Artificial spawning areas producing Arctic charr

After a night of hard rain, a soft drizzle veiled the granite-faced hills overlooking Flood’s Pond. Handy to Kimball Point, Fred Kircheis, a research fisheries biologist with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, reined in the 15-horsepower outboard. “The traditional spawning beds are in the shallow water off the point and along the shore just ahead of us,” he said. “The three artificial spawning beds we built are a little to the right in deeper water. Those white buoys mark the nets we’re using to capture the fry.”

The reference was to juvenile Arctic charr hatched earlier this year on the artificial beds constructed in 1991. During the next three years, fertilized charr eggs were transferred to the beds, where hatching occurred. Fisheries and wildlife management programs take time: In 1998, after four years of diligent, patient and, no doubt, often disappointing observation, natural reproduction of charr occurred on the artificial beds. This year, Fred first captured fry on April 26.

Aside from supporting one of the few populations of native Arctic charr remaining in this country, Flood’s Pond, located in Otis, supplies water to Bangor and several outlying towns via the Bangor Water District. Although the district’s drawdown of water from the pond has diminished somewhat – the town of Orono, for example, now has its own water supply – the possibility of the traditional charr spawning grounds being exposed by lowered water levels still exists. Therein, obviously, lies the reason for the creation of artificial spawning areas in deeper water.

“We have a good working relationship with Bangor Water District,” Fred allowed as he hooked a buoy and hauled the funnel-like trap section of the net aboard. “And that’s one of the reasons this project is working.” The fine-mesh nets – actually elver fyke nets – used in trapping the fry are set where the artificial beds drop off to deeper water. “These fry were actually hatched in February or March,” Fred explained. “Now that their yolk sacs are absorbed, they’re emerging from the substrate [rocks and gravel] and responding to their instincts to seek deeper water.”

On that steamy spring morning, however, no fry were found in the nets. “Wouldn’t you know it,” said Fred. “Every time I take someone fishing, the fish refuse to cooperate.” However, on the following day he captured four fry, naturally. “It’s early yet, though,” Fred continued. “I expect that as the fry develop, we’ll catch more of them. I’m just thrilled that this project is working. There’s quite a difference between watching fry hatch and develop in a hatchery and observing them in natural habitat.”

Because fishing is prohibited at Flood’s Pond, I mentioned that anglers sometimes ask why the DIFW is managing the fish often referred to as Sunapee trout or silver trout if fishing for them is off limits. Fred replied, “Flood’s is the department’s research site for charr, so fishing isn’t allowed here. But there are 10 ponds in northern and western Maine that have wild populations of `blueback trout,’ which is another name for Arctic charr. We’re also stocking adult charr in Enchanted Pond in Jackman, Long Pond in the Rangeley region, and Rum Pond in Greenville. All those ponds can be fished.”

As we towed a wake back to the Bangor Water District dock and Fred’s “field office,” the shed where he stows his equipment, I thought of the times when the late Carroll Soucie and I fished for silver trout on the rock-rimmed pond – it was open to fishing then – using bits of lobster meat for bait. That was 45 years ago, give or take. Small wonder that, while gazing through the drizzle that blended the maroon of budding maples and the chartreuse of birches and poplars like washes of watercolor paint, I wondered how such enjoyably long days became such dreadfully short years?

Later that morning, Fred, Randy Spencer, a biologist with the Atlantic Salmon Authority, and I stopped by Souadabscook Stream in Hampden to observe the alewife run. At the remains of a saw mill dam, where a trap is in place to catch alewives (the fish are sold for lobster bait), the biologists evaluated the accessibility of alewives and Atlantic salmon to that section of the stream.

While there, we cut the trail of Bob Wengrzynek, state biologist for the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and John Jones of Winterport, former owner of the grist mill dam that was removed from the Souadabscook last fall. You may recall that Wengrzynek coordinated the angling of several agencies to remove that obstruction. Currently, he is solidly hooked to planning the removal of the aforementioned saw mill dam and breaching a smaller downstream dam in the not-too-distant future.

From ledges slippery with the spills of fir and hemlock, we watched alewives swarming and darting in the turbulence of a pool directly below the dam. Once again fascinated by the springtime spectacle, I marveled at the instincts compelling the fish to ascend spate-swollen rivers and streams. Tenaciously, the silvery migrants surmount what appear to be insurmountable velocities of water gushing through pitches, gorges, chutes and cascading over falls, not to mention negotiating fishways. That struggle to proliferate – to perpetuate the plan that remains intact in spite of mankind’s steadfast efforts to destroy it – is truly an awe-inspiring sight.

Whenever we lose a natural resource our lives become less natural.

Tom Hennessey’s columns can be accessed on the BDN Internet page at: www.bangornews.com.