Sounds like the National Park Service may finally have a solution for controlling non-native lake trout numbers in Yellowstone Lake while boosting sagging populations of native cutts. That would be awesome because Yellowstone Lake used to be one of the best cutthroat fisheries on the planet. Then, in the 1990s, whirling disease in the lake’s tributaries, coupled with heavy predation by those lake trout, made the cutthroat population crash. And the river below the lake, which was an excellent, yet challenging fishery, was hit equally hard. Check out part the story below. Click here for the full, lengthy version:
Lake trout equipped with transmitters could betray their kin this summer as conservationists and Park Service officials escalate efforts to eradicate the species from Yellowstone Lake.
Biologists hope these so-called ‘Judas fish’ will lead them to spawning beds, where new techniques will be used to destroy mackinaw eggs and young.
The non-native lake trout were illegally introduced to Yellowstone Lake sometime in the mid-1980s and gained a foothold by 1994. The predatory species eats Yellowstone cutthroat trout, and spawning populations of the native fish have plummeted 99 percent.
After years of marginally successful efforts to kill lake trout using fishing boats and nets -— from 2001 to about 2010, park personnel have removed about 500,000 fish from Yellowstone Lake — some began looking for new solutions …