Montana is finest identified for its blue-ribbon trout streams. However as eight-year-old Garin Hicks proved final weekend, the state’s warmwater reservoirs are to not be missed.
On Could 27, the younger angler from Kalispell caught a 13.6-ounce inexperienced sunfish from Gartside Reservoir. Hicks’ panfish was simply accepted by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks as a brand new state file for the species, edging out the earlier file by a fraction of an oz.. That file belonged to Bette Schmieding, who caught her 13.4-ounce greenie from Fortress Rock Lake in 2009 when she was simply three years outdated.
Each reservoirs are within the japanese a part of the state, with Gartside located a stone’s throw from the Yellowstone River close to the North Dakota state line. The reservoir additionally holds largemouth and smallmouth bass, in addition to bluegills, walleyes, and pike.
Inexperienced sunfish are an launched (non-native) species in Montana, in response to FWP. They are often discovered all through the decrease Yellowstone and Little Missouri drainages, the place they’re “properly suited to radically altering situations present in prairie streams.” The species’ native vary stretches from the Nice Lakes all the way down to Mexico, and contains the entire Central Plains west of the Appalachian Mountains and east of the Rocky Mountains.
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Because the company factors out, these “hardy little fish” hardly ever exceed 5 inches in size. This makes Hicks’ 10-inch inexperienced sunfish a whopper by Montana requirements. The IGFA all-tackle file for the species is greater than twice that measurement, nevertheless, measuring 15 inches lengthy and weighing 2 kilos, 2 ounces. That fish was caught by Paul Dilley in 1971 at Missouri’s Stockton Lake.
