Fly Fishing in and around Yellowstone National Park

A Golf Course in Paradise Valley – Where’s the Water Coming From?

riversbendlodge — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:41:30 +0000

This isn’t the first plan for a golf course in Paradise Valley, just north of Yellowstone Park and on the Yellowstone River. One near Chico Hot Springs never came to fruition…mostly because of the housing bust. But this golf course is being built by Arthur Blank (of Home Depot fame…and a regular shopping point for me), as a new service for his clients at Mountain Sky Ranch…a “luxury” dude ranch.

First, a disclaimer. I golf. I like to golf. I’m also a capitalist, and Mountain Sky isn’t doing anything legally wrong and they are trying to appeal to their client base. And, furthermore, I respect some of the “community service” Arthur Blank has provided to the Valley, including restoration of one of the first small school in the Valley, and just as importantly, reinvigorating the Pop Stand…a local diner favorite with the best caramel malts in the Valley.

So, rather than rant polemically about how this new golf course is an environmental disaster for Paradise Valley, I think I’ll just ask a few honest, albeit “leading” questions and follow it with some photos of the golf course being built…WITH THE HOPES that this post can simple be a forum for discussion and some answers from Mountain Sky Ranch (note: repeated attempts to contact MSR have gone unanswered).

1. Where is the water coming from to keep the grass green in a high-desert landscape? A few options: wells, piped from the Yellowstone, or Big Creek. Big Creek is one of the more important cutthroat troat spawning grounds in the upper Valley. I doubt water is being piped. Piping from the Yellowstone is unlikely, and also unlikely to be a legal water right (unless cows are going to be moving the golf course lawns).

2. If the water is coming from Big Creek, what impact will it have on water flows during the critical post-spawning July/August timeframe when fry try to return to the Yellowstone.

3. Granted, this next question is a bit opinionated, but “Why do we need a golf course to entertain clients in one of the biggest and most spectacular playgrounds in the United States?” Of course, that is a personal opinion…but a challenging one I hope.

[UPDATE: Word on the street indicates that the water is coming from well water...seems like a lot of drinking water to use on a golf course...but, if this is the case it would at least be the least impactful to the cutthroat trout. Transparency from MSR on this issue would be much appreciated.]

Mill Creek Water Measurement Project Update

riversbendlodge — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:31:53 +0000

Two of the most important tributaries for cutthroat trout in the Yellowstone River are Big Creek and Mill Creek. If we can continue to improve water flow in these tributaries during the cutthroat’s spawning season (and fry development), we can improve the trout population in the Yellowstone River itself. There is some excellent “grass root” support for doing just this. One of these is sponsored by Montana’s DNRC. For more information, you can visit the website for the Mill Creek Water Measurement Project. Keep an eye on this website, because the success of this project could have profound impact on the fly-fishing of the Upper Yellowstone River, especially with regard to the native Yellowstone Cutthroat trout, which depends on spawning habitat in the surrounding tributaries during the heavy irrigation season of late spring and summer.

Drought obviously has an impact on fishing, and you can research historical trends (county by county) at Montana’s Drought Website. For those of us who fish the Yellowstone regularly, we recall some of the previous “bad” years when August water flows were low and “hot”, clearly impacting trout and requiring us to “not fish” in order to give the trout a break.

But, one of my favorite sites for predicting water conditions for a season is http://nris.mt.gov/wis/SWSInteractive; view historical trends and compare a current month’s water conditions to a prior year to see if the upcoming summer season may or may not be “fish friendly”.

These issues — tributary water flow and drought conditions — are inter-dependent. The more we can do to lessen the impact of human use of tributary water, the more we can help trout navigate the ebbs and flows drought conditions.

Improving Mill Creek’s Trout Habitat

riversbendlodge — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:29:57 +0000

For those of you who are familiar with Mill Creek – a major tributary in to the Yellowstone River – and the trout fishery it is and, more importantly could be, I would encourage you to follow the efforts by the DNRC to improve its water flow. Mill Creek is heavily irrigated, and therefore repeatedly runs dry during the critical summer months for cutthroat fry trying to make it back to the Yellowstone River. Big Creek has a similar issue, but due to some of the self-sacrificial efforts of some of Big Creek’s landowners, more water is being leased back to the government and therefore left behind for migrating trout. These two major tributaries in Paradise Valley could have a major impact on the quality of fishing in Yellowstone River, but at a cost to those who need the water to irrigate (e.g. hay fields for cattle) and supply the Water District Pipeline.

A unique study was done by Montana FWP in which (for seven days in August) they closed the water district pipeline and (voluntarily) one of two irrigation ditches. By doing so, the trout fry which had hatched and survived in the upper stretches of Mill Creek could be “flushed” back down to the Yellowstone River. A map of the area studied follows.

The lower portion of Mill Creek is typically a dry river bed during this time of year, which prevents migration of fry and also kills many of them in their redds. To give you a visual idea of what this did to the water flow, see the CFS graph below.

The green line represents the flow at the upper metering station (roughly five miles up from the Yellowstone River), before and after shutting off the outflow. The blue line represents the similar shift in flow at the east river bridge, about a half-mile from the Yellowstone…as you can see, Mill Creek is dry at the bridge when the ditches and water district pipeline is extracting its water.

I’ll let you read the entire article, but what they found within this short timeframe of increased flow, was evidence of fry (and yearling trout) movement back down Mill Creek towards Yellowstone River. The article concludes with a promising remark: “If a base flow that will keep redds wet and allow fry to hatch can be maintained, a flushing flow has the potential to move a large number of fry to the Yellowstone River and help maintain healthy, viable year classes of trout that can return to Mill Creek to spawn when they mature.”

Could it be, that if we had the will to improve our water use – in the form of improved irrigation methods and in the form of drawing and filtering water from main water sources, not tributaries that will run dry – we truly could have our cake (trout habitat) and eat (drink) it too. I can only hope that Mill Creek continues to get the attention it deserves as a critical tributary influencing the ecosystem of the Upper Yellowstone River.

For the entire article in PDF, download Mill Creek Flush. For more information on initiatives to improve Mill Creek visit Montana’s DNRC website.

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2009 Snowpack Report

riversbendlodge — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:10:43 +0000

Measured on February 27: Colley Creek snow course @ 6300 feet: snow water equivalent is 80% of normal, 76% of last year. Mill Creek snow course @7500 feet: snow water equivalent is 109% of normal, 91% of last year. As of March 11, snow water within the Yellowstone River basin above Livingston sits at 102% of normal.

So it appears at this time that the Yellowstone Basin is very near the long term normal accumulation of snow water, and very near last years’ accumulation at this time, but the Mill Creek watershed is running just a bit below normal, especially at the lower elevations. The next two months are critical in terms of the snow pack, as maximum accumulation typically occurs in early May.

As of March 6, the stream flow volume projection for the Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs is 98% of normal for April through September (50% chance of exceedance), and 90% of normal (70% chance of exceedance). Mill Creek is not individually estimated, but I would suspect the flow estimate would be somewhat lower than for the entire Upper Yellowstone Basin, perhaps around 90% of normal at this time. (Data provided by Dave Amman)

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Big Creek Water Rights

riversbendlodge — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:03:12 +0000

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks will likely approve renewal of an existing water right lease on Big Creek, an important tributary to the Yellowstone River near Emigrant and only two miles from Rivers Bend Lodge. FWP currently leases 10 cubic feet per second and the proposal will continue that lease. FWP and some of the local land owners on Big Creek recognize that increasing the year round flows of this tributary will have a positive impact on the spawning cutthroat trout during the irrigating season for farmers and ranchers.

My hope is that the same efforts can be garnered on Mill Creek, another critical spawning tributary to the Yellowstone River cutthroats…and a great fishery in its own right. Better land management and irrigation methods could reduce irrigation needs on the lower portion of Mill Creek. Hopefully, local residents, farmers, and ranchers can work with FWP to increase water flows in Mill Creek during the summer spawning season of cutthroats.

I highly recommend reading the report on this topic prepared by Carol Endicott — Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout Restoration Biologist — at the FWP website.

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Getting Cut-Throat over Cutthroats

riversbendlodge — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:27:23 +0000

To Be or Not To Be — those famous, albeit hackneyed, words penned by Shakespeare, came to mind as I crested a ridge overlooking High Lake and its outflow in to the wandering Specimen Creek drainage, located in the lofty northwest corner of Yellowstone National Park within the southern sliver of the Montana border. 1 A more worthy quotation escaped me due to the steep hike, winded lungs and a left temporal lobe lacking in literary prowess. But Hamlet’s phrase aptly summarizes the debate I have been pondering with respect to the survival of a particular native sub-species of trout. In 2006 the federal government decided to reintroduce generically “pure” strains of westslope cutthroat trout to the Specimen Creek drainage (and High Lake) in Yellowstone National Park.2 To do so they poisoned all of their cousins, the resident Yellowstone cutthroat trout which had been introduced by the government to these headwaters in 1937; and they killed all other non-native trout…

Click Here to download entire article in PDF

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