If you ever float the Missouri River between Toston Dam and Townsend you'll surely enjoy a delightful float away from major roads and have the opportunity to observe the area's abundant wildlife. You'll probably see many species of birds, including the majestic bald eagle, and if you're lucky you may see an osprey plunging into the water after a fish. Muskrats and beaver are common along the banks, as are whitetail deer, and you might even see a family of otters. The one thing that probably won't distract you on your float is the quiet slurp of a brown trout rising to a grasshopper under the overhanging willows, or in late October the crash of a hook-jawed male brown during his spawning ritual.

It wasn't always this way. If you talk to a trout fisher who frequented this beautiful stretch in the early 1980s you will hear stories of huge brown trout trying to leap the overflow of Toston Dam, or of landing an 8-pound brown hooked on a streamer stripped through a fast riffle. This same person will probably now tell a story of how these wonderful experiences disappeared in the early 1990s.

What happened? The problems began in the mid-1990s when the State of Montana proposed installing a turbine in the dam for power generation. The local fisheries biologist in Townsend at the time expressed concern because the turbine would stop all flow over the dam except during periods of high water. It was his contention that browns and rainbows spawned in several tributaries above the dam, and then migrated over the dam and downstream into Canyon Ferry Reservoir where they grew to a large size. When the trout migrated back upstream to spawn in the spring and fall they created a spectacular trophy fishery. Because the river bottom in the Missouri between Toston Dam and Canyon Ferry is almost all large rocks, there are no gravel areas suitable for spawning. The biologist feared that installation of the turbine would prevent the downstream movement of small trout. This would eliminate the source of wild trophy trout and the fishery would show a decline. As it turns out, his fears were well-founded.

In order to mitigate the impacts of the power project, the biologist, Bruce Rehwinkel, proposed building a spawning channel utilizing the flow from the Big Spring irrigation ditch. A portion of the flow from the ditch would be diverted across a section of state land and back into the Missouri. This channel would provide a gravel substrate suitable for trout spawning. This idea was accepted by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the project developer. However, the amount of money assigned to the mitigation project was far too small and no funds were allocated to pay the Big Springs Ditch Company for the water.

Instead three projects were implemented using Toston Mitigation (aka Broadwater Power Project) funding in the 1990s: 1) Montana Ditch Siphon Project, which re-established fish migration from Deep Creek to the Missouri River that had been partially lost due to the construction of Montana Ditch across Deep Creek several decades earlier; 2) Confederate Creek Spawning Habitat Enhancement Project, which attempted to improve spawning habitat for trout in lower Confederate Creek; and 3) Four years of imprinting young brown trout using wild eggs collected from the Missouri River system.

According to the "2005 Broadwater Power Project, Annual Mitigation Report," these projects have not been successful in returning brown trout to the system. In fact, the report shows that from 1997 to 2005 the number of browns in the Toston-Deepdale section of the river was too low to allow estimation of a population. Also, the number of browns in Canyon Ferry Reservoir is only one-tenth of the target population set by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

"Although rainbow trout have benefited from the Deep Creek and Confederate Creek projects, none of the three projects have shown a significant benefit for brown trout," said Ron Spoon, an FWP biologist in Townsend.

Spoon agrees that brown trout abundance has declined significantly in the Missouri River and Canyon Ferry Reservoir since the early 90s. But it has also declined in drought-impacted rivers upstream of Toston Dam, he pointed out.

"Brown trout recovery goals have not been met during implementation of Broadwater Mitigation Projects since the early 1990s," Spoon said. "But we simply do not know how much of the lack of recovery is due to the power plant, the drought, walleye expansion in Canyon Ferry Reservoir, or other causes."

"Any future mitigation work should be directly designed to improve brown trout reproduction, and the Big Springs Spawning Channel project proposed in the late 1980s is being reconsidered as an alternative future project," Spoon said. "This large spring is known to attract brown trout and successful brown trout spawning has been documented in this area."