There is no argument in Jackson Hole about whether the Snake River needed the break. The argument is about whether asking politely will be enough next summer.
Wyoming Game and Fish issued a voluntary afternoon closure on 29 July covering the Snake from the Yellowstone National Park boundary to Palisades Reservoir, and all of Flat Creek. Anglers are asked to stop catch-and-release fishing between noon and sunrise. There is no penalty attached. It is the first such request the department has ever made for the Snake.
"It amounts to a final warning," said Darren Rhea, the department's Jackson regional fisheries supervisor, speaking to Wyoming Public Radio. "If people behave accordingly and practice good ethics, we can avoid a closure."
Rhea can close the river for real if he wants to, and has said repeatedly that he would rather not. He described the Snake guidance to Buckrail as "pretty unprecedented" and laid out the biology behind it: "When we are dealing with trout - the primary concern is that there is just less oxygen in the water when it is warmer. So they are already stressed, they are already dealing with marginal conditions, and then you hook one and fight one and try to release it. And it just takes a much longer period of time to recover."
The temperature record is not ambiguous. Afternoon highs at the Moose monitoring station have topped 65 degrees since 11 July. The Snake below Flat Creek has gone past 70 on eight days since 19 July. Flat Creek below Cache Creek hit 73.6 degrees on the afternoon of 20 July.
For the guiding businesses, the closure landed as confirmation rather than shock. Mike Dawkins, president of WorldCast Anglers, had guides reporting hot water back in early July. "It was just a matter of time from our perspective," he said. He is candid about how it feels: "It is scary because it is foreign territory and it is happening now in our backyard. [But] this is not the apocalypse. It is better for our trout friends and our sustainability."
Dawkins expects a short-term dent in retail at his Victor, Idaho, shop. What bothers him more is the elevation the heat has reached. "I think that is the bigger picture piece that really worries people," he said.
Jean Bruun, who outfits with Wyoming Angling Company, is on the other side of the enforcement question. She told Wyoming Public Radio she is "really happy" the warning went out, then said the province of options should include Montana's hoot owl restrictions, which legally shut listed water from 2pm to midnight. Her own thermometer readings have been running above the state guidance for several summers running.
"Not anything that will be unique this year," Bruun said of the closures. "I think it is going to be a new norm in certain years, especially during a drought year."
The map has kept growing. A full closure was recommended on part of the Bighorn River near Thermopolis on 3 August. Voluntary afternoon closures now also cover sections of the Green River, the New Fork, North Horse Creek, the North Platte downstream of the Lusby ramp and Deer Creek at Deer Creek Canyon.
Out in the Casper region, guide Bradey Hall said the 70-degree line is treated as settled among people who fish for a living. "Most of the guides, when we are out fishing and the water starts hitting 70 degrees, we are done," he told Cowboy State Daily. "Trout are cold-water fish. When the water is warm and they fight so hard, they just fight themselves to death."
Trent Tatum, co-owner of the North Platte Lodge and The Reef Fly Shop in Alcova, has so far stayed in the high 50s and low 60s on his water, and is watching what happens at the dams. "We are pretty diligent. We have guides taking water temperatures every day," he said. "If you get into water that is 68 degrees or higher, that is no bueno. My concern will be in August. If they decide to lower our water flows below the dams on the North Platte, the water temperature could become an issue."
Rhea is counting on the fishing public to make enforcement unnecessary. "The majority of folks here, they are really engaged," he said. "They appreciate the resource, and they do not want to impact it."
Boots Allen, who works for the Snake River Fund and guides for Snake River Anglers, made the same appeal from outside the agency: "Snake River Fund would urge anglers to really heed this. The biologists at Wyoming Game and Fish do a lot of work on this. They do not take these types of announcements and closures and advisories lightly at all."
The recommendation may hold through August. Game and Fish says it is watching both the thermometers and the riverbanks for dead fish.