MILES CITY, Mont. - Roger Muggli's 40-plus-year obsession to enhance the Tongue River's fishery can be traced to a life-changing encounter with a smallmouth bass.

Muggli, 58, will be honored today for his dogged persistence that culminated in the construction this summer of a fish-passage channel around the Twelve Mile Dam south of here. The dam has blocked upstream migration of fish since it was built in 1885. Today's celebration, to be attended by Gov. Brian Schweitzer, will formally dedicate the 660-foot Muggli Fish Passage, bringing to an end 122 years of a fish-spawning dead end.

"It's important to the species of fish that live in the Tongue River because it reconnects the river so they have a place to migrate around the T and Y diversion dam now," said Dwayne Andrews of the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "This was really because of Roger. He took the lead on it. It was a concern to him. He manages that irrigation district, so his influence was critical to this being successful."

The passage opens another 50 miles of the Tongue River to fish, including six species of special concern in Montana including the blue sucker, sturgeon chub and sicklefin chub. It also opens the upper Tongue River to some of the other 49 species of fish that live in the Yellowstone River. Right now, only 14 of those species are found above the Twelve Mile Dam.

Reaching this point has been a long struggle for Muggli.

He grew up on a Miles City-area farm. One of his chores as a young boy included helping his father with irrigation. It was in the fields that his concern for fish began.

"These fish would end up getting out in our fields," Muggli said, stranded as irrigation water was withdrawn and left to rot or feed the raccoons.

"It was great fun as a 7- , 8-, 9-year-old kid going out picking up fish in the fields," Muggli said. "But it was bothersome."

He didn't mind catching fish from the river, but it seemed wasteful for them to die in the fields. So Muggli began transporting fish to the nearby creek or Yellowstone River in a bucket of water, saving a select few.

"It was symbolic, taking a few fish," he said. "But what else do you do at 8 or 10 years old?"

One day, a fairly large smallmouth bass got caught in the irrigation drawdown. But this time, Muggli said, he decided to watch the fish die. Struggling, the fish sought out small puddles of water, working its gills frantically to stay alive.

"The mud started to boil out of his gills," Muggli said. "'Whoa,' I thought, 'that's got to be some terrible way to die.' I couldn't take it. I picked him up and threw him in a bucket of water."

When Muggli turned the fish loose back into the Yellowstone River, it shot out of the bucket, but then returned.

"He was probably just disoriented," Muggli said. "But I thought he came back to thank me for letting him go. That was the point when I thought something had to be done."

Since his grandfather managed the Tongue and Yellowstone Irrigation District, and then his father, Muggli was ideally positioned to effect change. But being conservation-minded did require him to step out at a time when most of his fellow farmers equated environmentalists with Easterners telling them what to do. It's a stance that hasn't always made him popular, or understood.

"There aren't too many people who have been lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to be in a position to make this work," Muggli said. "But if you have an opportunity to do something positive for the environment, you flat need to do it.

"Irrigation has been one of the toughest things on the fisheries," he said. "We as irrigators and water users need to look out for other uses of the water. The less intrusive we can be on the resource, the better."

He said it only made sense in his mind that taking care of the river was good not just for local farmers but for the state, the country and the world.

He took over as manager of the Tongue and Yellowstone Irrigation District in 1987. The next year, he started working on a new fish bypass system at the inlet to the 27-mile-long canal that would allow fish coming downstream to circumnavigate the 300-foot-long, 12-foot high Twelve Mile diversion dam and also divert them from the irrigation canal.

In 1999, the nearly $1 million structure was finished, funded in large part by federal grants. But the inlet did nothing to help native fish running upstream to spawn in the spring. So Muggli started work on the second phase of his fish-enhancement project, a passage around the dam for upstream-moving fish. To that end, he consulted with members of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers.

"Trying to get all of the horses pulling in the same direction is a hard feat," he said. "There was quite a bit of groundbreaking there. We'd make two big mistakes before we did anything right. But I'm one of those people who won't let go of something."

That's good, because it would be several more years before the permits were acquired, environmental studies were completed and funding was lined up. Along the way, he got the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy, Carroll Cos Inc. and the Natural Resources Conservation Service to pitch in.

"This never would have happened without Roger," said George Jordan, Yellowstone River coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "He scrounged materials and dogged this project all the way through."

But Muggli said it was a community project, noting the hard work of agency personnel, conservationists and the assistance of his wife.

"I never thought it would take this damn long," Muggli said. "But I knew that someday, if I lived long enough, we'd get it done."

The $400,000 to build the fish bypass was finally budgeted this year, but then bids came in about twice the amount of projected costs. Rather than risk losing the funding, Muggli made the irrigation district the general contractor.

"Every conceivable thing that could go wrong did," he said.

Although he was attempting to return some natural balance to the Tongue River, it seemed that even Mother Nature was conspiring against him. As the channel was being dug for the fish bypass this spring, the area experienced a 100-year rain event that shot the river over its banks, flooding over the top of a nearby dike and rushing water into the incomplete bypass channel.

"I was sweating bullets," Muggli said.

Although washing out the dam was a concern, Muggli was excited to see fish attempting to use the flood waters to migrate around the dam.

"There was a theory that the fish wouldn't go past the Twelve Mile Dam," Muggli said, that because so many generations of fish hadn't been able to go upstream, that genetic trigger to migrate had been quashed. But the fish in the floodwaters proved that wrong, he said. It was a great relief.

"That was the silver lining of that 100-year rain event. Because, what if this thing doesn't work, who's going to eat that crow? Everyone was going to have my neck," he said.

Three weeks ago, the bypass channel was completed.

Muggli's persistence and work may help advance the cause of fish passage around irrigation dams along the length of the Yellowstone.

"What the biologists would like to see, with support from the irrigators who use the dams and local anglers, is to eventually provide fish passage on most of the dams in the Yellowstone and Tongue River," said Andrews of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "So what's unique about this project is that it's the first extensive fish passage to be completed on the Tongue River."

Muggli is pleased that his work, although not yet done, may lead to other such endeavors.

"Maybe I've helped chart a way so that it won't take 40 years next time," Muggli said.