Salmon fry bolster streams

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Denise Buckley spent Thursday afternoon bumping her way over potholes and fishtailing her way through occasional patches of oozing mud in a Ford F250 pickup truck.

In the back of that truck were 50,000 of her favorite critters, each heading to a new temporary home.

Buckley is a fisheries biologist who works at the Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery in East Orland. Her cargo: Atlantic salmon fry.

And on Thursday, the task she and a crew of federal employees and college volunteers undertook sometimes got a little bit messy.

“I made a baaaad decision,” she said, moments after swerving to the left in an attempt to find a better path through one particularly pesky patch of mud.

“Bad decision,” she said again, as the F250 spun itself to a halt, somewhere deep in the woods of the East Machias River watershed.

Not to worry. Buckley spends a lot of time on back roads and ATV trails this time of year. A simple flip into four-wheel drive, and Buckley and her precious cargo were back in motion.

It’s stocking season all around the state. State hatchery trucks are everywhere, pouring fully developed fish into brooks, creeks, lakes, and ponds in part so that anglers will be more likely to succeed this summer.

The federal folks are a bit different. Biologists like the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s Buckley are stocking Atlantic salmon. Most will never be caught or handled by a human again, and re-establishing healthy runs of fish – not providing a put-and-take fishery – is the goal.

“We’re going to a whole smattering of tributaries today,” she said. “Our goal is to put about 7,000 fry in each little tributary.”

On Thursday, Buckley and the team – which included five students from Sherrie Spranger’s Atlantic Salmon Conservation Projects class at the University of Maine-Machias – were toting fry from brook to brook in what’s termed “bucket stocking.”

The phrase is accurate: A bucketful of fry are placed in brooks, several fish every few feet until the pail is empty.

The process is simple: Dump a few fry. Replenish the water in the pail. Take a few steps. Dump a few fry. Repeat as necessary.

The fry in question are smaller than any fish you’ve ever caught by rod, net, or gaff. They can’t eat yet, and rely on their nearly depleted yolk sac for nourishment. While some fish are measured in pounds, you’d need 2,500 of these fry to weigh a single pound.

In a bucket with hundreds of relatives, the fry strike an interesting pose: Most end up in a motionless heap at the bottom of the pail. The few wriggling, frantic ones darting about at the surface of the water are stressed, Buckley informed the crowd … not extra-eager to get into the wild.

Buckley said the fish were stocked well back in tributaries of the East Machias River so that they’d have time to mature as they made their way into the main stem of the river.

“They face a formidable task ahead of them, just avoiding predation, which is natural,” Buckley said. “They’re a tiny little fish and there’s a lot of bigger fish in a lot of these streams.”

While Craig Brook’s hatchery provided the fish, the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission set up a game plan and decided which brooks to stock.

At Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery, Buckley explained, there are two programs currently in progress. One raises Penobscot salmon from brood stock that are collected at the Veazie Dam, and the other deals with “Distinct Population Segment” fish that have been listed as endangered in a particular waterway, like the East Machias.

On Thursday, more than 50,000 additional fry were adapting to life in the wild after their introduction to the brooks. They may survive. They may not.

They’ve all got challenges ahead … but they’ve all got a chance, too.

Proud father Steve Hughes contacted the NEWS this week to let us know that his 12-year-old daughter, Holly, bagged her first turkey during this season’s hunt.

Holly, who is from Corinna and Pittsfield, bagged a bird that was a 19-pounder with a 91/2-inch beard and 3/4-inch spurs.

Congratulations to her.

You likely heard about Thursday night’s fire at Atlantic Salmon of Maine’s Embden fish hatchery – a blaze that cost the aquaculture company nearly 3 million juvenile fish.

You may have also heard that ASM was found in contempt of court last week when U.S. District Judge Gene Carter concluded that the company had purchased and stocked smolt through its wholly owned subsidiary, Island Aquaculture Co., after Island Aquaculture had been ordered not to stock its pens.

It’s easy to find people who don’t like aquaculture, and just as easy to find folks who make persuasive arguments against some of the industry’s practices.

It’s also easy to find Internet reports of eco-terrorism targeting companies like Atlantic Salmon of Maine.

By the time you read this, the state Fire Marshal’s Office may have told reporters that the fire was entirely accidental and had nothing to do with foul play.

Let’s hope that’s the case. No matter how folks feel about the salmon pens they find in many of our bays, malicious acts against those companies must be recognized for what they are: Crimes. Pure and simple.

Coming up next week: First, I’ll tell you how the fishing was at the third annual Kids All-American Fishing Derby, which will be held in Greenville today. Hand a fishing rod to a boy or girl, point them at water where plenty of trout have been stocked, and a column is bound to develop. At least that’s my hope.

According to fisheries personnel who stocked the pond on Friday, plenty of local folks were in Greenville Junction just after the hatchery truck left, trying to dredge up one of the brood stock trout before the youths arrived en masse. Rest assured, there will be plenty of fish to go around … and plenty of stories.

Included in that trip will be a side trip up to the East Outlet of the Kennebec for some fly fishing. When boy meets river, columns also sometimes arise (especially if the fish bite, or if a fly somehow becomes lodged in my skin, giving new an entirely new meaning to my favorite Gulf War term, “embedded reporter.”)

Also next week, I’ll introduce you to a man you may not know … but whom you may want to hear about.

Most sportsmen in this neck of the woods have spent a bit of time rumbling across the Stud Mill Road, one of Maine’s nifty gravel backwoods highways.

If the Stud Mill Road leads to your favorite fishing hole … Bill Cherry is glad to hear it. He’s one of the guys who helped engineer it over a three-winter span back in the early 1970s. And he has a few memories he’ll share.

Until next week, so long. (And since the weather’s good, do me a favor: Go catch some fish).

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.