ECHO LAKE n There’s not many places for a baby bass to hide in Echo Lake.
Carved out millions of years ago by glacial ice, the bottom of the 695-acre lake just northeast of Bigfork is covered in gravel and stone.
“There’s no cover to speak of,” said Jim Vashro, Fish, Wildlife and Parks regional fisheries manager in Kalispell. “The bottom of the lake is as bare as this parking lot ... on top of that, when the water levels are low, landowners pull out what few logs and stumps there are along the shoreline.
“There just isn’t much habitat left for fish,” he said.
Recently, Vashro and a team from the Montana BASS Federation spent a few days building a variety of artificial structures to offer those young fry a place to hide.
Using plastic-coated wire mesh fencing material, the crew built 100 4-foot wide, dome-like structures they like to call bass bungalows as well as a number of artificial weed beds made from plastic snow fencing.
After the construction work was completed, the structures are weighed down with a bag of stone and scattered around the lake in likely looking spots.
“We are just making up for what Mother Nature overlooked,” Vashro said. “These structures are relatively cheap and nontoxic. They should last for decades.”
A $2,200 FWP Future Fisheries Grant paid for enough material to 140 structures. The majority of those ended up on the bottom of Echo Lake. The remainder was parceled out into Loon, Horseshoe and Middle Thompson lakes.
Creating structures for fish in lakes and reservoirs is nothing new.
Biologists and fishermen have been heaving old Christmas trees and wood pallets overboard for years all around the state to help build fish populations.
“Christmas trees are messy and wood pallets don’t last all that long,” Vashro said. “We think these new structures are going to work much better in the long run.”
Each one costs about $14 to make. Once submerged, Vashro said it won’t take long before the plastic mesh is covered in algae and begin attracting both small and large fish.
“We have pretty good natural reproduction for bass in Echo Lake,” Vashro said. “There are a lot of predators out there looking for the little fish. Other bass, trout and even larger perch will eat them.”
The structures should help more baby bass survive those first couple of years.
“The little guys can squeeze back and forth through the holes,” Vashro said. “That provides them with a little more security, which is something they certainly lack in a wide open lake like this one.”
Curtis Spindler, president of the Montana BASS Federation, said that organization is always looking for ways to improve bass populations in the state.
The chief challenge with almost any fishery is recruitment of young into the population.
“Maybe one fingerling out of a thousand survive to adulthood,” Spindler said. “If a bass is able to survive for one year, we define that as recruitment. We know if they make it that long, they have a pretty good chance of becoming adults.”
The structures give the young fish a fighting chance.
“It was a good project,” Spindler said. “We’ll jump on board almost any project we can do in conjunction with Fish, Wildlife and Parks.”
The federation supplied much of the labor and the boats to deposit the structures around Echo Lake. The group sometimes supplies funding as well.
In Montana, the federation has about 120 members, which includes five adult clubs and two for kids in Missoula and in the Flathead.
“Everyone in Montana knows that trout are No. 1,” Spindler said. “Outside of the Rocky Mountains, bass fishing is way bigger than trout fishing.”
Bass has been around Montana and Echo Lake for more than 100 years.
In the late 1800s, bucket biology was considered a good thing. Fisher folk would get their favorite fish from specially equipped railcars operated by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries n the precursor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“They’d plant the fish two different ways,” said Vashro. “Sometimes they’d just stop near a river or lake and drop the fish in themselves. They’d also set up troughs at a whistle stop and allow people to fill cream cans with fish.”
“That’s one reason you find all kinds of non-native fish in lots of different places,” he said.
Over the years, FWP has augmented the bass population with periodic plants of hatchery raised fingerlings. The state also plants rainbows and kokanee in Echo Lake.
A lot of the habitat work being accomplished around the state wouldn’t happen without partnerships from a variety of different fishing clubs and conservation organizations, Vashro said.
“There are a lot of different clubs doing this kind of work,” he said. “Sure it’s going to take some time when you consider we’re creating a 4-foot-square structure one at a time in the bottom of a 695-acre lake.
“Over time, with some help from our friends, we’re going to make a difference,” he said.
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