Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has approved a plan to continue lake trout netting on Swan Lake for another five years.

The plan involves contracting with fishery consultants to conduct gill netting over a three-week period starting in late August or early September of this year, followed by an effort to remove spawning adult lake trout in October and November from known spawning sites. Similar operations would be carried out over the next four years.

The decision came about after a 30-day period for the public to comment on an environmental assessment. Fish, Wildlife and Parks received 127 written comments, and of those, 108 supported the proposal, 14 opposed it and five involved questions rather than comments about the proposal.

From 2009 through 2011, a total of 21,330 lake trout from 6 to 36 inches long were removed from the lake.

There were 5,213 caught in 2009, 10,021 in 2010 and 5,165 in 2011.

Last year’s declining catch, which included a greater number of young lake trout partly because of smaller net mesh, suggests that the spring and fall netting efforts were effective in reducing the abundance of lake trout, which first were detected in the lake in 1998.

The project is intended to reduce the impacts of non-native lake trout on native bull trout and cutthroat trout, and to curb a proliferation of lake trout to other waters in the Swan drainage.