Fish have to be 40 inches before they're keepers

Montana's 2007 fishing regulations are out with a new provision for tiger muskellunge on Horseshoe Lake, plus there is a special statewide rule passed by the Legislature that is not included in the regulation handbook.

The Legislature just passed a law making it legal for anglers to fish with two rods on standing, open water. Previously, anglers were limited to a single rod except when fishing through ice.

The state now has a regulation to account for the stocking of 500 4- to 6-inch tiger muskies in Horseshoe Lake last fall, and 500 eight- to-10-inch muskies this spring.

Anglers can keep one muskie per day and it must be more than 40 inches long, meaning that it will be several years before a muskie can be legally harvested from Horseshoe Lake.

"Realistically, it will be four years before we get anything of that size that can be harvested," said Jim Vashro, regional fisheries manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Within a year, anglers may begin to catch small tiger muskies on Horseshoe Lake, but they must be released.

Vashro noted that the main purpose for planting muskies was for them to serve as a "biological control" on non-game fish that infest the lake, "and we want to get our money's worth" by allowing muskies to grow to an effective predatory size.

The fish now are even more prized because their supply is limited. They were imported from Wisconsin and reared at a state hatchery in Miles City. But just recently, Vashro said, a virus that causes fish to hemorrhage has emerged in the Midwest, prompting the state to put a moratorium on all hatchery imports from that part of the country.

The Miles City hatchery was tested and the virus was not present, Vashro said.

The decision to introduce muskies at Horseshoe Lake - the first plant of its kind in western Montana - was highly controversial because of concerns that "bucket biologists" or raptors would catch them and move them to other waters.

That still can happen, Vashro acknowledges, but the state decided to proceed with confidence that tiger muskies are a hybrid species in which all males are sterile. Some females continue to produce eggs, creating a risk of cross-breading with a species such as northern pike.

Because Horseshoe Lake does not have a pike population, that risk is minimal, Vashro said.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com