Montana Fisheries Supervisor Goes to Work for Power Company

In something that might have seemed ironic if not downright odd 20 years ago, the head of Montana’s FWP fisheries will move to a job at PPL, the power company in charge of flows on the Missouri River. It is perhaps a statement about how resources managers must work closely with utility companies who manage major river flows if our best fisheries are to survive. In this case, PPL’s more careful timing of power creation helped the upper Missouri grow into such popular fishery in the late 20th century. “‘With stabilized flow, the trout population began growing,’ [Steve] Leathe said. ‘And the fishing became great.’ Leathe recalls fishing the Missouri near Craig on a summer evening in the early 1980s before he moved to Great Falls. He had the river to himself.” Michael Babcock in the Great Falls Tribune.