And it appears the good guys won.

The Montana State Supreme Court refused to rehear the case, leaving in place a decision that should put wide, wide smiles on the faces of fly fishermen:

The Montana Supreme Court will not rehear the Mitchell Slough case.

In an order issued last week, the court turned down two petitions seeking a rehearing on the court’s ruling in November that the slough was a natural waterway and therefore subject to state law for streambed permitting and public access.

“It’s a done deal now except for the formalities,” said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park’s Chief Legal Council Bob Lane.

The 16-mile-long Mitchell Slough has been mired in controversy for years. The channel runs on the east side of the Bitterroot River between Hamilton and Stevensville through private property, including lands owned by 1980s rocker Huey Lewis.

The two petitions seeking a rehearing were filed by landowners who argued the Supreme Court overlooked material evidence when it issued its ruling on the slough’s status. Landowners argued – and two state district courts earlier agreed – that the slough had been dramatically altered over the years and was no longer a natural stream.

The Supreme Court disagreed and overturned two earlier state district court rulings.

Somedays you’re the trout, somedays you’re the stuck-in-the-shuck emerger. Today we’re all trout.

See you out of court, Tom Chandler.

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Court Opens Mitchell Slough in Landmark Stream Access Case: New West Missoula

With a 54-page ruling, the Supreme Court deemed the waterway a natural stream, which means access to it is protected by Montana’s stream access law, which is among the strongest in the country. The ruling has been coming for more than two years and overturns two lower-court decisions that had defined the stream the way the Bitterroot Conservation District and several high-profile landowners had advocated it be: Just a ditch.

The case, which has been watched closely across the West as a crucial test of stream access law, has been a long-running extravaganza of protests, celebrity, and political maneuvering but more than that, it has been a spur for complex and often heated discussions on water rights, landownership, what’s natural and what’s not and most of all, how to square the values of the Old West with the demands of the New.

I’m on my way to a class, but you can read the whole story here.

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