Farmington River Electroshocking Results

CT DEP: thanks for another terrific job! Your friends at TPO.


(email from Neal Hagstrom, CT DEP)

Hi all;
I haven’t had time to go through the data yet. I’m just finished putting all the equipment away. All the samples in the upper TMA were done. The lower TMA was too deep to effectively sample. General impression was that there were good numbers of small wild browns both young-of-year and yearlings. We also encountered good numbers of wild brown trout at the upper end of the camp ground (Lunch Rock). We have only 2 brown trout at 20 inches, we usually get 4-6 > 20inches. We found a 26-inch rainbow (spring broodstock stocking). This year’s survivor yearling (orange-right tag) seem to be doing well also. It will be two-three weeks before I can get the data analyzed (still lots to do for this field season). We had a couple of brook trout, which is about the same as past years.
We took 111 fish for broodstock, some were this years left-red survivors. These fish were taken for insurance that we would have enough eggs. An will only be used if the wild females don’t produce enough. The largest component of the broodstock were 49 wild adults. These fish should be returning the TMA in early to mid- December. Sorry the pictures weren’t better, hope they give you an idea of what we saw.

Neal

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Alain,
When Neal talks about left-red and right-orange is he referring to the dye marks that CT uses?

Lopat: yes, CT uses elastomer tags injected just under the skin near the eyes of the fish. This is a common way of marking fish.

I reallly like this idea and i would love to see it done on some of the streams in PA.

Flyfisher,

The Clarion would benefit from a survivor program and so would the Allegheny below Kinzua Dam.

The yough river would as well. I think it is a great idea and the PA fish comission is looking at trying some new things. The Clarion is in great shape this year there are trout form Clarion all the way to Johnsonburgh the cold temps and rain should make for next year to be a banner year on the Clarion.

Yeah but when I spoke to Kurt he said the the drift boats and pontoons are screwing the fishing up.

Excellent job by CT not only in the management practice but in the spreading of information as well. We need more transparency in NJ.

I agree with trout5. Aaron told me about this program in August while I was in CT and I thought it sounded like the best stocking program I've herd of. You can't complain about NJ for the number of stockers and their size is decent also but we need better regulations to get quality numbers of holdovers.

I'm not sure if it will continue and how, but CT also stocked some survivor trout in the Housatonic recently.

I always thank the CT DEP for the hard work they do, especially with a limited budget. All the CT biologists I've met are forthcoming with information and dedicated to our sport.