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Fisheries Cross Country '13

Started by Guest_NateTessler13_* , Jan 26 2014 12:15 PM

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#21 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 16 February 2014 - 05:38 PM

...I sure am glad i never watched Deliverence in my youth, nor Blair Witch Project. A lot of my favored activities of life would have been altered....

Casper, I have actually not seen the movie myself. Enough people have told me about it, that I think I've got the general idea of it without having to see it. On many occasions I've been around a river and people have brought up the movie in conversation. Maybe it's for the better that I haven't seen it.

The names on these guys are all over the place as is the subspecies designation... my Amphibians and Reptiles of Georgia book says up that way they would actually be Notophthalmus viridescens viridescens. And yes, they do indicate that efts are rather poisonous and rather bold because of it. And these are some strange beasts... they actually start out as larva with external gills looking like a greenish salamander... then they go through the red eft stage and are entirely terrestrial... then they turn into what you have pictured there in order to return to and breed in the water... really strange life history.

Thanks for the newt information. I find it interesting that this species goes through these different metamorphoses in its life stages. You say it's a strange life history, is it uncommon for newts to go through this many metamorphoses?

#22 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 16 February 2014 - 06:06 PM

Early May: northern Georgia (continued...)

My friend and I didn't have the liberty of traveling far on the last day of my visit, as I had a plane to catch in the evening. So, we were forced to find water near his house in northern Atlanta that would be fishable after 3" of rainfall over the past 24 hours. The Chattahoochee River below Buford Dam in the town of Buford fit that description. For those not familiar with the Chattahoochee, it is a large river that flows from northern Georgia, southwest to where it forms part of the western border between Georgia and Alabama. The Chattahoochee joins the Flint River to form the Apalachicola River in Florida, prior to entering the Gulf of Mexico. On the upper Chattahoochee, Buford Dam forms the reservoir known as Lake Lanier about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta. This hydroelectric dam provides power for northern Georgia and the reservoir created by the dam provides nearly 70% of Atlanta's drinking water. The bottom release dam (cool water from the bottom of Lake Lanier is released into the stream) cools the water sufficiently to provide a year around trout fishery downstream. Since water releases from the dam are regulated and occur on a schedule, water levels may still be low/wadeable below the dam even if water elsewhere is high and unsafe. Luckily for my buddy and I, water was not being released from the dam, so the water downstream was low and clear.

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As you can tell in the picture, the waters of the Chattahoochee were clear, and much of the red/orange sandstone boulder slabs were exposed. Wading around the stream was done via hopping from boulder to boulder. If you look across the stream near the tree line, you can see where the waters of Haw Creek enter the Chattahoochee. Haw Creek, like most streams in the area that day, was high and muddy. Fishing along this mixing zone was fantastic for stocked rainbow trout. Several blue herons were also seen wading the stream, making easy meals of the trout.

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After leaving the Southeast, I had work to conduct on a larval fish study in northern Pennsylvania on Lake Erie, and a few fisheries surveys to complete on lakes in northeastern Ohio. I'll write more about that later.

#23 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 16 February 2014 - 06:26 PM

Nate, I am not a newt expert at all. Just a guy that buys and reads text books. So from what I have been reading (before and again today since you asked)... some things like mudpuppies and waterdogs have a juvenile phase that looks a lot like the adults only smaller (external gills and aquatic lifestyle)... salamanders have two phases (like frogs) an aquatic juvenile, often with external gills and a tail shaped for swimming, and then an adult phase that is mostly terrestrial and looks like a typical salamander. In Georgia we have lots of frogs, several mudpuppes and sirens and such, but only two species of newts (a northern one and a southern one both from the same genus broken into some subspecies).

So I was just saying they are strange to think about (water to land to water) and unusual in my experience that they go through metamorphosis twice like that (frogs don't, butterflies don't, etc.).

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

#24 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 16 February 2014 - 06:36 PM

Yeah, I agree. I think it's interesting that they go through that twice. The terrestrial form seems to be very specially adapted to life on land as compared to the breeding form.

#25 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 16 February 2014 - 10:01 PM

Early May: northern Pennsylvania

After returning from Atlanta, my attention turned to a larval fish study on Lake Erie. The study was done as part of an assessment of potential impacts to fish communities from sand and gravel dredging activities at the Norfolk Moraine in Lake Erie. For those not familiar with the Norfolk Moraine, it is a large submerged sand and gravel bar extending from Long Point, Ontario to Presque Isle, Pennsylvania. The moraine essentially divides the central basin of Lake Erie from the eastern basin. For this portion of the study, I was a member of a team of biologists that headed out on the lake to tow plankton nets, with the goal of capturing larval fishes in and around the moraine. Our methods mimicked a previous fisheries study conducted at the moraine in 1986 (http://www.gpo.gov/f...ent-detail.html - link to the 1986 study).

We launched our boat in the town of Erie, Pennsylvania and motored northwest approximately 5 miles in rather calm conditions. It doesn't take much wind to make that big lake get choppy, so we strategically picked a calm day. When we got out there we used a downrigger with a cannonball to get the nets down to the appropriate depth:

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We attached the net to the cable and equipped a flow meter to the mouth of the net. The flow meter allows us to determine the volume of water passing through the net:

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While the net is towed, it expands and funnels water (and larval fish) down into a collection cup at the end of the net.

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We towed nets and collected samples through a variety of locations, at a variety of depths, throughout the moraine area and then headed back to shore. The samples were brought back to the laboratory, so that fish could be identified and enumerated. The 1986 fisheries study (provided in the link above) found the moraine provided nursery habitat for larval fishes of several species, including; burbot (Lota lota), rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax), and yellow perch (Perca flavescens). I cannot, however, report on the results of this study, as they are not finalized and ready for submission to the various federal and state agencies. The next phase of the study includes setting gill nets in the fall to help determine if the moraine is being utilized by adult fish as spawning habitat by fall-spawning species, such as lake trout (Salvelinus namaychush), cisco (Coregonus artedi), and lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis).

The next day a co-worker and I decided to stop at a stream in northwestern Pennsylvania just outside of the Allegheny National Forest. More on that later...

#26 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 18 February 2014 - 07:48 PM

Early May: northern Pennsylvania (continued...)

On our way back from the big lake, we decided to spend the better part of a day at a creek once famous for the oil found along its banks. The appropriately named, Oil Creek, flows in a southern direction through northwestern Pennsylvania before joining the Allegheny River in the town of Oil City. The Allegheny joins the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. Signs along trails through Oil Creek State Park detail the history of the region, including the claim of Oil Creek as the birth place of the world's oil industry. Once a "boomtown", the area has now mostly reverted to its natural state, with old oil rigs still standing as monuments of times past. For my buddy and I, Oil Creek represented a destination for an afternoon of wading and waving a rod at stocked trout.

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Among the trout aggressively chasing hatching caddis flies, I managed to catch a good number of striped shiner (Luxilus chrysocephalus) that were just a little outside of peak breeding condition:

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While wading from pool to pool, I noticed a fish swimming slowly between the cobble and boulders. I reached down and was able to scoop up a large adult stonecat (Noturus flavus):

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Although the fish was in terrible shape, it was still alive. I set it back in the water and watched it slowly swim away. I thought it odd, but it is not unusual to occasionally see a fish in poor condition, especially in spring when the rigors of spawning can take their toll on older adult fish. But as I paid closer attention to the cobble beneath my boots, I started noticing more stonecats...

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...and they seemed to be in poor shape. Many had lesions and fungus...

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In about a 300 meter length of stream, I found nearly a dozen adult stonecats in the same poor condition. I'm not sure what may have caused it. Perhaps these older adult fish had recently finished spawning and were succumbing to the associated stress. Or, it may be possible these fish were exposed to some sort of contaminant. It's not hard to imagine a stream like Oil Creek to have legacy contaminants in the streambed. Either way, I'll be sharing my findings with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (I'm kicking myself for not doing so immediately. Better late than never, I suppose). Dying stonecats aside, the trout couldn't ignore our caddis fly imitations all afternoon and we caught about a dozen a piece prior to being chased off by an incoming thunderstorm.

From Oil Creek we headed back home to northeastern Ohio. The next week I had a few nighttime fisheries surveys at lakes in northeastern Ohio lined up prior to heading out to New Jersey to continue my work with the National Rivers and Streams Assessment. More on that in a bit.

#27 Guest_UncleWillie_*

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Posted 19 February 2014 - 01:43 PM

I was mostly doing boat electrofishing surveys for a long-term monitoring of the stocked population of robust redhorse in that reach of river. Because captures were very low of the target animal, I ended up getting data on all catostomids, and doing occupancy analyses. You're right about the redeye having torqoise on there faces. Also, a lot of the redeye in the Ocmulgee have a red-orange margin on margins of the soft dorsal, soft anal, and caudal fins (by far my favorite of the black basses). Some of the larger adult fish seemed to lose this coloration. I'll see if I can dig up those old photos. I don't want to hijack your thread, so I will send them via PM or start different thread. Cheers!

I'm glad you're enjoying the write-ups. There's plenty more coming. What kind of project were you working on in that area? Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing longear sunfish there as well.

I've only seen a few redeye bass in my day. They've been mostly adult fish ~8-10" and have had a fair bit of turquoise coloration on their face. I'll have to take a closer look at the fish in question. Do you have a pic of the redeye x spotted bass?

#28 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

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Posted 20 February 2014 - 12:06 AM

Nice chrysocephalus - beautiful fish in the pink! Under-appreciated

.

#29 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 22 February 2014 - 10:56 AM

I was mostly doing boat electrofishing surveys for a long-term monitoring of the stocked population of robust redhorse in that reach of river. Because captures were very low of the target animal, I ended up getting data on all catostomids, and doing occupancy analyses. You're right about the redeye having torqoise on there faces. Also, a lot of the redeye in the Ocmulgee have a red-orange margin on margins of the soft dorsal, soft anal, and caudal fins (by far my favorite of the black basses). Some of the larger adult fish seemed to lose this coloration. I'll see if I can dig up those old photos. I don't want to hijack your thread, so I will send them via PM or start different thread. Cheers!

I didn't know there was robust redhorse rehabilitation efforts in that river. As you can see, we didn't capture any. I think redeye bass are my favorite of the black basses as well. They are near the top of the food chain in many of the small streams in which they're found, and they're truly beautiful fish. I'd love to see some of those photos when you get a chance. Feel free to post them in the thread for all to see...I don't mind at all. :biggrin:

Nice chrysocephalus - beautiful fish in the pink! Under-appreciated

You've got that right. I find myself taking more time to appreciate and look at the striped shiner as compared to the trout I catch in some of these streams. A spawning group of them is really something to behold...

#30 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 22 February 2014 - 12:25 PM

Mid-May: northeastern Ohio

During a short lull between work for the National Rivers and Streams Assessment, I had time to conduct a few electrofishing surveys on lakes in northeastern Ohio. Mid-May through early June is an ideal time in northeastern Ohio to conduct fisheries surveys in lakes. If sampling were to occur earlier in the year, many of the fish would be in the deeper parts of the lake, out of the effective range of the electrofishing gear. Sampling later in the year may cause unnecessary stress to the fish, as the warmer water tends to contain less oxygen and the fish have higher metabolism and respiration rates when the water is warmer. Those things coupled together can lead to mortality during summertime lake surveys; although there are certainly ways to reduce and nearly eliminate stress to fishes sampled in lakes during the summer to and reduce the chance for mortality. Either way, given the choice...I choose mid-May through early June.

Most stream surveys I conduct take place during the day. Many of the streams I sample are small enough to enable the electrofishing gear to be effective for all/most species of fish regardless of the time of day. Plus, it's a lot safer to be on a stream (whether wading or boating) during the day. For many large streams, fisheries surveys may be conducted during the evening, as fishes that normally reside in the deeper parts of the stream may come into shallow waters at night, where they are more effectively sampled via electrofishing gear. In lakes (especially clear lakes), sampling for fishes during the day is difficult, as fish can easily avoid the collecting gear. They can see you coming in the shallow water, and take off. Or, the bright sun forces them out of the shallows, into deeper water during the day. The cover of darkness makes nighttime electrofishing on lakes much more effective.

During the second week of May I conducted a nighttime electrofishing survey on a lake in northeastern Ohio, near Akron. The survey was ordered to provide a census of the fish community, assess the success of recent local stocking efforts, determine the age-size class structure of the largemouth bass population, and to remove nuisance species.

The lake is a shallow natural lake a little less than 100 acres in size. Historically, the fish community consisted of a warm-water fish community similar to other lakes in the region. The lake used to be clear and well vegetated and contained a variety of sunfish species, a few sucker species, a few lake-dwelling minnow species, bowfin, and perhaps even Iowa darter (Etheostoma spectabile), and least darter (Etheostoma microperca). Although I can't recall for certain if those two species existed in this lake...I know they were formally present in lakes adjacent. Presently the lake has heavy algal blooms, which decrease water clarity drastically, thereby reducing the diversity and density of vegetation. Also the shoreline has been developed/altered, reducing available spawning and nursery habitat for some of the native fish species. In addition, fish stocking has occurred to provide greater variety in sportfishing opportunities and other non-native fishes have been introduced to the lake (either intentionally, or accidentally) and further altered the fish community. Of course, almost all of these conditions described above can describe almost every lake I've visited throughout the Midwest. Admittedly, I stay away from lakes for this reason (both for study/work and for recreation). I'd rather spend my time in a stream

. But, the survey provided me an opportunity to be out on the water, and work towards helping improve the quality of the fish community at this lake. Here's a summary and some pictures of what was swimming in the lake:

The lake contained a high number of big largemouth bass. Although the home-owners association is pleased to see large bass in their lake, there was a concerning lack of small to medium-sized bass, suggesting an aging population.

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This shallow lake had a variety of sunfish species including bluegill, pumpkinseed, green sunfish, and hybrids of all. I usually take an interest in seeing the different hybrids in these lakes. Guessing at the parent species is half the fun...

Bluegill x Pumpkinseed

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another Bluegill x Pumpkinseed

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The top fish has a smaller mouth, more typical of a pumpkinseed. The bottom fish has a bigger mouth, more typical of what I see when a hybrid has a green sunfish parent (but who knows...nor does it really matter). This particular evening I remember laying out about 5 or 6 different hybrid sunfish and comparing them side by side. All have different features of their parent species. The lake also contained one of my favorite sunfish species, warmouth (Lepomis gulosus):

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The lake also had a large population of black crappie in the 6-8" range:

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Many of the males were very dark in coloration (like the one above), indicating they were going to be spawning soon. A lesser population of white crappie was also present:

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I came across a few white sucker (Catostomus commersonii) in some of the deeper portions of the lake:

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You can see this one was beginning to develop tubercles on its anal fin and caudal fin. This species is one of the few lake-dwelling sucker species I encounter in Ohio.

Stocking efforts about six or seven years ago at the lake have resulted in the several really large walleye hanging around in the lake, although I didn't find any smaller walleye that would suggest natural reproduction is occurring.

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We removed LOTS of common carp from the lake...perhaps over 1,000 lbs.

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In addition, we removed hundreds of pounds of white perch (Morone americana):

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This species is not native to the lake, nor is it native to Ohio. This species arrived into Ohio through the Welland Canal which connects Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. The fish is now established in Lake Erie and many of its tributaries. I'm not entirely sure how this species got into this natural lake in northeastern Ohio. One theory though is the nearby Cuyahoga River (Lake Erie tributary) flooded and connected to the lake, allowing white perch from the river to enter this lake. Either way, the white perch is now established in this lake and is competing for limited resources.

Results from this survey were compiled and analyzed in a report given to the lake managers to help them guide future fisheries management efforts in the lake. After this survey, I headed a few counties over to conduct another nighttime survey in a natural lake. More on that later.

#31 Guest_Gavinswildlife_*

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Posted 25 February 2014 - 12:27 AM

What lake is this? That survey pretty much sums up every lake I've ever seen.

#32 mattknepley

NANFA Member

Smack-dab between the Savannah and the Saluda.

Posted 01 March 2014 - 08:47 PM

Ok, Nate, it's been a week and a half. Post some more, please!

Matt Knepley
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."

#33 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 02 March 2014 - 07:37 AM

What lake is this? That survey pretty much sums up every lake I've ever seen.

PM sent.

Ok, Nate, it's been a week and a half. Post some more, please!

Restless? I'll work another post in here this morning. My burden at work has increased substantially, and I am very slim on free time anymore. I'll try to get this stuff posted before I forget too many details. I've got some really good ones coming up...

#34 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 02 March 2014 - 08:43 AM

Mid-May: northeastern Ohio (continued...)

Within a few nights of completing the previous survey, I had another nighttime survey to complete at another natural lake in northeastern Ohio. This lake is located in Portage County, about 15 miles south from the shores of Lake Erie. The task at hand was to simply inventory the fish populations at the lake, and to remove invasive carp species. I remember the evening I arrived to do the sampling was particularly muggy. The crew and I arrived around 8:30pm to launch the boat. Although it was mid-May in Ohio, I remember water temperatures being well into the 70's*F. A massive hatch of caddis flies was coming off the water. When electrofishing at night, we mount large spotlights to the front of the boat. Those lights did a fantastic job of attracting the bugs... Although the air temp was in the mid-80's*F, I remember having to wear long sleeves and waders just to keep the swarms of bugs from distracting me while I was working. As the night wore on, a thunderstorm rolled through. We motored to shore to let the storm pass, and luckily the insect activity passed as well.

This lake contained many of the fish species expected in a natural lake in northeastern Ohio. A diverse sunfish community was represented by largemouth bass, bluegill, green sunfish, hybrid sunfish - mostly green sunfish x bluegill, pumpkinseed (top), warmouth (middle), black crappie (bottom), and white crappie:

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The lake contained an overwhelming number of black and white crappie...perhaps too many. The crappies outnumbered the other sunfishes by a ratio of at least 10:1. Densities that high lead to stunting. Most crappies were between 5" and 7". Surely, anglers won't mind harvesting extra crappies to help improve/increase the average size of crappies in the lake. The pumpkinseed were nesting in large colonies on the sandy (man-made) beaches. They had cleared away a saucer-shaped nests and found the small gravel under/mixed in with the sand. Judging by the dark coloration of some of the warmouth collected, they too were likely getting ready to spawn, although their nests were much less conspicuous.

Since most of my time electrofishing is spent in rivers and streams, I don't frequently encounter fishes that are commonly found in natural lakes. Although I do find these "natural lake fishes" in low-gradient sections of flowing waters, they usually do not occur in the densities found in natural lakes. The warmouth mentioned above is one of those species I enjoy seeing in these lakes, the brown bullhead is another:

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In flowing waters throughout the Midwest, when I capture a bullhead, 95% of the time it's a yellow or black bullhead. Natural lakes are a good place to find all three species (yellow, black, and brown). This particular fish (pictured above) was an excellent example of an adult brown bullhead. The fish had a slight mottled pattern on its side and very diagnostic yellow/cream chin barbel base, fading to brown/black.

The lake also contained many channel catfish in the 3 - 6 lb. range:
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^ Not really anything noteworthy about the channel catfish here...I just really liked this picture. :biggrin:

At the end of the evening, after the population survey was completed, we spent time capturing and removing common carp and grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella):

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^ Here's my co-worker, Andrew, holding up a grass carp weighing over 20 lbs...one of many we collected that evening.

Several years ago, lake managers stocked grass carp to reduce densities of aquatic vegetation in the lake. The technique has been effective, and now they're concerned the grass carp are eating too much of the vegetation. Through the removal of a good number of them, hopefully the vegetation community will recover.

Well, that about summarizes the highlights from the two nighttime fisheries surveys I conducted in mid-May. The next two weeks I traveled to the northeast (New Jersey and Massachusetts) to continue work on the National Rivers and Streams Assessment. I'll post more on that soon.

#35 mattknepley

NANFA Member

Smack-dab between the Savannah and the Saluda.

Posted 02 March 2014 - 01:29 PM

Good stuff, Nate. I'm happy with my life, but still find joy in living vicariously through others. Thanks for some more adventure!

Matt Knepley
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."

#36 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 09 March 2014 - 01:35 AM

Late May: western New Jersey

I spent the last few days of May in western New Jersey training field crews in methods of stream habitat assessment for the National Rivers and Streams Assessment. After discussing the stream habitat assessment methods for boatable streams in the classroom, we took to the Delaware River near Trenton for practice.

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This portion of the Delaware River forms the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I believe I was looking downstream when I took this picture, so Pennsylvania is on the right (west) and New Jersey is on the left (east). It's hard to decipher the direction of the current in this picture because the river is wide and deep here. If I remember correctly, there was either a wing dam or rapids area of some sort not far downstream. I remember the electrofishing training session didn't yield much fish diversity or abundance. Perhaps the depth of the water limited the effectiveness of the gear here. While demonstrating how to estimate the density of riparian vegetation in the understory, I noticed quite a few stonefly naiad casings:

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The next day we focused on the wadeable stream sampling protocols. A small stream located a few miles northwest of Trenton served as a suitable practice stream. I waded Moores Creek with crews as we discussed the finer points of riparian vegetation, surrounding land use, substrate composition, fish cover, and numerous other aspects of the habitat assessment portion of the National Rivers and Streams Assessment. The portion of the stream we visited was approximately 500 meters upstream from its confluence with the Delaware River.

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Although I was training three or four crews that day, I found a few minutes between my training presentations to chase fish with a dip net. In my limited efforts, I was able to capture eastern blacknose dace (Rhinichthys atratulus), creek chub (Semotilus atromaculatus), tesselated darter (Etheostoma olmstedi), and a good number of eastern banded killifish (Fundulus diaphanus diaphanus):

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These fish seemed to be the most abundant species in this portion of the creek. Several schools of these fish, each consisting of about 50 fish, could be seen swimming near the shoreline margins. The iridescent blue sides, black spots on the dorsal fin, and yellow tint of the anal and pelvic fins indicated the males (top) were coming into breeding condition. Many of the larger females (bottom) had extended abdomens, likely containing developing or mature eggs. Capturing the killifish gave me a welcomed "fish break" from the habitat work I was focused on during this training. In addition, some of the crew members that were not fisheries biologists took interest in what I was catching when they saw some of the colors on the male killifish. Having an interesting looking fish in-hand is always a great conversation starter about native fishes and conservation. After a day of of playing/working in the stream, and drinking about 10 bottles of water (I think it was 95*F that day), I had to be on my way to northeastern Massachusetts for another training session. More on that later...

#37 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 09 March 2014 - 12:58 PM

Early June: northeastern Massachusetts

From New Jersey, I headed north to northeastern Massachusetts for another NRSA training session. At this training session, I again focused on habitat assessment. The training was centered in North Chelmsford, a little over a half hour northwest of Boston. The Merrimack River was chosen as our boatable field training site. Below is a map of the watershed borrowed from Wikipedia:

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Haha...this map is gigantic. Oh well. It should make it easier to follow along then. We boarded the boats near the town of Lowell, and I spent the day going through the boatable protocols.

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This portion of the river is impounded, and the flow was hardly discernible. The fish sampling session wasn't very eventful. If I remember correctly, we may have only captured a few common carp, and maybe an American eel. The next day, we headed over to our wadeable stream. Beaver Brook is a tributary to the Merrimack River located in the town of North Chelmsford. Although the stream cut through an urbanized area, the portion we visited didn't display many of the characteristics I anticipate when visiting a stream in this type of setting:

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A modest sized (about 100-150 foot wide) forested flooplain bordered both sides of the stream, and many large boulders were strewn across the bottom of the tannin stained stream:

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Boulders of this size (over 10' tall) were common in this small, urbanized stream. After doing a bit of reading about Beaver Brook, I learned the stream drains Wolf Swamp, which is likely the major source of the tannins in the water. A 2001 report from the Merrimack River Watershed Council (http://www.merrimack...kAssessment.pdf) mentioned the stream is also stocked with trout, suggesting the stream may contain coldwater habitat suitable of supporting trout. Using a battery powered backpack electrofisher, we encountered: white sucker (Catostomus commersonii), eastern blacknose dace (Rhinichthys atratulus), bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus), pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus), and hybrids of these two sunfish species. We didn't find any of the trout suspected to live in this stream, although the warm temperatures may have driven them to cold water refuges upstream.

After this brief stop in the Northeast, I headed across the country to the Pacific Northwest to spend a week in Portland, OR for another NRSA training.

#38 Guest_tomterp_*

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Posted 09 March 2014 - 04:35 PM

Nice report Nate. Sometimes "stocked" with respect to trout means simply put and take fishing, with no expectation of any survivors reaching the summer. This is common in Virginia/Maryland area, no idea about Mass.

#39 Guest_fundulus_*

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Posted 09 March 2014 - 08:01 PM

I haven't been in a stream full of glacial debris for a while. Fishing for trout in similar streams in the NW Boston suburbs would usually yield really feisty 5 inch brookies out of water maybe 8 inches deep. It's the only real microfishing I've ever done. At least you didn't find brown trout in the stream.

#40 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 12 March 2014 - 04:09 PM

Nice report Nate. Sometimes "stocked" with respect to trout means simply put and take fishing, with no expectation of any survivors reaching the summer. This is common in Virginia/Maryland area, no idea about Mass.

Good point. I suppose it was wishful thinking to reason that the stream would contain coldwater habitat and possibly other coldwater species since it is stocked with trout.

I haven't been in a stream full of glacial debris for a while. Fishing for trout in similar streams in the NW Boston suburbs would usually yield really feisty 5 inch brookies out of water maybe 8 inches deep. It's the only real microfishing I've ever done. At least you didn't find brown trout in the stream.

I had a similar experience at a small stream a little northwest of Schenectady, NY back in July. It's really quite enjoyable to behold those native jewels in those kind of streams. You're right about the browns...I'd rather see no trout than encounter brown trout there.