Unwanted Walleye?

When I heard about the illegal introduction of walleye into Swan Lake, the first person I thought of was Tommy Garrison.

A hermit who lived for years in the mountains near Cooke City, Tommy was rumored to have stocked all the lakes and streams in the area with his favorite fish --brook trout.

No doubt the walleye dumped into Swan Lake were the perpetrator’s favorite species. I suspect, however, that the technique was a bit different. The walleye, which originated in Lake Helena, probably arrived in the Swan via the live well in a fishing boat. Tommy was said to have carried fish in coffee cans from place to place.

But it’s just rumor. I don’t know of anyone who actually saw him do it. A true hermit, Tommy squatted on the National Forest and kept to himself. He made infrequent trips to town for mail and supplies, on skis in the winter and at the wheel of a decrepit foreign sports car in the summer.

While working part time as a clerk at the Cooke City General Store one winter, I waited on him a number of times, his arrival always heralded by the smell of wood smoke. It was said he was from a wealthy family back east and had arrived in the area to work on the Beartooth Highway. What drove him to a life of seclusion was never clear, but rumor had it a woman was involved.

Tommy lived in the mountains above Cooke without power or water until his cabin burned during the fires of ’88. He stayed for a while with Ralph and Sue Glidden, who owned the store, and then I seem to remember him moving to an old folks home in Livingston where he died a few years later.

The state is offering a reward of more than $35,000 for information leading to the conviction of whoever put the walleye in Swan Lake. I don’t recall any reward for information about all the brook trout stocking in the Beartooths.

Fisheries biologists from Montana, Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park completed a project last year to remove brook trout from Soda Butte Creek, which flows through Cooke City. Terribly polluted from mining waste that had leaked for years into the stream from an old tailings pond, Soda Butte recently received a clean bill of health following years of cleanup.

The brook trout were poisoned and replaced with native cutthroat trout.

Tommy must be rolling over in his grave.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]