Restoring Balance

A pilgrimage to a Montana creek to fish for native grayling reveals a personal dilemma about our role in the 21st century

By Noah Davis

February 12, 2024

Brookies. In every inch of this small stream where a fish could be — brookies.

Fat, strong, eager. Black-jawed beauties with red bellies so bright I thought they were bleeding. Strikes so aggressive I could only imagine they were starving. Yet each stomach was swollen with grasshoppers, crayfish and stoneflies. The fish were ravenous, commanding every pool in the lowland creek choked with willows. Even as I fought the trout back through a run, others rose to mayflies that floated down the current.

It was fantastic fishing.

As a professed apostle of the church of brook trout, I felt blessed by the size and number of fish, immersed in a fantasy of dropping a fly in any stretch and watching it disappear in a swirl brushed by a speckled side. But here in the Rocky Mountains, half a continent away from where these creatures evolved to swim in the spring creeks of the Midwest and tumbling waters of the Appalachians, the day had turned nearly apocalyptic, a fever dream: I was drowning in brook trout. They were jumping into my net. I couldn’t keep them off my fly. They’d populated themselves out of proportion and beaten down the native Arctic grayling, the fish I’d come for, which were nowhere to be found.

We’ve all heard this story. The last wolf killed in the state. The last run of shad in the river. The last spawning pair of cohos in the stream. In this moment of climate change, we humans have stamped the qualifier “last” on species and environs the world over. The fleeting moments we have to touch and revel with creatures in habitats slipping into oblivion are accelerating with breakneck speed.

Native fluvial (river-dwelling) Arctic grayling, a cold-water species native to northern North America, only ever existed in two isolated populations in the Lower 48 — Michigan and Montana. By the 1930s, due to habitat loss, overfishing and competition with introduced species, the Michigan population was erased from its natal landscape. The last remaining native, fluvial population of artic grayling in the continental United States is now restricted to a single river drainage in southwestern Montana.

Due to similar circumstances, Montana Arctic grayling are categorized as a fish of “special concern.” Once widespread throughout the upper Missouri River drainage as far downstream as Great Falls, Montana — Lewis and Clark even made note of these “new, kind of white or silvery trout” in 1805 — their numbers have dwindled to a mere 5 percent of their historic range. These unique natives have become an unexpected bycatch on a river known for trophy, non-native brown trout.

Picking my way up the cobble, I struggle to read the stream for grayling. I’ve watched water, parsed seams, picked pools and rode riffles all my life trying to imagine what a trout would like in a holding lie or a feeding lane. What do grayling want? More depth? A slower-paced run where they can rise and open their narrow mouths around a fly?

I see a soft spot where the current hits a bank and swirls back on itself. A distinct line formed by foam and calm backwater provides an obvious target for my bow-and-arrow cast. The Royal Wulff lands with the splash of a beetle falling into the creek. It’s pulled under by a delicate mouth, something so different from the slamming I’ve seen during this first hour. My heart leaps at the hope that finally this is a grayling. A fleck of the original stream still clinging to its cold flows. But as the fish relinquishes itself from the shallows, I see the white tips of the brookie’s fins slicing over the algae-slick stones.

Here, in a stream that screams trout, I know the brookies’ unnatural presence is tricking me into believing the creek is full and healthy, when in reality it’s a shell of its native self. Waters throughout the world are filled with this same unnatural company. California rainbows and Scottish and German browns were dragged by Europeans across the globe to Africa, Canada, Europe and even Puerto Rico. Brook trout have been flown from their ever-shrinking native range in the eastern United States and Canada to populate the cold waters of the American West and Patagonia.

Before you begin to think of me as some haughty fly angler who only chases native trout in their native range using dry flies imitating native bugs, know that I’ve become weak in the knees watching a 20-inch brown engulf hoppers on a grass bank. I’ve squealed with delight as I pulled stocked rainbows from muddy Pennsylvania rivers with corn and worms. And I’ve looked skyward in thanks when I’ve hooked a brook trout in a cutthroat stream, picturing the feathered flesh in a pan with butter, salt, pepper and lemon juice.

But these non-native creatures separate us by varying degrees from the natural order. A native, like the grayling, appears foreign in waters where we expect a trout.

A pod of fish gorges on blue-winged olives tumbling in the stream. The glide is 2 feet deep, with a curved bubble line along the eroded bank. The rises range from quick-strikes to porpoise-eats, and I try to envision what edges a grayling might be pushed to.

As I cast, a wind comes around the creek corner, catching my thin tippet and light fly, dropping them feet short of my intended float. In that quiet water to the left, a mouth appears, engulfing my Royal Wulff. Setting the hook, I know this is no brook, brown or rainbow trout. Silver like a sliver of moon flashes back to me, and its run is quick and angry. This fish dives, then lilts for a moment. Diving again, then lilting again. Brook-trout anglers would miss the frantic energy. Brown-trout anglers, the throbbing headshakes. Rainbow-trout anglers, the explosive leaps.

I keep the 6-inch grayling in the water. A juvenile, the fish looks more gold than silver. Even though it hasn’t yet grown its massive and distinctive dorsal fin, a faint green catches the tiny mohawk in the afternoon light. Dark spots pop on the flanks while the uniquely square mouth works the water. I try to be gentle with every fish I bring to hand, but I feel as if my wet skin is still too rough on the grayling’s smooth scales. The gills sway as the fish breathes. The deep-forked caudal fin looks more appropriate for a fish pulled from salt water.

Shooting back into the creek, I watch the fish disappear beneath the nervous water.

Fish need water, but so does every other living creature. Therein lies the dilemma of cold-water fisheries in the United States. Most publicly exposed in the American West, the human need for water drastically outweighs the needs of the non-human world, which eventually catches up to the human world — i.e. the Colorado River.

In this valley where grayling make their final camp, nearly as soon as the Nez Perce people were brutally extirpated from their native lands, hay production began. By the 1880s, the luscious river bottom was referred to as “the valley of 10,000 haystacks.” The fecund nature of the ground, along with its many creeks and flowing river, provided ample irrigation opportunities that resulted in canalization and dewatering. In 1877, Congress passed the Desert Land Act, which allowed settlers to obtain 640 acres of land with the caveat that the land must be irrigated within three years.

The flourishing nature of the hay producers meant ranchers could keep large herds of cattle through the winter. Cattle companies ran cows that toppled banks and browsed the riparian buffer to dirt, leading to increased sedimentation that suffocated fish and their eggs laid in redds.

With this destruction of habitat and overfishing, native fish such as cutthroat and grayling faded from the drainage. Small, resilient populations eked out an existence in tributaries and the coolest stretches of the river. This resulted in the introduction of non-native fish, including browns, rainbows and brooks, to fill the anemic waters. One must only look as far as the mouth of a mature brown trout compared with that of a grayling or cutthroat to see which fish would dominate.

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Before the Arctic grayling went the way of its Michigan cousin, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, along with concerned landowners and other fisheries stakeholders, stepped up in the early 2010s. This coalition recognized that a river is only as healthy as its tributaries. These thin creeks that sometimes register 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the main river are sanctuaries where grayling spawn in the spring and retreat to in the warm weather of July and August.

While the headwaters of most tributaries begin in National Forest where management is easier to accomplish, the most productive stretches for grayling — low gradient for easy migration and small gravel for spawning — are in the first mile or two from their confluence with the river. These bottom sections meander in dogwood and willow thickets through properties privately owned by cattle and hay producers.

As of 2021, 32 landowners were enrolled in voluntary Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances to aid grayling survival in the drainage. Property owners voluntarily agree to manage their lands or waters to remove threats to species at risk of becoming threatened or endangered. These landowners receive “assurances” against additional regulatory requirements should that species be subsequently listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ conservation goals for native Arctic grayling mean implementing measures that improve streamflows, improve and protect the function of riparian habitats, identify and reduce or eliminate entrainment threats, and remove barriers to migration. These improvements include fish screens so grayling won’t be trapped in irrigation ditches, maintaining a minimum streamflow during drought and blocking cattle from decimating streamside vegetation. Some landowners even keep beavers in their creeks, as these furred hydrologists create reservoirs that provide thermal refuge for grayling. A stream with active beaver dams can hold up to three times the water than those without.

This cooperation with private landowners is one of the great jewels of 21st century conservation. With more than 160,000 acres registered in the valley, tributary strongholds are bolstered through these active improvements. The same hay producers and cattle companies that worked the valley 150 years ago are in some ways still relics, yet they embrace the opportunity to create a more balanced corner of their world.

I see a rise in the still water of a pocket pool and drop the fly to the right of the fish, twitching the calf-hair and peacock-hurled hook. The grayling’s dorsal fin looks big enough to be another fish racing behind as it rises. The grayling’s colors blink vividly. The sail is the most striking feature. A curtain threaded and mottled with iridescent and electric blues, yellows, reds and greens. Although native to this place, they appear as if they were dropped from the Northern Lights. An alien with a galaxy splattered on its dorsal fin.

This 10-inch female doesn’t boast the stunning canvas of a spawning male, but the dorsal fin glimmers with a kaleidoscope of colors. Anyone who has caught grayling knows that the moment the fish is lifted from the water, the shimmering shades fade like stars in the morning. Only when swaddled in the wet world where they were born do the mottled streaks return.

I try to trace the fin with my eyes as she dashes back into the pool. While wondering how many times she’ll be caught this year, or if she’s ever been caught, I try to convince myself that fishing for these struggling creatures won’t cause unnecessary harm.

The beaver dams grow larger and the waters deeper the higher I hike. Fish dart away as I wade up over my waist and raise my pack over my head. Where the current enters the ponds, I cast. The last grayling I caught was 25 brookies ago, and I’m fishing more out of habit than confidence in finding another native. I hook a brookie that shakes loose at the tail of the run and cast again, beneath where a willow lies half-drowned in the stream.

I can tell it’s a grayling because it isn’t a brookie. Another juvenile that I half-hope will spit the fly. No need to burden it in my hands. But the barbless hook stays buried, and I bring the fish to my submerged palm. The eyes — which are different from a trout’s — Bigger? More focused? — seem to dart from my shape back toward the beaver ponds.

For a moment, after I pinch the hook free, the grayling hovers in my hand. Only the pectoral fins graze my skin. In the next moment, it darts away, thumping its tail on my fingers. A sensation that lingers like the long June light and soaks into memory.

I have rejoiced in the grayling’s beauty and have lived a fuller life because of my day on the creek, but I won’t cast for them here again.

OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST:

– Plying the Currents