Trouts Get ‘Stressed’ From Megadrought, Ruining Some of the Most Iconic Trout Fishing in US

The worsening heat condition across the west of U.S. had brought several environmental problems in the region, one of the many is the increasingly stressed-out trout fishes in Yellowstone National Park.

Due to the hot water and low stream flows induced by the megadrought in certain regions, the Yellowstone National Park, a home to a number of native trout and other fish in the U.S., had implemented fishing closures starting from 2 p.m. to sunrise the following day - as an effort to protect the trout population.

Just this summer, a lot of the native fishes had been under serious stress due to the hot water temperature and unprecedented low stream flows. By implementing restrictions on fishing time, it would somehow lessen the stress among the wild trout.

Yellowstone National Park's had released new regulations

(Photo : Photo by Eugene Samarin on Unsplash)

As it looks like the building heat dome in the West is not making much improvement in the near future, Yellowstone officials are stepping up their game in protecting the fishes from the rising temperatures in some of Yellowstone creeks and rivers, surpassing 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) already. Officials say that water levels are "approaching historic lows."

The park just recently released regulations for all native fishes to be returned to the streams unharmed. Although this "can still put the already stressed-out fish under even more duress," says officials, "it's best to avoid removing them from the water during the hottest part of the day."

The threats brought by the climate to the fish population do not just limit from the wild trout's difficulty to search food and travel, but also include whirling diseases and influence of nonnative fish distribution, displacing the native fishes. This news disrupts the food chain as well.

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Fishing Affairs in Other States

More on the fisheries facing against struggling fish populations in the west are other states like Montana and California. The low river levels and dying rainbow and brown trout fishes in Montana forced them to issue new fishing restrictions, while California officials planned to relocate 17 million chinook salmon from hatcheries in the Central Valley to the open sea because of the hot and dry conditions, making them 'untenable to swim downstream'.

Officials also warned that "nearly every young chinook along the Sacramento River could perish anyway," despite the effort.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, people are prohibited to fish along a 120-mile (193-kilometer) stretch of the Colorado River due to the same reasons, low river levels and warmer water. Lawmakers in Utah, on the other hand, believes otherwise and convinced people to double the catch limit "since many are expected to die due to low water levels anyway."

The Yellowstone Lake will remain open for fishing from sunrise to sunset as usual, but officials had advised to fish during the day's cooler hours and put the caught fish back immediately (and gently, of course) into the water to not exhaust them too much.

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