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 As we look at the wild fish of the Missouri River and other waters in the state today, it's hard to imagine that so many of them are newcomers to Montana. Fish species like brown trout, brook trout, yellow perch, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass and most likely even walleyes didn't swim in the waters of Montana when Lewis and Clark made their historic journey up the Missouri River. Of the 45 species of fish found in the Missouri River below Fort Peck Dam today, 15 of them are what we call introduced species. That means they originally were found elsewhere -- somewhere outside of the area and often outside of Montana. They were raised in hatcheries and were transplanted into the Missouri River system by man. In the years since they were planted, these species made the river their home. If you're curious, you can see which species are native and which are introduced in the Missouri River on our Fish species page. But just because these new fish species are introduced, that doesn't mean they haven't existed in the Missouri River for a long, long time. Let's look at some examples of introduced fish species in the state, remembering that Montana became a state in 1889. In about 1880, U.S. Army soldiers stocked Beaver Creek, a tributary of the Milk River south of Havre, with cutthroat trout from another stream. That was more than 120 years ago. In 1889, brown trout, rainbow trout and brook trout were introduced into Yellowstone National Park in drainages that flowed into Montana. That was more than 110 years ago. In 1898, yellow perch were stocked in Lake Sewell near Helena, which later became part of Canyon Ferry Reservoir. That was more than 100 years ago. Stocking of fish and introducing new species was well underway before there was a Montana Fish and Game Department (now called Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks). The department didn't get started until 1901. In fact, the first federal hatchery in Montana was already in place at Bozeman and it raised its first fish in 1897 -- four years before the Fish and Game Department got its start. For the first 50 years of its existence, most of the fish work done by the Fish and Game Department involved hatcheries and stocking fish. It was thought that the only way you'd have fish to catch is if you stocked them.
A number of private hatcheries were also started, including one at Butte, which provided fish to sportsmen who then stocked the fish in area waters. It wasn't until 1908 that the state of Montana finally built the first hatchery of its own at Anaconda. Early fish stocking wasn't too well organized across the state and transporting fish to where they would be planted wasn't too easy, either. Fish raised at the hatcheries would be placed in railroad "fish cars" which would transport them by rail across the state. These fish cars would be met by game wardens or sportsmen who would then take the fish to where they would be stocked. In some areas, the fish would be taken off the trains and transported by car, truck or wagon. If the fish were going into the mountains to to remote areas, they'd be transported in milk cans on horseback or by mules in a pack string. With few vehicles to take them long distances, fishermen would also ride what they called "fish trains." These trains would pick up fishermen in towns and then drop them at area streams along their route in the morning. Then the fishermen would flag down the trains and ride them back to town at the end of the day. |
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To help pay for the fish stocking and game wardens, Montana sold its first hunting and fishing license beginning in 1905. Those first licenses cost $1 for the whole family to hunt and fish for the year. The first nonresident license, which also cost $1, was sold in 1907. It wasn't until 1910 that each member of the family had to buy a $1 license. But even then, children under 14 didn't need to buy them. Women didn't need to buy a license either. The price of a resident license went up to $1.50 in 1917. By 1922, it had gone up to $2. Fishing limits were also pretty generous in those days. In 1910, for example, the bag limit was set at 25 pounds of trout per day with a possession limit of 50 pounds. |
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Hatcheries were established in many areas, almost all of them in the western half of the state. Most of the stocking -- and most of the fish introductions -- involved trout species. But there were some fish introductions going on in Eastern Montana, too. By 1917-18, somebody had already introduced common carp into Lake Bowdoin, near Malta, and the McNeil Brothers began commercial netting of these fish so the meat could be used. By 1927-28, commercial carp netting had expanded to Medicine Lake and to the backwaters of Nelson Reservoir. In the winter of 1930, that commercial carp netting operation wound up taking 14 railroad car loads of carp from Nelson Reservoir alone. Each car was estimated to contain 30,000 pounds of carp. The carp was shipped to Chicago and New York where it sold for three to five cents per pound. In 1927, the state also began work on a hatchery pond at Miles City to provide warm water species for waters in Eastern Montana. In 1930, the hatchery received largemouth bass, sunfish and crappies. The largemouth bass would wind up providing fish for the upper Tongue River and prairie ponds near Terry, Rosebud and Cohagen. The hatcheries also traded fish with other states. In 1932, Montana made a trade with the state of Michigan. Michigan got grayling eggs. Montana got walleyes which were introduced into Missouri River reservoirs, plus the lower Yellowstone and Tongue Rivers. In 1933, the federal government took over the Miles City hatchery from the state. It continued operating the hatchery until the 1970s, providing warm water species for waters in Montana and elsewhere. Since then, the state of Montana has operated the hatchery. Another hatchery to help stock fish in Eastern Montana was the McNeil Pike Hatchery built at Nelson Reservoir in 1944, mostly through the efforts of Malta game warden Herb Friede. In addition to raising fish there, hatchery personnel netted bass, bluegills and crappies in ponds and reservoirs where there were too many of them and moved them to ponds which didn't have fish to get new populations going. And in 1948 alone, the McNeil Pike Hatchery received a million walleye eggs from Minnesota which were stocked in area waters. |
New methods From the old railrod "fish cars" and moving fish by train in the early days of the 1900s, the methods of moving fish changed as the years passed. As vehicles became better and roads in Montana became better, Fish and Game began using more trucks to stock fish and introduce new species. By the early 1930s, trucks were fitted with fish tanks and systems to pump air in the water to keep fish alive. In 1938, airplanes were starting to be used to plant fish in remote mountain lakes. As the years passed, both the trucks and the airplanes would be improved to make fish stocking better. |  Trucks became the vehicle of choice to move |
| But it wasn't until 1947 that the first fisheries biologist position was created in the Fish and Game Department. In the early 1950s, more biologists were hired for various regions of Montana. Biologists began to determine where fish would be stocked and which species would be introduced into waters. Rather than hatcheries and sportsmen making those decisions, it was up to the biologists who looked more at what the possible effects of that stocking might be. Some new species introductions have continued, but there has been a lot of planning that went into stocking these new species. For example, among the new species to be introduced in the past 20 years in Fort Peck Reservoir -- and the Missouri River below Fort Peck -- are cisco and spottail shiners, both of them as so-called forage species to feed the hungry introduced chinook salmon, lake trout, smallmouth bass, northern pike and walleye and the native sauger, burbot and channel catfish. Introducing a fish to a new water isn't nearly the same as it was in the old days. It's not quite as simple as raising fish at a hatchery, putting them on the train in a fish car, then meeting the train with a milk can or a fish tank and putting them wherever you think they should go. By the way... Do you know how that railroad fish car pictured above got its name, "Thymallus"? Thymallus is the genus part of the Latin name for the Arctic Grayling, Thymallus arcticus, which is a native species in Montana. In the early days, the state hatcheries raised and stocked many arctic grayling in the waters of Western Montana. That's likely why the fish car was given that name. |
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"A History of Montana's Fisheries Divison from 1890 to 1958" by Bill Alvord, 1991, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks 
Montana PikeMasters Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks |