Fishing through the decades

When I was a boy there were two kinds of fishermen on the North Fork. Fly fishermen were probably mostly interested in cutthroat trout that were primarily caught for immediate consumption. Few meals can beat fresh trout fried in bacon grease over a campfire and accompanied by sliced potatoes in the same cast iron frying pan.

Then there were those who used bait casting rods to fish for the much larger bull trout or Dolly Varden. Although sometimes baked, most of the bull trout fishermen I knew would salt the fish with rock salt, cut them into large chunks in a crock (no water, they made their own brine) and after a week or so soaking in the root cellar they would be smoked. In those days any whitefish caught would also be smoked as they were considered to be much inferior to fried trout.

Both types of fishermen caught fish to eat. I never heard of catch and release until many years later. In fact, I was taught to only catch what we could eat, fish could be canned or smoked for the winter but could only be given to folks who needed the food and were never to be sold or mounted.

In the years leading up to World War II and for a period after the war, fish were plentiful and people were fewer. As a teenager I could always catch enough bluebacks or red bellies for a meal in less than an hour. The picture with this column was taken in the 1940s when my dad was home on leave. (That’s me in the middle.)

After World War II the road was improved and more and more people came to the North Fork. Also the spinning rod came on the market and new lures made it easier to catch fish.

Along with these changes came rubber boats. At first all of the inflatables were war surplus, were not of real high quality, and did not last more than a few years. Of course, that didn’t last long and today most rubber rafts are outfitted with rowing platforms and frames that make it easy to stand up in the boat to fish.

After World War II, my dad, Ross Wilson, became the first game warden in District 1 of the Montana Fish and Game. (District 1 encompasses the five northwestern counties of Montana.)

In that position for 14 years he worked hard for legislation to forbid floaters from even carrying fishing gear in a boat on the river. His opinion was then, and until he died, that floaters fishing would put too much pressure on the fishery and the fish population would crash.

Maybe so, and maybe not. The Montana Fish and Game never did sponsor legislation to ban floating and fishing. Instead, they came up with the idea of introducing mysis shrimp in Flathead Lake to increase fish population.

We all know how that worked out, the kokanee salmon population crashed due to astronomical increase in lake trout which also began eating the native cutthroat and bull trout.

Today, we have catch and release and I do not believe the bull trout will ever recover and cutthroat are in the same boat. The water is still clear and cold but whitefish and lake trout are poor substitutes for cutthroat and bull trout.

What do you think?

Larry Wilson’s North Fork Views appears weekly in the Hungry Horse News.