Say good-by to the kokanee fishery in Lake Mary Ronan

Lake Mary Ronan is located a few miles northwest of Flathead Lake in Montana.  It has an excellent kokanee fishery.  Over Memorial Day weekend this year I quickly caught my limit (10) of kokanee.  Many of them were 11.5" long, which in most lakes in Montana would be a Boone and Crockett kokanee.  But an article in the July 2 Missoulian reported that a fisherman recently caught 2 pike in Lake Mary Ronan.  These pike are apparently the result of an illegal introduction by a bucket biologist.  Pike love kokanee.  About 95% of the fish which I find in the stomachs of pike in the Clearwater Drainage in Montana are kokanee.  So I anticipate that the kokanee population in Lake Mary Ronan is going to start declining. This makes me both angry and sad.  Why would anybody transplant pike into Lake Mary Ronan?  There are already way too many lakes in Montana with healthy populations of illegally planted pike.  Why did they need to endanger the excellent kokanee fishery in Lake Mary Ronan?

Are pike eggs sticky?  I know that yellow perch have spread to all sorts of lakes by eggs sticking to the legs of Great blue Heron or other such waterfowl.  Might be an alternate source of introduction.

In any event, unfortunate .  I know some lakes benefit with the introduction of predatory fish and that Kokanee are sensitive to overpopulating and stunting their size due to lack of the daphnia they eat(which often explains the liberal limits)  But too much of a good thing, usually doesn't work out.

 

because they're a-holes