Dead whitefish on the Yellowstone

[Al Agnew]

It's been a tough month of so fishing the Yellowstone River out here in Montana.  It got hot, the river got put under "hoot owl" restrictions (don't ask me why they are called that) where you couldn't fish past 2 PM to limit stress on the fish.  The restrictions go into place when water temps consistently reach 73 degrees or more for several days in a row.  Then it cooled off a bit, and the restrictions were lifted.  The fishing got a little better.  I had friends out here for a week two weeks ago and we had a couple of decent days, including one where I caught a 22 inch brown on a nymph.  The hoppers were getting thick and the fish are starting to turn on to them.

Then, last weekend, dead whitefish started showing up.  By Monday it was making the news.  There were "hundreds", actually thousands, of dead whitefish over a 70 mile section of the river.  I floated a short, four mile stretch down to the house on Monday, and saw at least 200 dead ones.  Every eddy had dead whitefish.  One deep eddy had at least 30 lying on the bottom in it.  

It seems to be just whitefish dying, although a few suckers were also reported dead.  Whitefish are extremely abundant in the Yellowstone; on a good nymphing day you'll catch ten or twenty whitefish for every trout you catch.  On Monday, the trout fishing was pretty good, both on nymphs and hopper patterns, and for maybe the first time ever, I caught more trout than whitefish, although I did catch a few healthy-appearing whities.

The fact that only whitefish are dying seems to make a contaminant unlikely, so the best guess at this point is some parasitic disease that affects whitefish.  The Fish and Game people are looking into it, of course.

I walked down the little channel next to our yard this morning, looking to see if there are any dead whities in it.  I didn't find any, although there a lot of them in the main channel on the other side of the island.  Does this mean those whitefish died farther upstream and have drifted down this far?  Our little channel is only flowing about 10 cubic feet per second right now, and the upper end is too shallow to allow dead fish to drift into it, but there are couple of deep pools that hold trout and whitefish, so if there was something in the water that was killing them along here there should theoretically be some dead ones.

On a side note, I was walking along a rock ledge at the edge of one of the two deep pools.  The ledge was partially in the water with an overhang with a foot or so of water beneath it, and at one spot there was a notch in the ledge so that I could see the bottom beneath it...except I couldn't see the bottom because the space was taken up by a section of the back of a brown trout.  It's back was more than three inches wide, and the spots were the size of  peas or bigger!  I could have reached down and touched it, but it felt the vibration as I took another step, and moved back farther under the ledge, disappearing.  I knew browns often utilize overhead cover, but it was interesting to see one hiding up against the bank like this.  I'm thinking about slipping down there right at dark with a big streamer and seeing if I can catch that fish.

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

Interested in the....outcome  of this story. 

[Smalliebigs]

That's a bummer about the white fish......go get that Brown and take a pic Al......please

 

[Mitch f]

If they could figure out a strain of organism that only kills Asian carp.

[MOPanfisher]

We had an outbreak of dead common carp several years ago on Pomme up around the Bolivar Landing area.  Seemed to be only affecting carp and drum or buffalo.  If memory serves it was some variation of a herpes virus.  Wider what in the world the people up there were doing.  Imagine the smell if an entire section of the osage or MO rover were to have a sudden die off of big heads and silvers.

[Johnsfolly]

Al

I hope that you are able to catch that brown trout. Would love to see a photo if you do catch it. Also very interested in hearing what may be the cause of the die off.

[Flysmallie]

Quote

BILLINGS -

State officials announced Friday the Yellowstone River is closed immediately to all water-based recreation, including fishing, wading, floating, tubing, boating, to prevent the spread of a diseases that kills whitefish and trout.

http://www.ktvq.com/story/32798124/yellowstone-river-closed-to-recreation-as-officials-investigate-fish-kill

 

[ness]

Apparently it was a parasite.  Scary story. 

[ness]

More.

[Flysmallie]

183 miles. Wow.