The Flooding last spring on the Yellowstone River changed the environment along the river. That change means the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks fishing access sites were changed from the flooding as well. MTN’s Chet Layman takes a look at how FWP is working to return some of those sites to use.
“We had something like 19 fishing access sites through the upper Yellowstone River that were closed because of this flooding event. What happened was water came up obviously and deposited a lot of sediment, a lot of debris in these sites and even impacted some of the infrastructure,” FWP’s Morgan Jacobsen said.
Two remain closed. Mallards Rest was having access issues before and the flood only made it worse.
“What we’re hoping to do is build a new entrance road into Mallards Rest Fishing Access Site. One that doesn’t have a curve so that gives us a little more space to work with and provide an easier angle or easier slope for folds to be able to access that site,” Jacobsen said.
The other is Brogans Landing. The access road basically split in half.
“That one is a little trickier and so really what we’re doing at this point is looking where else can we provide access to the river in that general vicinity and that could take the form of adding a boat ramp to the existing site. Or see what other kinds of prosperities there might be able to accommodate some type of access to the river,” Jacobsen said.
Jacobsen says FWP is working to get both of those access sites, in whatever form they take in the future, as quickly as possible. As for the future, life on the river always holds an element of risk.
“The only thing constant is change. And that is certainly the case with rivers in Montana with the force of mother nature that we deal with having a resource this close to us. That is one of the costs of doing business around a river,” Jacobsen said.
