Conservation Corner
by Troy Pearse, Conservation Committee Chairperson
Conservation@BVFF.com
The last few years, BVFF has been working at the Diane Moore Nature Center. It has been a great match for our club mission of fly fishing access, education, and conservation--and the more time our members spend there, the more they love it.
The 2 ½ mile section of river between the New York Canal Diversion Dam and Barber Dam is different from the rest of the river. Much of it resides in the Barber Pool, which is a wildlife preserve on the outskirts of the City of Boise with very little public access. And while IDF&G regularly stocks 30,000 trout a year on the Boise River below Barber Park, they rarely stock the river above that. But even though the river hasn't been stocked,
rainbow trout and whitefish have established a wild population that is doing well, and with the recent side channel restoration and trout habitat improvements at the Diane Moore Nature Center the wild trout population should continue to improve.
Every few years Idaho Fish and Game asks the public for input on their fishing regulations and fisheries management plan. Initially the club wanted to propose that IDF&G manage the reach for trophy-sized wild trout, which means… (Pick up reading here) that any trout under 20" would need to be released. However, after talking with IDFG fish biologists Art Butts and Tim D'Amico we learned that they did not think changing the regulations would meet the trophy trout size goals (and therefore IDFG wouldn't be willing to change them). Based on their feedback the club decided to focus on wild trout management in this section and proposed that the section of river have a reduced bag limit and be closed for spawning season.
The club conducted an angler survey to see if local anglers supported regulation changes for this stretch of river. We got a good number of responses from fly, lure and bait anglers with 94% of them supporting regulation changes. For more details, see this article on our Conservation Blog HERE.
