closed
Madison River, dam to powerhouseMadison Co., Montanafull closure; hoot-owl on six riverschecked Jul 15
Fishing
Warm outflows from Ennis reservoir are keeping the river from cooling overnight, and the drought policy has started to bite.
By Outdoor Unc
Fish, Wildlife and Parks closed the Madison from Madison Dam to the footbridge at the NorthWestern Energy powerhouse to all fishing from Wednesday. Warm water leaving Ennis reservoir is preventing the stretch from cooling off overnight, and officials say sustained high temperatures are lethal to native fish.
Six more rivers went under hoot-owl restriction the same week, which closes fishing between 2 p.m. and midnight. Two sections of the Big Hole are affected, along with the lower Gallatin from Cameron Bridge Road down to the Missouri, and stretches of the Jefferson, Beaverhead, Smith and Sun.
The trigger is written into the department's drought policy rather than decided case by case: restrictions follow when flows drop below critical levels, when water quality falls off, or when daily maximum temperatures hit 73 degrees three days running. At 77 degrees trout start dying.
The practical version is get up early. Morning is usually the better fishing anyway, and the department is pointing people toward high lakes and deep reservoirs, which hold cool oxygenated water through the afternoon when the rivers cannot.
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notice
Grizzly management ruleWY · MT · ID · WAcomment period closes Sept 15checked Jul 15
Public land
A proposed rule would give Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington day-to-day authority over roughly 2,000 bears that stay federally threatened.
By Outdoor Unc
The Interior Department announced a proposed rule on July 14 that would move day-to-day grizzly management to the four states where the bears live, while leaving them listed as threatened. The department framed it as recognition of recovery rather than a delisting, and the Secretary was explicit that responsibility, not status, is what moves.
The mechanism is a tiered system. How much decision-making and regulatory flexibility a state gets is tied to whether it has adopted conservation strategies and management plans and hit demographic objectives for the bears in its own country. Meet more of them, get more latitude.
This is the latest turn in a legal loop that has run for a decade. Wyoming, Montana and Idaho have petitioned for delisting repeatedly; two previous delistings were reversed in court. A settlement forced a final delisting decision, and that deadline now sits at the end of December.
The question most hunters will ask first is whether this opens a season. It does not, and not soon. The comment period on the rule closes September 15, and the separate delisting decision is still pending.
Sources