By Jason Stuart
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
Following a severe fish winterkill in Hollecker Lake, all indications are that the small community fishing lake on the outskirts of Glendive is headed back to becoming a stocked trout pond.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 7 fisheries manager Mike Backes said that he is leaving it up to the local chapter of Walleyes Unlimited to decide what to do with Hollecker in the wake of the winterkill.
Brian McDanald, the WU of Glendive chapter president, said turning Hollecker back into a stocked trout pond appears to be the only real option available.
“(Trout) seems to be about the only thing that thrives around here,” McDonald said. “I guess (FWP) didn’t really have any other ideas or plans at this time.”
For a long time, Hollecker was managed as a stocked trout pond. Prior to 2005, FWP irregularly stocked Hollecker with a variety of trout species, including Yellowstone cutthroat trout and bull trout.
In 2005, FWP began trying to turn Hollecker into a warm-water yellow perch/largemouth bass fishery, but that hasn’t worked out the way they had hoped. Backes had noted in the immediate aftermath of the winterkill that Eastern Montana’s climate just isn’t conducive to allowing largemouth bass to grow or to establish themselves in large numbers.
McDanald also spoke to that.
“The bass did OK in there, they were just tough to catch, and I don’t know that they did as well in there as (FWP) had hoped,” he said.
Besides the fact the bass didn’t flourish in Hollecker, McDanald added that in order to restock with bass and perch again, it would require FWP to obtain special permits for stocking species that the agency no longer has.
Probably the biggest issue for both McDanald and Backes is the fact that since the bass did not do particularly well in Hollecker, they were difficult to catch. Both FWP and WU’s primary goal with Hollecker is to provide a family-friendly fishing opportunity close to town, which means having fish in it that can be caught with relative ease, especially for kids.
And for those reasons, it looks like Hollecker is headed back to being a stocked trout pond.
FWP has continued to stock Hollecker with catchable, 8-inch rainbow trout each spring just prior to the annual Kid’s Fishing Day in May. This year’s stocking will be a sort of a ramp-up to what’s to come for the lake. Both Backes and McDanald said the plan is to stock Hollecker with twice the number of trout this spring that they normally do, which would be about 600 trout all told.
Next spring’s stocking would be even more robust.
“Then we’ll stock it with as much as 1,500 catchable trout next spring,” McDanald said. “That way we have something good that people can go catch a lot of trout.”
One thing that both FWP and WU still want to do with Hollecker is completely drain it and clean out all the unwanted fish and dead vegetation. Many of the fish killed in the winterkill were not game fish, but species like carp which had entered Hollecker while in their larval stage through the Buffalo Rapids irrigation canal, which feeds the lake. Both FWP and WU are keen to get the “trash fish” out of Hollecker. Backes has previously said that ideally, they would drain the lake every few years to clean any unwanted fish out of it.
But Backes said there won’t be any draining of the lake until later in the year. The primary issue is that the Kid’s Fishing Day is on May 5, and Backes said there simply isn’t enough time before then to drain, clean and refill the lake. Even if it could be done in time, a lack of available water would be the next major hang-up, as Backes said the water right for Hollecker from Buffalo Rapids doesn’t become active until the end of May.
McDanald added that WU and FWP also need to sit down with the Dawson County Commissioners before moving ahead with a draining and get their blessing to do so. Hollecker is managed by FWP, but the lake is owned by the county.
Backes said the best time to drain the lake would be later in the year just before winter anyway in order to have the most desired effect.
“If you’re gonna try to eliminate what’s in there, that mechanical draining and then the winter freeze is what you need to kill as much that’s in there as you can,” Backes said.
Reach Jason Stuart at rrreporter@rangerreview.com.