For all of you that appreciate the world-class Montana trout fishing on the Madison River, beware that efforts to effectively privatize sections of the river are still being promoted by local landowners via the Madison River Foundation. The latest manifestation of that is a Montana FWP online survey seeking public input on potential new regulations for the river. The premise of the survey that at a high % of 2016 survey respondents thought the fishing experience on the Madison was poor because of overcrowding was very biased and most non-Madison River stakeholders during meeting last year contested its conclusions.
One only has to read the current survey to see that there is a big push to limit access and restrict commercial outfitting on the river all to the benefit of local land owners who want to restrict access to their pieces of the river. The alternatives in the survey have been heavily influenced by the Madison River Foundation which is clearly a mouth piece for local landowners.
The MT FWP has not updated their site yet with the scoping announcement but the link to the current survey is below. I would encourage anyone interested in protecting public access to the Madison river for all types of anglers do some research and way in on this matter with MT FWP.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RDWKFXW
I have been a member of the Madison River Foundation for the past few years, although not a very active member I must say. However, from the limited knowledge that I have - most of which has been in the form of emails I’ve received during the past year or so (multitudes of lengthy emails from many different people and organizations) I am of a different opinion from what you say, that “efforts to effectively privatize sections of the river are still being promoted by local landowners via the Madison River Foundation”.
If you have more current information to explain your opinion, other than a survey by Montana’s FWP, which is separate from the Madison River Foundation, I‘d be interested in hearing it.
I am aware that a year or so ago (I loose track of time) some board members of the Madison River Foundation attempted to take a stand on Madison River access/restriction issues. As you might expect, opinions on that subject varied significantly between the different stakeholders/interested parties, which included the many outfitters and guides, local business owners and land owners, etc. that operate in or near the Madison River Valley. The debates on this issue were very heated and emotional, from what I understand, and resulted in resignations of one or more Madison River Foundation board members, some financial support of the Foundation being withdrawn by area businesses, etc.
As a result of these debates, it was my understanding that the Madison River Foundation had some reshuffling of its board members and is no longer directly participating in river access issues, but are instead concentrating on its core objectives, namely to ”Protect, Promote and Enhance“ the Madison River.
I don’t think, for example if you look on the Foundation’s webpage that you’ll find any references to “privatize sections of the river” as you say, and if you’ll look on their Facebook page all that you‘ll see are projects, like the $3 Bridge Riparian Improvement Project, completed this past year, that are directly related to improving, not restricting, access to the river.
However, notwithstanding any of the above, in my own opinion let’s face it, there are just too many guides and too many fishermen using, and some of whom are abusing, the river at certain times of the year. No matter what is ultimately concluded, some of us will be unhappy. However, I’d much rather give up my rights of floating or fishing a specific part of the river, on a certain day of the week, if it meant I wouldn’t be surrounded by a 100 other fishermen when I was able to fish there. Personally, I’d rather fish in solitude and catch a fish or two, than be surrounded by many others and catch a dozen or two (a couple of which are likely to be idiot anglers).
John
p.s. Although I have fished the Madison a few times each year over the past several decades, it has not been as frequent as my time on the Yellowstone River has been. And, I almost always prefer to fish when and/or where there are the fewest fishermen. For example, I’ve been fishing the lower Madison early in the season when it‘s normally uncrowded, or I’ve floated and fished in the evening, when the fishing is at it’s best and most guides are off the river.