will keep one for his mom.
But all his fishing experience on the upper West Fork over all these years has led him to regret not getting involved a bit sooner in a formal way when the Bitterroot River Recreation Advisory Committee was formed to consider some permitting options to manage the growing, and sometimes conflicting, use of the river by all recreationists.
Because he lives up there next to the river, he loves to just take a walk and go fishing. But he’s also seen a lot of cars with out of state and some out of country license plates parked down the road where there is access to the river and they, like him, are out wading the river, not floating.
Now he’s a bit concerned that wade fishermen may not have been given enough consideration in the new rules that are being developed by FWP. While the advisory committee has developed a proposal that would limit float fishing one day a week on different sections of the river to allow waders to have an “uninterrupted” day of wading, Hansen believes that waders should be given one stretch of the river at the very top, just below the dam, where they can have “uninterrupted” wade fishing any day of the week.
The reason for this, according to Hansen, is that the river is simply too narrow in this reach to accommodate both wading and float fishing. He said his nephew was just out on the river in that stretch recently and had to let six boats go by in about half an hour.
“He won’t be coming back,” said Hansen. “You know a wade fisherman can easily spend an hour at a fishing hole, changing flies and trying different things.” The problem, according to Hansen, is that, on this stretch of the river it is so narrow that when a boat comes by you have to back off. Down river, he said, after the Nez Perce comes in, the river is wide enough that it provides a little buffer in this interaction.
Hansen said that the conflict has made him think a lot about fishing and why all these people are doing it, because that’s the thing that they all have in common.
“Reflecting on it,” he said, “we are all out there for the experience. It involves fishing, but it is a communing with nature. That experience is being degraded.”
Hansen believes that the upper West Fork ought to be closed after July 1, when low flows make floating it not just an “interruption” but a complete “disruption” of the wader’s experience. The kind of experience his nephew had.
Hansen has other concerns than being crowded out by floaters. He’s also really concerned about the “chainsaw boaters.” He believes that a few lawbreaking boaters are using chainsaws to keep the river as clear and open “for business” as possible to the detriment of the habitat, the fishery and the wade fishermen. He thinks it is primarily just laziness.
There are laws that prohibit doing that kind of work in the river without a permit. The permit is free. But the system also allows for an “after the fact” permit to be issued if some action was taken in the case of an emergency for safety reasons. Even if you turned someone in for violating the law they could claim that, at the time, it was a safety hazard that needed to be removed.
“They may say safety, but I think it’s convenience,” said Hansen. He said there are ways to deal with obstacles like fallen trees without taking them out but it does mean going over them or around them. If there is no option but taking it out, there are ways to do it correctly and there are the wrong ways.
Hansen took me for a walk along the river to show me some classic “mistakes”. One where the root wad was allowed to wash away, leaving the river bank unprotected. One where an alternative channel could have been used but someone decided they liked the fast lane better.
“I don’t think these chainsaw boaters are thinking about the consequences of their actions,” said Hansen. “I’m all for safety and I’m not saying that things should not change. But I’m opposed to indiscriminate cutting with indiscriminate effects.” He said FWP and the Conservation District provide expert advice along with the free permit if the boaters would just ask first.
According to FWP Fisheries manager Pat Saffel, the 310 Permit law is a difficult one to enforce in terms of chainsaw boaters. To take a 310 Permit violation to the District Supervisors for enforcement you would need to have the name and address of the alleged perpetrators. Not an easy thing to do when someone is floating down the river. He said there is plenty of evidence that woody debris and fallen trees make good fishing habitat.
The Bitterroot River Recreational Advisory Committee, consisting of sixteen members, was formed last December. The committee met in two two-day sessions about two weeks apart and developed six different alternatives for consideration. They also came to a consensus about a single “preferred alternative.”
The river from the dam to the Wally Crawford FAS just below Darby falls under the rules and has been divided into four sections. Commercial outfitters would be limited to two floats per outfitter per section per day. From June 1 through September 15 a non-commercial day would be established in each section.
Section 1 from the dam to Applebury (11 miles) would be closed to float-fishing one day a week on Friday.
Section 2 from Applebury to Job (8 miles) would be closed to float fishing on Saturday.
Section 3 from Job to Hannon (8 miles) would be closed to float-fishing on Sunday.
Section 4 from Hannon to Wally Crawford would be closed to float-fishing on Monday.
The preferred alternative being recommended by the group at this point does not involve issuing any Special Recreation Permits as was once contemplated. Instead, an alternative permitting system involving voluntary registration of commercial outfitters is being recommended that would include placing a cap on the total number of outfitters allowed on those upper reaches and regulating the days that they could float in various sections.
Saffel said that this list of alternatives was just a starting point in what promises to be a long process.
“We aren’t going to have any rules in place this summer,” Saffel said. He said there would be opportunity for wider public comment on the alternatives that the committee has produced and new ones could be added as an Environmental Analysis of the alternatives is developed.
“The process is far from over,” said Saffel.