‘Bows’ Threaten ‘Cutts’

Sun., Dec. 10, 2000

Staff

Fishing

The fabled Yellowstone cutthroat trout that made Idaho’s South Fork of the Snake River famous are losing ground to the non-native rainbow trout.

Since 1986, when the Idaho Fish and Game Department started monitoring catch rates on the river, rainbows have gone from 1 percent of the total catch to nearly 30 percent. Hundreds of drift boats and bank anglers work the river on summer days from Palisades Reservoir downstream to its confluence with the Henry’s Fork, another world-famous trout fishery.

Cutthroats, which comprised 79 percent of the catch in 1986, now make up about half of the total landings. Brown trout, native whitefish and lake trout that escape from Palisades make up the rest of the catch.

The department has been electroshocking on spawning areas and removing as many rainbows as possible from the river to prevent the rainbows from further expanding and hybridizing with the cutthroats. The rainbows are then released in waters that don’t have native fisheries.

“If Yellowstone cutthroat become endangered, somebody else-namely the federal government-is going to be called in to manage them,” said Jeff Dillon, state fisheries biologist.

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