Did anyone else check out the salmon and trout on the Maine board?

[Raquettedacker]

I'm heading out Wednesday night after work for 4 days of fishing with my brother and a group of buddys  ... Cold front coming in..    Hope the fishing will be good...  Hope to have some nice pictures to post......

[bigbrookie]

no reason to go to maine for great brookie fishing, there is some of the best brookie fishing in the states here in ny. us brook trout fisherman are very tight lipped and if i told you where we were fishing, i would have to kieel ya (jk) . we catch at least 2-3 20" fish every year, with numerous 17-19''s in the mix. it took me a few years to figure them out, but once i figured out their likes, dislikes, and patterns they followed, it became pretty easy. my biggest to date is a 22" 5+lb released to fight again. i've seen bigger, but could never get them to hit.

[rainbarrel]

-20", with the possability of maybe a record size fish, we now have 8-12" fish that are netted and stocked elsewhere and replaced with 4-6" fish. They just keep turning it over.(now my thoughts are, if the state can rear fish in one pond and dispence to another, whats all the fuss about bait fish?) Sorry I tend to get off course sometimes. Soo the biologist says, what about the fish that don't get netted for stocking? There must be some big ones holding in there. I said with the fact that these ponds were killed to remove undesirable bait fish, what does a trout eat to get big?(Brookies) He said bugs and larva and worms washed in. I said if 500 fish are competing for 100 worms washed in how do they get big. If 500 fish are following a school of 2000 bait fish then wouldn't they stand a better chance of being healthier and growing to a more mature size? Neither of them had a real answer for me, they just skirted every question with for the better of the fishery and subsequent generations of fishermen and women. The bottom line since the early 70's has been the dollar. If people go somewhere and catch fish they will continue to buy a licence. If they get skunked repeatedly they don't. Me personally if I get skunked OH well! the fish won today. But if the chance at a big fish exists then I will be back and going for them. We have turned everything including fishing into an instant gratification sport. What happened to the ole boys sittin on the bank with a pole and a piece of grass in their mouth relaxing and catching fish??
[/quote]

Um Bait bucket biologists have ruined more trout ponds in the Adirondacks than acid rain or anything else.  Maine has lakes connected with large river systems to support reproduction and growth until brookies get to the size where they can eat fish and compete with other species .  Not so around here.  The only ponds worth a crap to fish are smallish headwater ponds that are a long hike because the ones close to roads are either overfished or loaded with trash fish from dirtbags bait buckets.  I don't know which biologist you were talking to but all the scientific papers I've seen on Adk ponds conclude that shiners, smelt, perch are death for our small ponds.  THe only minnows that don't hurt ponds are the native ones like dwarf suckers and redbelly dace.  Too many aggressive fish competing for too little food in our acid sensitive ponds and the brook trout lose.   Sure there are exceptions but they are few.  They stock browns and bows along with brooks in ponds that have an overpopulation of shiners to beat the shiners up and perhaps provide better opportunity for brook trout.  Whether or not this works I can't say but that's why they do it.  So before you go blaming the state for your crappy fishing you might want to look in the mirror and think before 'helping' the trout by dumping that bucket of shiners into a reclaimed pond.  Chances are you've just ruined the fishing for the next generation and you've just wasted the $30,000 they spent on the reclamation.  And yeah, as bigbrookie said, people catch big brook trout every year they just don't go posting them on public message boards because such ponds are too valuable to inform the typical ignoramus that will go in there with a bucket of bait.  Sorry for the rant but this stuff really annoys me. 

[bigbrookie]

rainbarrel, it does suck that so many people have no respect for what we have here in ny. i have seen first hand what the invasive species have done in the adks. ponds my father use to take us to back in the early 80's no longer have any trout in them, only warm water species. we have also seen what a reclaimation project can do for the fishery, as we are catching trout in a few ponds that were reclaimed in the late 90's.
perfect example of what the bait buckets biologist can do to a fishery, little tupper lake. the first few times i fished it when it was opened to the public we did really good and got into some monsters. in the last 6-7 years, myself and some friends that fish it, have noticed a great decline in the fishery. and it a shame because it is easily accessable and a beautiful lake. i since have been going to my other ponds in the backcountry more, and the fishing as good as it has ever been (in my lifetime) without the human pressure.

[adkbrookie]

Thought that might bring a smile.
This post made me do some mental researching,(doesn't take long, data base doesn't hold to much info anymore.) But remembered a lengthy conversation with an ECO(who was a biologist) and a encon biologist. We met up at a local fly fishing tackle shop(happened to be owned by a retired forest ranger). As the owner(Vic) was asking me what I had been catching, the ECO asked if I had been to any local ponds like Peaked or Hour. I said nope, these reclaimed artificial only ponds are a joke. The state uses most of them as a stocking holding tank. Where we could once go and have a reasonable expectation of catching something 16-20", with the possability of maybe a record size fish, we now have 8-12" fish that are netted and stocked elsewhere and replaced with 4-6" fish. They just keep turning it over.(now my thoughts are, if the state can rear fish in one pond and dispence to another, whats all the fuss about bait fish?) Sorry I tend to get off course sometimes. Soo the biologist says, what about the fish that don't get netted for stocking? There must be some big ones holding in there. I said with the fact that these ponds were killed to remove undesirable bait fish, what does a trout eat to get big?(Brookies) He said bugs and larva and worms washed in. I said if 500 fish are competing for 100 worms washed in how do they get big. If 500 fish are following a school of 2000 bait fish then wouldn't they stand a better chance of being healthier and growing to a more mature size? Neither of them had a real answer for me, they just skirted every question with for the better of the fishery and subsequent generations of fishermen and women. The bottom line since the early 70's has been the dollar. If people go somewhere and catch fish they will continue to buy a licence. If they get skunked repeatedly they don't. Me personally if I get skunked OH well! the fish won today. But if the chance at a big fish exists then I will be back and going for them. We have turned everything including fishing into an instant gratification sport. What happened to the ole boys sittin on the bank with a pole and a piece of grass in their mouth relaxing and catching fish??

smelt and other undesirable bait fish prey heavily on  brook trout eggs and larvae. i agree some of the ponds w/ the biggest fish have bait in them but the ponds with the best mix of sizes seem to have only brook trout. at least that's what i noticed. i do agree they killed some ponds w/ some very large brookies in there, but it was typically at the point where the number of invasives in there was ridiculous. there was one pond that i would have considered trecking into to ice fish for perch the year before they killed it b/c there were so many good perch in there.

Here's a real answer for you:
the deal w/ brookies eating baitfish instead of inverts is simply an issue of trophic efficiency. every time you move up a level in the trophic level only 10% of the energy assimilated by the previous trophic level is passed on to the next. so let's do some simple math. if we start out with 1000 calories in algae/diatoms/ect., then there should only be 100 calories in grazing inverts, and 10 calories in first level carnivorous inverts, fish, ect. So if you increase the number of trophic levels you increase the energetic loss to maintenance metabolism. In fact in most aquatic ecosystems there are actually equal biomasses the first two trophic levels. This is due to the turn over rate being much faster for the lower level. The lower level turns over 10X faster than the next level up so there can be the equal biomasses. Higher turn over rates do not make up the difference at higher tropic levels. Think about it, most aquatic inverts reproduce once a year, the same as most fish. There cannot be 2000 "bait" and only 100 "worms". The bait has to eat something too. Also, brook trout would have to burn more energy capturing fish (they can swim away) than inverts (which are less motile relative to the bait). Brook trout also evolved in an environment primarily without competition from other species so their feeding strategies and body form are tailored towards feeding on inverts. Nick Karas wrote a book entitled Brook Trout, you might enjoy reading it. If you are interested in some articles about trophic efficiency then I can give you the citation info. for some.

I agree in general that dropping the browns and rainbows in does not make a lot of sense. I have heard of one pond that they put rainbows in with the brookies and the fishing went way downhill. I have also personally experienced some ponds that are now amazing fishing for both brookies and rainbows. rainbarrel seems to have this right.

I have personally seen several ponds reclaimed that had decent fishing. The fishing has improved in all after the reclamation.

[jimmie333]

I love New York, but the fishing 20 minutes from my house is the best in all of New England. Small remote ponds or big lakes like Sebago and Moosehead are top notch fishing waters.

Maine The Way Life Should Be!

[bigbrookie]

adkbrookie, thx for the great info. i'm going to have to read nick karas's book. have you been out yet this year? i'm very short handed at work this spring, so i'm not going to get to take a spring trip this year. hope to get out this summer, and definitly once this fall.
gl

oh ya jimmie, love the avatar pic. great colors

[1fish@atime]

well I've tried to post two times to this but it hasn't posted. So sorry if I ruffled some feathers. I do respect what we have, and never said dumping anything was good for a body of water.
Also very good post adkbrookie. Did make some sense to me about baitfish. Still doesn't explain why a large lake like Raquette can sustain so many different kinds of fish including brookies. yet a small pond can't sustain baitfish and brookies.

[adkbrookie]

Well you kind of answered your own question about Raquette, it is a lot larger than the small ponds. Simply put, there is enough space so the brookies can "get away" from all those competitive species. Species diversity is typically a function of the niches available in the ecosystem. The available niches are a function of the gradients present. The larger body of water has a larger possible area for those gradients to exist, and over a wider range.

[Raquettedacker]

1fish, I think you inadvertently started a very good discussion here..  I am learning more and more with each post..  I always thought brookies mainly ate insects and larva... But some of my biggest came in the winter when I was able to gig up some smelt and put them on a tip up..

[1fish@atime]

Sorry, what I meant was comparatively. I understand the bigger the more species it could contain and sustain.
But what the state would have us believe is the brook trout is this incredibly fragile species that can't stand any competition for foodand that water quality is utmost to their survival. I find it hard to believe that the small ponds they are targeting, Clear in Hamilton county, Sargent, clear in Essex cty.(that held one of the best spawning laker populations of any small body of water), were in danger of becoming fishless bodies of water. The spring that they were to kill Clear in Hamilton cty, I personally saw some of the best brook trout caught in the area come from that pond. Yet from Raquette lake, a body of water that the brook trout competes with a multitude of species we see the new record come from. Is the water quality any better? Probably the same. I get upset with always blaming the "bucket biologists". I'm talking ponds that are quite a ways from a road. I'm sure there are some that are devastated by the introduction of invasive species, will never defend those that do this. But the powers that be would have us believe the old timers brought buckets of bait to these ponds and ruined them. I know from fishing the late 60's and early 70's with quite a few of them that they used more, worms, perch bugs, salted minnows than any other bait. Carrying a bucket of minnows to a pond three miles in was just not done very much. Not at all of the ones we fished with. And my father was born in '24 and we never took minnows to a trout pond. I guess bottom line is the ponds I grew up fishing aren't what they were when I was a kid. I'm sure though the state will make sure my kids, kids will have good fishing at these ponds when they are my age.

[mainer in ny]

I grew up fishing for brookies in Maine. For the last 6 years I've lived in NY and while I love it here and believe there are tremendous opportunities to catch trout, the truth is that it simply doesn't compare to Maine.

There are large parts of this state that do not support trout of any kind let alone one as fragile as the Brookie. The competition from warm water, more agressive species is just too great.

This is a serious problem in Maine right now as the bucket bios have been dropping bass and pike into what were once trophy brookie/LLS fisheries.  It doesn't take long for those trophy ponds to be gone forever, simply because someone wanted the fast action of catching bass or pike, or even perch. 

I really think that the penalties for illegal introduction  should be severe enough to scare people away from chancing it. And if I'm being honest here, from what I've seen NY doesn't seem to put a priority on preserving it's natural resources, specifically fish and wildlife.