Places like Cooney Reservoir, Bighorn Lake and Canyon Ferry Reservoir get plenty of attention when it comes to services for campers and fishermen. Many state and federal dollars are spent there annually to upgrade the facilities and provide amenities and comforts for the public.

But there's another group of waters in Montana that get much less attention - sometimes just about no attention at all - but still provide recreation for local and area anglers. These are typically irrigation storage reservoirs that don't fall under state or federal land management. As a result, there isn't the built-in funding source. Dollars spent there are few and far between.

Consider the case of Petrolia Reservoir, an irrigation-storage impoundment east of Winnett, in Petroleum County. This 518-acre water provides fishing for walleyes, northern pike and perch for anglers from places like Winnett, Roundup, Lewistown and Billings.

But the two ancient wood outhouses - one without a door - made Petrolia less than appealing as a destination spot for family-based recreation.

That was hammered home to Dave Snyder when he took his wife there two years ago.

"My wife came back from the outhouse and said she would never come back here to camp, ever again," Snyder said. "I went to check it out and even I was disgusted by the condition of the outhouses."

That started what could be quaintly termed as the Petrolia privy project which was culminated recently by the installation of an environmentally approved vault outhouse at the lake.

It was a cooperative endeavor among a number of fishing groups, the Winnett community and the approval of local water users.

"This was a huge project and took a year of planning and fundraising. Who knew that it would take so much paperwork and government stuff to just put in an outhouse," said Snyder, president of Walleyes Unlimited's Crooked Creek chapter at Lewistown.

"We had to get approval from the Winnett water district to put in a privy, get approval from central Montana sanitarian and agree to get a Fish and Game-approved, handicapped-accessible privy and agree to pump the privy every year so we could bypass the environmental impact survey study before we could even start," he said.

Along the way, Snyder also learned that this wasn't going to be cheap.

"The privy was $8,800 and it was $1,525 for delivery from Kalispell from Flathead Concrete for a total of $10,525," he said.

Snyder's Crooked Creek Chapter donated $6,200 to the project. Then the Billings WU Chapter chipped in $1,000, Montana PikeMasters donated $1,000, Walleyes Forever added $1,000, the Winnett Lions Club gave $1,000, the Central Montana Foundation donated $1,800, Winnett's Rimrock Club added $500, Bevis Gravel of Winnett donated the gravel and Petroleum County came through with strong support, manpower and equipment.

The fund gathering wound up totaling $12,500 with the extra dollars above the $10,525 cost being set aside for ongoing maintenance and pumping in the future.

When group representatives got together at the site for the installation of the new Petrolia privy, there was talk of other possible improvements that could be made to the site including the construction of a concrete boat ramp to replace the gravel-and-mud launching being done now.

In the whole scheme of outdoor recreation in Montana, this may not be a giant improvement. It won't draw huge crowds or propel the state's tourism industry to lofty new heights.

But it's a great example of assorted groups gathering together, pooling their resources and providing a basic necessity that local and area anglers will use on one of our smaller, less-famous waters.

And who knows? Snyder's wife might even go back to Petrolia Reservoir and camp and fish there with him, too.