“I must not be holding my face right,” Swaney decided as he and hundreds of other fishermen began the chase for $57,000 in cash and prizes during the annual Spring Mack Days fishing tournament, a five weekend-long affair on Flathead Lake. “That's what my dad used to tell me when the fish weren't biting. I'm thinking about putting on scuba gear, putting a knife in my teeth and diving down after them.”
It wasn't that the macks weren't biting. Just a few feet away from Swaney's boat, Bernd Albrecht of Polson had already filled a cooler to the brim and had more flopping around in a live well on his Boston Whaler, but he wasn't stopping.
“That's how it goes with lake trout sometimes,” said Joe Santos, a fisheries technician with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “A guy on one side of the boat can be reeling them in and the guy on the other side won't even get a bite.”
Santos and Rich Folsom spent two weeks on the southern end of Flathead Lake catching, tagging and releasing lake trout in preparation for Mack Days, while state employees did likewise on the northern half of the lake.
Catching them was easy. Keeping them alive wasn't.
“They're so deep that they get air bladders that expand when you bring them up,” Santos said. “Sort of like deep-sea divers get the bends. So you have to bring them up real slow to keep them alive.”
“We saw fish in shallow places,” Folsom added, “but we couldn't get them to bite.”
Eagles key in on the fishing boats in case a fish both develops the air bladder, and gets away.
“Once it bloats, it floats,” Santos explained, making for an easy meal for an eagle.
Even bringing the lake trout up slowly, from depths of 170 to 215 feet, half the fish Santos and Folsom caught still developed air bladders.
Not that the death rate of the operation was a concern. The whole idea of Mack Days, sponsored by CSKT and sanctioned by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, is to reduce the number of lake trout in Flathead Lake. It's a predacious and non-native fish that has all but destroyed the kokanee salmon population in Flathead.
The hope is to keep the same thing from happening to the declining populations of bull and cutthroat trout that are native to this fishery.
Every one of the fishermen is after as many fish as they can catch up to the 50-a-day limit - the top 10 will share in $10,500 - and one fish in particular.
We'll call it �.”
That's the one - out of several hundred thousand lake trout in Flathead - worth $35,000.
Dozens of fish were tagged before Mack Days, and then 20 tag numbers were selected. Those fish are all worth $500 if caught.
If 985161000031890 is the first of those 20 checked in, the fisherman wins $35,000. Otherwise, 985161000031890 becomes another $500 fish.
The tags are not visible. Rather, they're tiny Passive Integrated Transponder devices inserted into the gills. Fisherman can tell if they've caught a tagged fish because the adipose fin has been clipped.
Another 58 tagged fish are worth $100 apiece.
The long shot at the $35,000, $22,000 in other prizes - plus the fact that there is no entry fee this year, thanks to gambling restrictions on the Flathead Indian Reservation - sent registration for Mack Days soaring. Folsom said CSKT fisheries specialist Cindy Bras-Benson had been swamped by entries this week, and it looked like the number could top 600.
Last spring, the 296 anglers who registered caught almost 8,000 lake trout during Spring Mack Days.
There's a fall event, too.
“We have a pool to see who comes closest to the number of fish,” Folsom said, “and with that many registered, it looks like my 10,000 is going to be way low.”
Not that Bill Swaney was doing much to propel the number higher, but the Arlee man wasn't worried Friday, when his boat was one of 17 bobbing off Rocky Point.
Swaney caught 168 lake trout during a previous Mack Days tourney, back when the limit was 20 a day, and finished in sixth place.
“I never fished the lake when I was younger,” Swaney said, “but back in about 2000, when they had the old Mack Attack, I came out here in my 14-foot john boat and got nothing but a sunburn.”
Two veteran Flathead Lake mackinaw fishermen, Dick “Mack Man” Zimmer and Doug White, took Swaney under their wings, and Swaney has paid attention.
“It's all about having the right gear and the right line,” Swaney said. “You need a good anchor and a good line that doesn't stretch, so you can feel the bottom of the lake and feel the fish bite. If you're not on the bottom, you're wasting your time. I was using a monofilament that stretched, but now I use a brand called FireLine that's made a huge difference for me.”
Swaney also bought - in the middle of a previous Mack Days tournament - a Tracker boat with a Mercury outboard. “In case there was a prize for the guy who spent the most money to go fishing,” he explained.
And he plans to be out here all 14 days of this spring's tourney.
“Doug and Dick have shared a lot of info,” Swaney said, “and I've learned from a lot of these guys out here. They've taught me everything I know.”
Swaney looked at the lifeless pole in his hands and laughed.
“They just didn't teach me everything they know.”
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at (406) 319-2117 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com
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