March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Biologists hope to net `fishy’ information

JACKMAN — Biologists with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife across the state are busy trapping brook trout, lake trout, splake and salmon.

They are setting nets in lakes and ponds that were stocked in the spring and gathering fish for a variety of tests. Weight, length, age and sex will be recorded. Later, the computerized data will determine the degree of success of the state’s stocking program earlier this year.

Warden biologists Paul Johnson and Tim Obrey were busy this week on Big Wood Pond hauling in specimens, conducting tests and then releasing the fish into the lake.

“We let the fish tell us what to do,” said Johnson. “We look at the age and size, not the quantity.”

The information gathered is used to determine if the lake has been overstocked. Big Wood Pond, said Johnson, was stocked last May with 2,200 salmon that were one year old and seven inches long, and 3,500 splake.

Splake are a cross between lake and brook trout, said Johnson.

“Splake are doing well in places where brook and lake trout haven’t been faring well,” said Obrey. “They compete better with perch and we get a better return. We had stocked brook trout here for years and if we saw 10 percent back, it was a good year. We’ve seen splake up to 17 inches after only two years.”

Johnson said the tests could determine immediately how the fish were doing. Each of the fish tested this week at Big Wood were healthy, showed no signs of fishermen’s hooks and were growing at a respectable rate, he said.

A net set on Thursday, however, yielded only half a dozen fish on Friday. “It’s not what we hoped,” said Johnson, but added that calm conditions, such as those on Friday, did not precede good catches. A windy day will stir up the fish and possibly make the net harder to see, said Obrey.

The nets are set close to the public boat launch site, explained Johnson, because the young fish will return to the exact location where they were placed in the lake in May. Their homing instinct will bring them back to the site in the fall.

A T-shaped net is set, with a trap, similar to a lobster or minnow net, in the center of the T. The fish are caught and separated. Suckers and other “waste” fish are not used in the testing. Lake and brook trout, a hatchery bred combination of those two, splake, and salmon are used for the test.

Once removed from the trap, the fish are placed in shallow tubs, anesthetized, and examined. Information on each fish is recorded in a log: weight, length, sex and species. A scale sample is carefully taken and slipped into an envelope.

In Friday’s catch were several brook trout, several splake, a few native trout and a beautiful, egg-laden 18-inch salmon. “I don’t know how she managed to avoid the fisherman’s hook,” said Johnson, carefully handling the fish. All the trout were 12 inches in length or shorter.

“We just concentrate on stocking the three types of fish because if we keep adding more and more game fish, we dilute the population,” Johnson said. “It’s like a garden. The soil, or the lake, is only so fertile.”

Obrey said the biologists will return to a single site three or four times, until enough fish can be caught, about 25, to make the data credible. All data is fed into Obrey’s computer system and at the conclusion of the netting program, the information is quickly available. Future stocking plans will be made based on the netting data.

“Everyone has a different opinion about how we should manage the lakes, but the bottom line is if it wasn’t for the sportsmen, the fish wouldn’t be managed. The dedicated license fees pay for this research. Yes, the majority of the work is for the fisherman, but we also try to protect the fish habitat from inappropriate hydro projects and forest practices,” said Johnson.

“The non-sportsmen also benefit with clean water and a natural shoreline. The public at large benefits. In nature, everything is linked to everything else. If your remove one of those links, the whole system fails.”


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