Opposition to gill netting lake trout on Flathead Lake, and any state involvement with netting, continues to take shape.

Flathead Wildlife Inc., a local rod and gun club, has retained an attorney to challenge state involvement with a long-term netting project being pursued by the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes, and a campaign has been launched to boycott the spring and fall Mack Days events sponsored by the tribes.

Developing a new Flathead Lake co-management plan to replace one that expired in 2010 continues to be a topic of conversation between the tribes and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The tribes are interested in getting Bonneville Power Administration funding to support lake trout suppression, but BPA officials have made it clear that re-establishing co-management on the lake would be a prerequisite for that to happen.

Last fall, a BPA official said gill netting and other major management actions are “dependent on consensus of the co-managers (state and tribe) who have shared fishery management authority. If the co-managers agree and either party requests funds from BPA, then as part of our decision on whether or not to fund the proposal, BPA would undertake its own environmental analysis of the proposal to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and other federal laws.”

James E. Brown, the attorney for Flathead Wildlife, asserts that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks cannot participate in the tribal netting project, partly because the state agency withdrew from the development of an environmental impact statement for the project because of concerns that it was flawed in content and process.

“FWI sees no way FWP can simply now join or support CSKT in netting implementation as the tribes proposed without inviting litigation,” Brown stated in a recent letter to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Jeff Hagener.

Flathead Wildlife and other critics have multiple concerns about the potential consequences of netting.

At the forefront is a belief that gill netting will decimate the main sport fishery on Flathead Lake with great economic consequences and that gill netting could harm native bull trout populations. Gill netting typically involves some degree of by-catch of non-targeted species, including bull trout.

Tribal officials tentatively plan to remove 30,000 lake trout through netting this year, and they project that it will result in a by-catch of just 10 bull trout.

A low by-catch is expected partly because of restrictions that include netting at least a half-mile from shore and at depths of at least 100 feet, according to Barry Hansen, the tribes’ lead biologist on the project.

But Flathead Wildlife members claim they have caught bull trout in water deeper than 100 feet and more than a half mile from shore.

“Based on this firsthand knowledge, CSKT’s low by-catch claim is extremely questionable,” Brown states in his letter.

Hansen said by-catch is a major concern for tribal officials, but he believes the context for by-catch in the environmental study is frequently misunderstood. The document projects an annual by-catch of 467 bull trout, but the true expectation is that it will be far less than that.

“We couldn’t do an analysis that was kind of based on wishful thinking. It had to be kind of a worse-case scenario,” he said.

And if bull trout by-catch reached or exceeded 467 fish?

“If we caught as many bull trout as we project in the EIS, we would have to shut down,” Hansen said. “It wouldn’t be productive ... That wouldn’t be acceptable to us.”

Ultimately, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will determine how much bull trout by-catch is acceptable. A permitting process for “incidental take” of bull trout is currently underway.

Jim Vashro, who recently retired after a long tenure as the regional fisheries manager for Fish, Wildlife and Parks and is now a member of Flathead Wildlife, points to bull trout by-catches on Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille and Swan Lake, where lake trout netting projects have been underway.

Last year on Lake Pend Orielle, Vashro said, 11,000 lake trout were netted and 1,600 bull trout were caught, with about 400 direct mortalities and additional expected mortalities of fish that were alive in the nets and then released.

On Swan Lake last year, 303 bull trout were caught and it’s estimated mortality was about 40 percent.

Bull trout redd counts in tributaries upstream from both lakes have dropped sharply in the years since netting was initiated, and Vashro said netting has clearly played some role in those declines.

Tribal officials often point to netting on those lakes as success stories, but Vashro questions the measures for success.

On Lake Pend Oreille, for instance, lots of lake trout have been killed but the bull trout population has not been growing. That was the initial purpose of that project, Vashro said, but in the years since, netting work has been justified by a recovering kokanee salmon population that is popular with anglers.

A problem he sees emerging on Lake Pend Oreille is a diminishing return on investment. With a successful netting program, lake trout catch rates should eventually decline, but to keep the population suppressed, netting must continue with an increasing cost per fish and increasingly with less help from rod-and-reel anglers.

The issue of by-catch leads to another major concern for Flathead Wildlife. In addition to removing up to 140,000 lake trout per year, the EIS projects that up to 182,500 lake whitefish could be removed.

Both species prey on mysis shrimp, which feed on zooplankton, which in turn feed on phytoplankton, more commonly known as algae. There are fears that an explosion of mysis, due to a sharp decline in the species that prey on them, could lead to algae blooms on the lake and a degradation of water quality.

The environmental study generally predicts that water quality declines will not be any worse than what has been seen in the past. But in the past, lake trout and whitefish have held mysis in check.

There are disagreements about just how much the fishing-related economy will be hurt, but it’s widely expected that angler interest in lake trout will decline as catch rates decline.

That’s already the case for Doug Bolender, who has fished the Mack Days events for years but will no longer participate because of the tribes’ pursuit of gill netting on the lake.

Bolender, who also is a member of Flathead Wildlife, says he is not alone.

“I’ve talked to a dozen guys or so who say they are dead set on not fishing Mack Days,” said Bolender, who participated in a recent sportsman’s expo at the Flathead County Fairgrounds where Mack Days boycott signs were posted at the Flathead Wildlife booth.

“I totally respect the guys who do Mack Days,” he said. “It worked as a tool to reduce the lake trout population on Flathead Lake and it’s been extremely effective. In addition to being fun, a lot of us were looking at it as a tool to stave off gill netting.”

But now he views the events, combined with netting, as being tools to decimate the lake trout fishery.

“Our fishery will be gone,” he said. “All we’ll have left is little lake trout that will slip through the nets. People will quit coming here to fish.”

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