Tribes need to level with public about gill netting and future of lake

I am a charter captain on Flathead Lake, running Captain Norm’s Fish-N-Fun Charters. 

Flathead Lake is a fantastic fishery, drawing visitors from all over the world to catch the biggest fish of their life and stay in local motels and use local restaurants. But the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes seem to be determined to destroy that fantastic lake trout fishery with gill nets. 

In their EIS, CSKT says lake trout fishing will only go down a little if they net. I can tell you the fishing has already gone down a lot due to the CSKT Mack Days. A dozen of the best guides and charter captains on Flathead have compared their catch data for the past 10 years. Individually many of us spend more than 200 days on the lake each year and all together we spend more than 3,000 days on the lake. We have the best electronics and gear and share information so we do better than almost any other fisherman out there. 

Ten years ago it was common for all of us to average 15 lake trout on a half-day charter. Since the Mack Days kicked in, our average has gone down to three lake trout per day. We used to guarantee if the anglers were skunked they wouldn’t have to pay. No one offers that any more. 

But CSKT says the Mack Days event hasn’t reduced lake trout at all, and their models say there are more lake trout than ever before. The lures on the end of my line say there are a lot less fish. Who are you going to believe, someone actually on the water or someone crunching numbers in a computer? CSKT’s own Mack Days contest shows the change. Ten years ago the anglers winning the derby were jigging and trolling shallow. Now the winners are all jigging in 250 feet of water for 12-inch lake trout. The people fishing shallow catch very few fish. 

Does CSKT think that will be the future of sport fishing on Flathead Lake? When CSKT was offered the outfitter catch data they wouldn’t take it, saying it wouldn’t fit with their data and wasn’t real data. Fish in a cooler aren’t more real than fish in a computer? 

I have been checked a number of times by Cindy, the tribal creel clerk but when I’ve asked Barry Hansen from CSKT for the creel data, a number of times he hasn’t given it to me. What is CSKT hiding about the fishery they say won’t be hurt by gill netting? And if they won’t give us creel data, how can we expect they will show us the real netting data? It’s hard to get CSKT to even tell us where the fishing is good so that we can catch more fish, which they claim to support. 

The tribe’s models estimate there are about 1.4 million lake trout in Flathead Lake. That’s about 14 lake trout per acre of the main lake. My boats have the best fish finders available. We can see Mysis shrimp 50 feet down. But I can troll miles at a time without seeing any fish on the finder. Where are all these fish? I’d like to catch some of them. 

When the lake trout go away, what will be left? We haven’t seen a whitefish fishery in six years. Some perch are caught in the spring. Cutthroat are catch and release, and you can’t even fish for bull trout. And don’t expect that to change for the better any time soon. We outfitters have kept our charters going through aggressive advertising and sport shows. But too many skunk days will make that difficult and leave empty motel rooms and restaurants. 

The charter captains on Lake Pend Oreille say the fishing almost died entirely when Idaho Fish and Game started netting lake trout there. And it’s not just about outfitters. We used to see 10 to 20 private boats for each of our charter boats. We see fewer and fewer private boats out there as fishing goes down and Fish and Game’s own creel surveys show fishing pressure has dropped by almost half. 

CSKT’s netting plan will be the final nail in the coffin, so speak up and work to stop this before it’s too late. 

Norman Brewer is a resident of Lakeside.