Rainbows In The River Pipeline Project Created Pools For Trout In Moyie River

Many an angler has gazed into the water and just known there were lunkers down there.

Fishermen Steve Ahern and Steve Cannetta really do know. They’re biologists who get paid to swim the Moyie River and count fish.

“We’ve seen some that are about three pounds. They’re huge,” said Ahern of the rainbow trout.

By all accounts, there will never be enough big trout to make this a blue-ribbon stream. But it’s been helped by some creative rock arrangements done after a 1992 pipeline construction project.

“The Moyie’s probably in better condition than it’s been in years,” says veteran Boundary County sportsman Ralph Anglen.

The Moyie flows from British Columbia south into the Kootenai River. The upper stretch, from Eastport to Meadow Creek, is not home to many wild fish. The big rainbows are from hatcheries.

But even the hatchery fish had few places to hang out before 1992. Scientists say that years of grazing, logging, railroading and other human activities have robbed the river of its bends and filled in its pools.

When a natural gas pipeline was built across the shallow stream in the 1960s, it made things worse. Workers gouged trenches at eight crossings in the riverbed.

“Back then, it was get in there, dig it up and leave,” said Ahern.

Things had changed by 1988. Pacific Gas Transmission Co. needed approval from water and wildlife regulators before adding a second pipeline alongside the first.

The company doubled 844 miles of pipe, extending from Canada to California. The 18 miles along the Moyie River were the most sensitive, said John Cassady, the project’s environmental manager.

Pacific Gas did get in trouble during the 1992 construction.

Bulldozers hit more clay than expected, sending sediment into the water.

“It was pretty dramatic how quickly the color changed in the river,” said Bob Klarich, who monitored the project for the U.S. Forest Service.

The company ended up paying for new wells for the town of Moyie Springs, which drew its drinking water from the river.

All told, PGT spent about $500,000 to improve fish habitat, Cassady said. The biggest effort went into placing rocks at 34 spots in the river so water would back up, creating pools.

The rocks weren’t piled willy-nilly. Consulting engineer Don Reichmuth would stand in the river and bark orders, Cassady said, telling workers exactly where each rock should go.

He knew what he was doing. The angular rocks, taken from a local quarry, stayed put even after this year’s raging spring runoff.

From Ahern’s underwater point of view, the rocks have definitely helped the fish.

This is the third year he and Cannata have taken crews to the river. Wearing wetsuits, the four people immerse their snorkeled faces into the water and swim upstream in bank-to-bank formation through eight of the new pools.

“You’ll be herding fish,” Ahern said, explaining the procedure.

The swimmers stop when they reach the rocks, and compare notes: “Did you see those rainbows over there?”’

In the first two years after construction, the company reported, fish populations increased ninefold.

The numbers are down about a third from that this year, Ahern said. One reason may be that more fish are being caught. The counting crew is seeing lots more people along the river.

The pipeline company built some dandy fishing holes, complete with rocks to stand on.

Knowing the fish are there, of course, doesn’t necessarily make them easy to catch - as Ahern and Cannata can attest at the end of the day, when they take off their wetsuits and pick up their fly rods.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo; Map of Moyie River area