The State Record Brown Bullhead

 I called Noah with a fish flopping at my feet next to an old fiberglass spinning rod. It was a rather exceptional one, and also one I wasn't terribly concerned about being out of the water for a little bit. "Dude I just caught a huge brown bullhead. You've gotta see this thing. I'm sending a photo, give it a sec."

"Oh my GOD!"

"Yeah, this thing is f****** monstrous."

And it was. I didn't foresee this, exactly.  The spot was one that had given up some small bullheads on previous attempts the year prior, and a few channel catfish the previous visit. But it was a slow pick spot and had been underwhelming on the whole, never producing more than four fish in a session, and never anything large enough to be of note. But I wasn't convinced, there's always something to figure out. When my rod had bent over about ten minutes prior it didn't seem like anything notable. There was about nine minutes of undoing a gnarly tangle, as the fish had picked up an tracked to the side going right into my other line one rod had ten pound mono, the other had fifteen pound braid, so it was a bit gnarly. Then there was sixty seconds of cranking in the fish which had gone right to the bank and came back right along it. It felt like un insubstantial channel catfish so I was neither hard pressed to land it nor all that excited about it. Then I saw it, and my first thought was that it was a decently sized white catfish. Then it rolled and I saw yellow....

"You uh, might have a state record there" said Noah. "Yeahhhhh this is pretty outrageously big, I'm going to check..." I said. "Yeah, the standing record in under five pounds. I think this fish could be six, it's so f****** heavy."

In a few moments I was calling another angling friend at 9:45 at night... this time John Kelly. "Hey, do you have your certified scale handy? I've got a huge bullhead that I think may be a state record and I want to be sure before I keep it." Groggily, John replied "Yeah, I've got it, where are you?" I explained. "Good, I'll be there in twenty minutes" John replied. Then I was calling Garth. "Dude, I've got a huge bullhead. I think she might be a state record, and I really want to keep her alive". Garth is an aquarist, and I figured he'd be able to help me avoid killing this bullhead for the record. Connecticut has two categories, harvest, for which the fish is retained and weighed on a certified scale. Then the specimen may need to be checked out by a biologist to confirm the species identification. The other category, catch and release, is length specific. I wanted that weight record and was sure this fish would crack it, but I also wanted to try to keep her alive. Because this was a bullhead, which are some of the more durable fish there are, this couldn't be too difficult. They're said to be able to survive dissolved oxygen content as low as .1 part per million. Oxygen isn't the only concern though, and that's why I called Garth. After those two calls I had two friends on their way with things I needed to confirm the record. In no time John was there with the scale, and sure enough she went 5.5 pounds. It was settled, I was holding onto her for a little while. Garth would be a little while, and I soaked bait with John while I waited. Another much smaller brown bullhead came to hand, a tiny white cat, then an average channel catfish. It was getting cold, and I made a few water changes in my small bait bucket to keep the fish lively. She was still full of piss and vinegar then. Any time I grabbed her by the mouth she bit the ever loving crap out of me. Bullheads are hard biters, but I was fine with letting her get back at me a little. 

Garth arrived just as John left, and we quickly transported the bullhead into a cooler. Her fins were red and she was clearly stressed, but not enough so that I was worried. We lingered a while and Garth fished with me, but the bite was poor by that point. So I drove home the flattest way I could, trying not to slosh my new friend in the back around too much. 

The next morning, I got up and took a look. She was swimming around in the cooler, still washed out but fins looking a little better. I rang up Noah again and asked him if he'd like to come up and see her and help me haul the fish to get it weighed. While waiting for him I drove down the road to do a water change to make sure she stayed lively. I then called the closest shop to see if they had a certified scale, and when they didn't double checked the next closest. We rolled into Fishin' Factory III not long later with a cooler. Andrew said he'd had people come in with bullheads before that never made the grade. This one though, she did. And in good time too, Noah fired off a photo of the scale at 5.45 pounds and not soon later she pooped and lost .05. So I had everything I needed to fill the application, and just after getting home I did so. At that point, I felt I needed to name the fish and decided to call her Angela. Angela would be with me for a bit yet, I suspected. As I hit send on the application I recalled a slight debacle a few years prior where a misidentified channel cat was briefly listed as the record. It had been eaten and no biologist got a chance to examine the specimen. Since this beast was a bit out of the ordinary not only in size but subsequently in many identifiable traits, I figured it would need close inspection. sure enough, it wasn't long before I got an email from Mike Bucheane at DEEP asking for more photos of the animal. I took as many clear photos of the fish showing important color and meristic parts: the jaw, the barbels, the anal fin, and the tail. As these photos circulated between the folks at DEEP I got word from Garth that they were confident that it was a brown bullhead, but doing everything possible to be sure. In the meantime I kept Angela's water clean, changing it every few hours while I was awake. Late in the day I got another update from Mike to expect to hear from Andrew Bade, that he would inspect the fish in person. I didn't hear from Andrew until the next morning, but Angela was still swimming strongly at that point and had actually regained her pigmentation. "We didn't realize you were keeping the fish alive!" Andrew told me over the phone. I told him that the monster bullhead was just fine and we made plans to meet where I'd caught her. A couple hours later we were both marveling over the fish as fish nerds do. Andrew Bade is working on smallmouth bass in Connecticut and does a good job of breaking the of-held stereotype anglers have of biologists not actually being all that fishy. He confirmed that my big fish was indeed a brown bullhead, and finally she got to go back where she'd come from. 

Photo Courtesy Andrew Bade

There are perhaps more glamourous records to be held, but I'm glad the first state record I actually secured was a native species. And a commandingly large one at that, not just beating the previous record by an ounce or two. I've got my sights set on other fish though, and this one likely won't be the last. 

Guiding Updates: Rolling Into June

 May has been a pleasant little mixed bag month for me. I was away for a good third of doing non-fish things but catching fish anyway (see my last post for that tidbit). I'll probably write a little more about that trip soon, and possibly some on Patreon. But I guided a good number of trips this mo th while I was around and things were productive on the whole. The floodplain continued to spit out carp, in fact the water finally peaked while I was away and is up at a pretty good level even now if anyone wants to squeeze in one last go at my best selling type of trip. This year wasn't as good for numbers, on the whole, but was pretty darned good for size....

Dave Nguyen wins best of the season- unless something dramatic happens in the next two weeks -with two stud commons including the long 20 pounder above, and a gorgeous mirror as well!

We've been light on the morphs this season, with only one fantail/longfin, one mirror, and no ghosts. Though a bit of everything has been seen, it does seem to take a plethora of six plus fish days to get a good number of those odd ones. Other than the carp, of course, I've been floating the marginal rivers as often as I can. This has been a wonderful extended, wet, cool spring to hold the trout fishing out. This could break at any time and we could pop into high water temperatures at any time, so it's very much a "get while the gettin' is good" proposition. Eric's brother got him a trip for his birthday and he made good of a decent nymph bite and got a good smallmouth eat on the streamer as well! Those double digit days seeing hardly a soul out on some of Eastern Connecticut's best rivers is why I needed a raft and it's been great getting to work many of my old stomping grounds in a new way. 

Going into June, thing look very promising! Here's my guiding agenda for the month: 

Carp are far from over, as always that's still very much on the agenda. June is more of a classic mud flats fishing scenario, and the river can't stay high forever. It'll also eventually transition to more of a morning bite. It already had, but this cooler weather had them going all day again for a bit there. 

Bowfin are the next headliner, one of my favorites and a really engaging sight fishing target. I struggle to sell trips for them for whatever reason, but it certainly isn't the quality of the species of the fishing... people just haven't caught on yet. Don't be late to that party, they're awesome!

Because it looks like the water will stay pretty decent for a while, I'll keep doing trout trips going into June. Dry flies will be the main focus with some streamer fishing when the water levels permit. I'll also do some night time floats on a couple of the big eastern river as well if anyone is interested in that! 

Lastly as far as freshwater goes, pike... the cooler weather and rain has also extended the post spawn pike fishing, so that is yet another good option. 

On the salt, it's already sight fishing time. I've got a handful of dates on the calendar for sight fishing trips already on prime tides, and if sigh fishing for striped bass is something you'd like to learn I recommend  reaching out soon. Last year was pretty darned good when conditions were amicable, and it made up for what would end up being a very poor fall run. I'll take the flats fishing over blitzing schoolies any day, anyway. Of course I'll do multispecies salt trips as well, though that hasn't kicked off just yet, including scup, fluke, weakfish, black seabass, and whatever else wants to play, both of fly and light or ultralight spinning gear. That's been a crowd pleaser the last few years, and as far as fly and light tackle for that game goes I'll confidently toot my own horn and say no other local guides do it as much or as well as I do.

Last but not least, I'm planning on organizing a couple water chestnut pulls locally on the Connecticut River backwaters. I wrote about water caltrop here, and after seeing a few patches pop up in new places over the last two seasons, where they should be manageable with some low-impact hand pulling, I hope to keep the places that pay my bills free of this nasty aquatic invasive species. If you have a small personal watercraft like a canoe, raft, or kayaks and would like to help, reach out to via email at brwntroutangler@gmail.com and I'll keep you updated on when I'm planning of doing pulls. 

Happy almost summer everyone, thanks to all my clients and readers, and stay healthy and safe! 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Here Be Carp

From the hotel room I could hear two young anglers chatting with one of the hotel guests on the back deck. These kids were local, not guests at the hotel, but somehow in suburban Michigan I'd stepped into a prior time and these kids were biking in and fishing without getting kicked out. That doesn't happen much in Connecticut anymore, and not just because I'm not a kid anymore (debatably, I'm still plenty immature), but I'd doubt my best friend Dalton and I could have biked to such a place when we were 14 or 15 years old and not gotten the boot if such a thing existed in Connecticut. He and I did trespass a lot, often cautiously, and we still got kicked out sometimes. There was something refreshing about these kids being at least tacitly permitted on the premises of a lakeside hotel. It felt like a whisper of a former time. There was also something refreshing about these kids targeting carp. That's what they were talking about, as I listened through the all-too-sound-permeable wall. And the adult guest was poo-pooing it. "Carp? why not fish for something that actually pulls? Those are just big soggy lumps". I snorted, probably loudly enough for them to hear me. Tell me you've never carp fished without telling me you've never carp fished. They can be accused of more than a few negative characteristics, but not pulling isn't one. Of course I've had a few dullards on the end of my line, but on the whole... they pull and they pull well. And since I hadn't seen these carp yet nor anticipated their presence in the crystal clear, 90 foot deep private lake, I glanced at my prototype Atlas 4wt in the corner and smirked. It was going to get hurt, now that I had this piece of information. 

The carp's introduction to North America is one spans back a couple centuries. Though they are still broadly looked down upon today, as evidenced by that other hotel guest, they weren't always. In fact they're so ubiquitous today because they held thousands of years of history as food, sport, and ornament in Europe in Asia. Another hotel guest, Dan, told me about the large koi found in some high mountain lakes in his native California and how they'd been brought there by Chinese railroad workers during the gold rush. That's just a piece of the puzzle though, as both amur carp (koi), and more often common carp, were being brought into the US and cultivated by enterprising individuals in hopes of providing food for the masses. Inevitably, they got around. Nary a state in this union lacks common carp, withstanding Florida which, contrary to the belief of many that carp like it hot, is too warm for too much of the year to have robust and sustaining populations. And evidently these wild carp lacked the flavor and appeal that cultivated ones had, and coupled with the rapidly deteriorating quality of many water bodies across the country due to industrialization, carp fell out of favor. Not only did they fall out of favor, but their ability to survive what we wrought on native species resulted in a general disdain and even blame, and that eventually grew into a distaste and disdain to even native species that resemble the carp. The American reaction to the invasive nature of common carp was so severe it caused many to look down on fish like buffalo and redhorse that share commonalities. Though the cult of carp that I've profited from has begun to turn the tide a little on the dislike of the species, the general displeasure is still there. I've meet plenty that cringe or wince when I say I guide for carp, though many of those are casual anglers or not anglers at all. I discourage moving carp around and in some cases even encourage their removal, they don't belong here and aren't ecologically beneficial... but that certainly doesn't dismiss their value as angling sport, and I feel increasingly less bad about stabbing non-natives in the face for fun and more bad about bothering the more incumbered natives. 

In many of the places I fish in Connecticut, the water is shallow and turbid, indeed in part because of the carp. That contrasted in many ways from this lake, which was clear as can be. The bottom was sand and gravel though, which doesn't lend to turbidity. The lake was a  kettle lake that had been enlarged by a small dam. Apparently it exceeded 90 feet in depth. That  would be astounding for a lake of similar size in Connecticut, especially given the flat landscape. This was a classic kettle lake, which we do have in Connecticut though none that I know of are quite like this. These a relic of the glaciers, where large chunks of ice remained as the glacier retreated. Imbedded in deep sediment, these pieces took a long time to melt and left large depressions when they finally did. They're one of the more obvious evidences of the glacial history on this landscape, though perhaps less dramatic than remnants I'd see after leaving Michigan. On Kelley's Island in Lake Erie, the glaciers left incredible gouges in Devonian limestone. 

The water around Kelley's Island was just as clear as that little kettle lake, but there were carp out there too, I'm told. And that is no surprise. Before gawking at the glacial grooves I was watching small carp thrash the shallows of marshes in Erie County, with terns wheeling overhead making it sound like home on long Island sound, limestone causeways and canals making it look like Florida, and the carp.... I don't know what the carp made it feel like, other than that I was being followed by them. I couldn't stay away if I tried. The frothed the shallows of the marshland to a soupy brown mess. That's the turbidity I'm used to. But back in Michigan, with a little bit of waiting, I was watching fish feed in seven feet of water thirty feet away. 

The clarity wasn't all that differed from home. These carp, I'd learn, weren't fans of seeing the fly on the fall. I almost need to see it drop through the murk, but these ones would spook from it. After a few blown opportunities that resulted in fish taking of at speed as thy spotted a sinking yellow sucker spawn fly, I opted to fish an almost bait-like tactic. A cast was made a cast when fish were still 15 or more feet away. Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. 

Though I generally chose to fish a fly, I think this spot-and stalk strategy with bait or artificial is equally exhilarating. When you can see the carp and watch her movements, drawing nearer or retreating from your hook, suspense builds. Especially when she is a really big one. I watch, my heart beating more and more loudly as she works ever closer to my little yellow fly. The water is so clear that I can see her eyes and barbels working as she forages, seeking out anything that might be calorically beneficial- something my fly certainly isn't, but I could hope it would catch her eye. I dare not move a muscle as she got within six inches of the fly. She dipped and tucked into a little patch of detritus next to a rock, mouth working hard and pectoral fins waving to push her into the good stuff. That waving action swirled the water near my fly and it's lightness allowed it to tumble a couple of inches in a little whirlpool. Her left eye turned down and I could have sworn she looked right at the fly. And she probably did, because she left what she'd been digging at and with flared lips pressed right down on the fly. I waited for her mouth to close and lifted the four weight only lightly. The heavy creature responded with violence and speed, running no less tan 140 yards down the lake (Soggy lump my butt). It was then my task for the next ten minutes to subdue a creature well over 20 pounds on a rod made to catch small trout, a job it was evidentially up for despite that intent. 

Though that trip was in part a fishing break for me- believe it or not I do want to do other things more than angling -it is impossible to say no when a freshwater fish that size wanders in front of me. Yet many people do still scoff and say no, and that I'll just never understand.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

A Single Sailboat

 I take significant strides to avoid the hendrickson crowds. It's a hatch I enjoy fishing, they're such a classic ephemera that can bring up some larger wild trout under the right conditions, but that means everyone and their mother is just as keen to fish them on the major rivers. And unfortunately the hatch just doesn't happen everywhere, even in places where it used to. The Housatonic doesn't seem to have a Hendrickson hatch to speak of anymore. Nobody quite knows why, and it may be a site by site problem, but aquatic insects are, on the whole, not doing so hot. In some places, nutrient deficiency means less bugs- ironically, septic tank leaks and farm runoff with manure in it isn't always the worst thing. In others, perhaps the runoff is the issue. Streams are more "flashy" now as areas develop with paved, impervious surfaces, so flows are more sporadic and less stable. And there's that pesky road salt. So wandering to places questionable has become the mantra, wondering if there will be bugs at all. Find a rock or log next to a pool or run, sit, ponder, don't make a cast unless a trout rises. And so I found myself standing next in a pool somewhere in Massachusetts after watching sleepily for a while. There'd been some duns flying by. I caught one, looked at it for a while and took some pictures. 

Eventually, looking into the reflective glare toward the top of the pool, on of the little sailboats appeared alone. In twirled through little eddies and rode down a seem, standing out like a sore thumb. Hapless little creatures they are in this state, its no wonder trout eat them with such abandon sometimes. Though this bug was by itself, I wondered if enough fish were looking upward to intercept it or if, by emerging in such sparsity the mayflies today were making it to the air freely without exception. It drew nearer, still drifting along. This is anthropomorphizing to an egregious degree, but that little bug looked happy to me. She bobbed along with her wings perked up skyward in the bright sunlight, seemingly carefree and safe as could be. My gaze followed it as it meandered down the seem. It then fluttered once, fluttered again, and in one fateful instant before it overcame the surface tension and took to the air, a foot long trout rose and she disappeared in a small splash. "Aww..." I uttered audibly though I was alone. That's when I stood, and decided that I'd seek vengeance for that little bug. The pool was wide and deep but I made it to a comfortable rock  above and across from where the trout had taken the bug and within reach of  a forty foot cast. It was a slow effort, as I didn't want to send ripples over the only fish I'd so far seen rise in a few trips of this sort. Once there, careful triangulations were performed to determine where that trout had been as the fly was dressed. Then I let fly a cast. I'd decided that this revenge would be swift but fair, it wouldn't take more than one cast. My fly and leader landed with slack to spare, and as the fly settled into that same seem the mayfly had taken her final ride down it looked much like that singular little sailboat had. And evidently I was not the only one that thought so as the trout came to it just as willingly as it had the natural. The battle was pretty one sided, admittedly. Modern fly tackle more than capable of subduing twelve inches of squirming brown trout. At hand, I scolded the trout, removed my fly, then sent it off with a smile. That had been enough for me, and I packed it in for the day. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

The Nighthawk's Boom

 New Jersey's pine barrens have an ethereal quality as the sun sets. In some areas there is extraordinary uniformity- nearly perfectly flat ground and vegetation all growing to the same height -that adds to this characteristic. As the light gets low, some of the barrens critters begin to awaken. A forlorn whippoorwill call whistles through the trees and accompanies a golden glow. There's almost unsettling stillness, and it becomes easier to understand why this area has garnered enough "spook" to spawn ghost stories aplenty and it's own legendary cryptid, the Jersey Devil, and plentiful rumors of these lands being a mafia body dumping ground. Perhaps these are more than rumors, with quite a few bodies being found over the years. It isn't easy to dismiss. If something needs hidden this would be a good place to do it. The actual pine barrens, in fact, look way more ethereal a creepy than the woods in The Sopranos episode of the same name. That episode was filmed in hilly, mixed forest in Harriman State Park... and at least for me, it shreds the illusion a bit. The real barrens are such a distinct environment that it's hard to fake it.

Spooky though it may be, the pine barrens cemented themselves quickly as one of my favorite places two years ago when I first visited for a few days of looking for amphibians and reptiles. I heard my first pine barrens tree frogs on that trip, though I wouldn't lay eyes on one until a year later. That species had a special place in my memory bank. When I was only little, my mother got me a set of wildlife call cards and a reader- such a 2000's thing -The reader was just a simple device that you slipped the card into and had a speaker. You'd push a button and it would play the corresponding animal call. One card, the only one I really cared about, was frog and toad calls. And perhaps the most annoying one on their was the pine barrens tree frog. They're a very distinct, quite loud caller. I'd long wanted to see one. 

One the second trip that first year, in that waning light, I was trudging through habitat that was much too dry as the sun set just hoping beyond reason that one of those frogs might start calling. In the distance, I caught a brief, punctual, call that I thought was a green frog. Looking on the map there was no sign of water in that direction, but I started to wander in that direction. If there was a pool that had a green frog calling, maybe there was a chance there might be tree frogs around it. Trudging through the knee high  ferns and other low brush I'm woefully ignorant on identifying, there was no sign of a pool. Then came another call, this time from a different direction. More futile searching ensued. Another call. At t his point, my field partner and I were right next to each other. I turned to him; "Are green frogs just calling from out in the dry woods?".

He just shrugged. 

The sound kept happening, and I recalled hearing similar as darkness fell om the previous trip while sitting next to a breeding pool waiting for frogs to call. At the time I thought it was cars hitting rumble strips on the highway. This seemed far too distant, now. Was it the same sound? Could it really travel that far? 

Then it happened right over our heads. A bird, diminutive in size with a distinct profile, performed a rapid acceleration right over the tree tops, dipping low to them as it did so, and made a tremendous booming sound. This was a common nighthawk, specifically a male. The sound was made by the air rushing through his primary feathers. He does this during the mating time, and may have been doing so over us to try to get us to leave. He does it to ladies too but with the opposite goal in mind. Though abundant and widespread (albeit diminishingly so as many species are), I'd never knowingly been privy to this show. What a wonderful one it was! Until we gave up our dreams of finding what we have concluded is North America's quintessential tree frog that night, I was kept in good spirits by the revelation of what was making the boom. The nighthawks swooped overhead and plummeted to the ground making that wonderful sound and I chuckled at how absurdly long it had taken to figure out what it was. Wildlife is fabulous and does fabulous things, and it never fails to enchant if you maintain a sense of wonder.

Common nighthawks are cryptic while on the ground, with patterns not unlike grouse or woodcock which rely on the same crypsis to go unnoticed. They don't nest either, and their chicks rely on the same camouflage. Their eyes are like black marbles and it always looks like they're squinting at you. There's an uncannily adorable look to them. Nighthawks are bug eaters, and they perform acrobatic shows in the evening as they take to the sky to chase down prey. The species has been around a while, with fossils dating back an estimated 400,000 years. Long may these weird little birds boom over the pines of southern New Jersey, and long may their brief displays add to the mystique of a desolate landscape where rumors of a hooved, winged devil persist. The booms dwindled with the daylight, and a  setting sun was framed perfectly in the symmetry of a man made scar on the landscape. I wondered what other surprises the night bring. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

April Guiding & Updates

 Being a fishing guide in New England comes with it's fair share of wild cards. This is one of the more chilly, prolonged early springs we've had in a while, and it has made things interesting. Not bad, necessarily, but different. Bites I though were temperature dependent started before the water was "warm enough" (I wrote about this on Patreon), and I've had to stay really on top of things to stay in the game. Happy to say, though, even though a couple clients were stuck on what I might otherwise have considered poor condition days, we've consistently made the best of it. Here are some highlights: 

Trevor got invited along with his friend Jack and got a rather excessive first fish on the fly rod, this heavy and very spastic common on a warm but rainy morning. 

Brian Saunders took the first big-bug bass of the spring on a white Heifer Groomer. This fish measured the magical 20 inches. 

Brian Cowden takes the prize for prettiest carp so far this season with this heavy male, and taken on a day when it never got above 43 degrees and the carp forced us to search some of the thickest habitat.

So no complaints here, really. Every day has had it's highlights and a few have been extremely good. On my off days I've been taking every chance to use the NRS I've been borrowing from Drew Price, a boat I may very well end up owning. It extended my salmon season in the higher flows on the Shetucket and I'm now putting it down every trout stream I can when the flows bump. 

 

My prognosis for the rest of April is a bunch more carp and bass, because that's pretty much what I'm booked for. Unless you're interested in a night trip, I'm pretty much plum full till May. Next month I do have some open dates. The 2nd, 4th, and 5th currently are free. I have a bit of uncertainty mid-month as I may end up away for close to ten days, and some clients have already taken their dates, but from the 26th to the 31st I'm certainly open as well. Once I'm certain of that mid-month period though I'll update you all. During that time frame is an anything and everything smorgasbord. Want trout? We can do that. Want carp? Obviously. Big smallmouth? Heck yeah. Pike, suckers, largemouth, weakfish, stripers... just ask. May is a great month, one of the best. It will also be chaotic, so grab dates while I still have a fair amount. 

Over on Patreon, I'll be focused on my "Rowan Learns Wet Flies" series, as well as some more weather analogs and a few Small Stream Streamer Fishing Masterclass videos. I may start a weekly fishing-weather forecast there, if that would be of interest to the folks that support me over there. If you aren't subscribed, please do! I try to get out at least 4 different posts a week, and they're more how-to focused and informative though I post some short stories there as well. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

A Few Screws Loose

 The idea that trout don't live in ugly places is bull. Well, I guess we can find beauty in a lot of places, but the crusty railroad bridge abutment I sat on watching water slide by beneath, tucked within a couple hundred yards between roads lined with industry and shabby houses isn't most people's view of pretty. Nor mine, really. But there is an aesthetic of sorts to decay. When my neurodivergence wandered down the path of model railroading, I took joy in rust and grime and making things look old. I used chalk dust, sometimes dry sometimes not, to make streaks on iron oar cars. I tried to get walls and stonework to look worn, because that was natural. Paint chips, railroad ties crack, and metal rusts. At ten years old I was plenty conscious of that. I looked up to model makers who created urban landscapes that looked right more so than I did those who focused on dramatic natural landscapes. Perhaps that carried over with time, because though I have little interest in building a model railroad through a crumbling urban ecosystem of my own creation, there's still draw to fish a trout stream through the real thing. 

Not long ago I heard a switch-up of the old trout and beautiful places quote, this one was "trout don't live in ugly places, but they're stocked in them". This doesn't hold up either, because the very reason I sat on that bridge abutment was because this urban, grungy stream held trout that were born there. Some quite nice ones in fact. On a different day not far from where I sat I stood on the bank while my friend Grant blew a shot at a very good wild trout indeed, one we both saw enough of to make us wince when that line went slack. Of course, these were brown trout, and their ancestors had indeed been stocked. But they are wild trout none-the-less, and just one example of many in such a setting. Trout hunting has taken me past homeless encampments, under factories, and around more than a few discarded needles. In southern New England it would even seem that some of the prettier, wilder streams have all but lost their ability to produce good wild fish while some urban streams continue to kick out quality fish. It's a tenuous existence, of course. I've watched two of my favorite urban wild trout streams collapse over the last five years. These fish are riding a razor's edge. 

Just a few feet below me was clear water and rock, but also a heaping pile of nails, screws, and other discarded metal. I see a lot of things dumped from urban bridges and this was no surprise. It was quite a volume though. It would be interesting to know what becomes of this and other human metallic waste. In some places our species is creating artificial mineral deposits, some exceptionally concentrated. The current river courses of many Great Lakes tributaries could probably be mined for lead in the distant future. And this pile of rusting nails, if it doesn't just rot away first, could conceivably become some sort of iron deposit in a conglomerate rock layer of this river's substrate. 

Long before that ever happens, though, I hoped to catch some sort of stream born non-native salmonid. Ideally a robust one with orange on its belly and sharp black spots on it's flanks. A beautiful in wild thing that shouldn't be there, in a landscape of our own creation, a river marred unrecognizable from it's former glory. Sometimes, we don't even know what we had after it's gone. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

My Search For a Connecticut Moose (Pt. 2)

Opening up a game camera, turning it on, and hitting replay comes with quite a feeling of anticipation, especially when the goal it to capture a rare animal and you know one had walked through the area a time or two just before you places the camera. But that anticipation is frequently followed by minor disappointment- or at least it is for me, since I have no idea what I'm doing. My first camera pull revealed only the most elusive of animals... a half dozen shots of grey squirrels. Award winning, without a doubt. 

He's there, in the bottom left. Just peaking, seemingly aware of the camera. I won't lie it took a bit for me to figure out what had triggered the camera. And I should really re-set the date and time, jeez.... 

After a few visits to the site without anything of interest on camera and no fresh sign, I started to branch out. The initial forays were just to the surrounding areas. The two old beaver meadows I'd placed the trail cameras near weren't the only good looking habitat in the surrounding area. Just downstream was a much large, still active beaver meadow and pond. That was the first obvious place too look. Perhaps the moose hadn't strayed far but had just hopped down in elevation a tiny bit to an even more sheltered area. Emily and I did a full lap of that wetland one day, and though there was deer, coyote, and bobcat sign there were no moose tracks. On the next visit, my mother and I hiked not down watershed but up, to another small beaver meadow and a clear cut. Again, no moose sign.

Answers to how far an individual moose will range very. The state of New York indicates a broad range of five to fifty square miles. Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife says "With its great size and forage demands, the home range of the average moose in any given season is approximately three to six square miles, although they habitually wander much further." The website All About Moose sites data from Alberta suggesting that bulls have a range of 55 miles in the winter and 22 in the summer. Considering all of Connecticut is 5,543 square miles, that means I'm looking at a potential 1/100 chunk of the state for my bull (I'd found both cow and bull tracks). That's not huge but it isn't insignificant either. The question then became, should I break the habitat up into pieces I think look more suitable, or take a more random approach? One method that crossed my mind was walking and driving the easier routes and trying to find tracks where an individual had crossed the road. Though there isn't a rod grid per-se in Connecticut, there are enough roads to create a multitude of closed loops. So by driving or hiking those loops, I could at least determine if a moose had crossed into or out of them, possibly pinning one down to a confined area that it hadn't yet left. This wasn't a highly appealing strategy to me, but perhaps something I could use down the road if I found tracks that were a few days old. 

The activity lull convinced me to give the area a little rest. I pulled my cameras and it was a couple weeks before I returned. Sometimes absence is important. I try to be discrete and unimpactful, but there's no such thing as being entirely so. I know I leave smells and signs when I'm out there, and animals recognize these. So I let the woods rest, let the moose do their thing if they were still anywhere nearby. 

When I returned, it was past the first day of meteorological spring, and the weather had definitely made a turn. There was still snow on the ground, a touch more than last I'd been in fact, but it was all hard and crusted over now. It was also covered with all sorts of branches and hemlock needles from a number of very windy days. Emily and I made our way to the area where sign had been turning up most consistently before, sometimes able to stay on top of the hard snow, sometimes post-holing more than we'd like. It was a loud form of travel, and I had no illusions of sneaking up on a moose this time. I just hoped we might find tracks again. Deer sign was plenty at first, but no moose. Whitetail deer are such a ubiquitous part of the northeast woodlands today. In fact, far more so than was historically the case. When the northeast was colonized, there where whitetail deer here, but apparently fewer than today. Colonists fairly rapidly hunted these deer to near or full extirpation in many places. ¹In Burrilville: As It Was, and As It Is, published in 1856, Horace A. Keach writes "To a citizen of this town, it will not seem improbable when we suggest that the last deer of Rhode Island was shot on the margin of Wallum Lake." It was likely that the reforestation of the New England and some reintroduction efforts that allowed whitetail deer to return, and likely to levels well beyond their former numbers. Deer don't do poorly in a lightly developed landscape. They tolerate suburbia, and they especially like farms. In the midwest, where corn crop makes up tens of thousands of square miles, deer flourish. In 2020 in Pennsylvania, hunters harvested 435,180 deer according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. In tiny and developed Connecticut, there are still well over 100,000 deer. See, deer also love not being predated, and despite the complaints hunters make about coyotes and bear, we got rid of the two effective deer predators keeping New England's population in check: wolves and mountain lions. Coyote are not great deer predators, though they can take some in deep snow when the deer are post-holing and they are able to run along on top. But neither they, nor we, do that good a job of managing deer herds, to the degree that whitetail deer can be ecologically detrimental given their wide and often dense distribution. They have outsized impacts on the plants they favor to feed on, and when too numerous can clean out undergrowth in what would otherwise be more diverse and healthy forest. 

There were deer tracks everywhere in this wood, including some big ones. But eventually, finally, there it was again: that unmistakably bigger trackway of a moose. 

I decided we should follow these tracks, even though they weren't that fresh. We stood to learn a lot if we could follow this animal's movements. Like a man on a mission, step after step I followed that moose. At one point I almost lost the trackway when it went into a patch of ground the snow had thawed from. There was what I though to be a different set of prints along it, and after a bit I determined that the moose had simply bedded down in that clear patch and left it right about where it entered. The animal made a few decisions that to my mind made little sense, including back tracking on two occasions, once right on top of it's own tracks, another just a few yards off. It moved eastward but zigzagged. Mostly it traveled at the same steady pace, but at times it slowed and its path meandered more. It may have covered the ground I followed it over in much less time than it took Emily and I to- about three miles, I'd estimate. Eventually, the trackway led us to one of the biggest wetlands in the area, and that area was covered in moose tracks. I'd say we saw trackways from at least five different individuals. This was mighty encouraging. I picked a spot to put up a camera again where two individuals passed through in a logical choke point, or funnel-like form to the landscape that I hoped would force a moose in front of my camera. Following the trackways had shaken my confidence a little, though. I was less than sure another moose would pass through this spot within a few weeks. They were a little more careless and erratic in their travelling than I'd expected them to be. Of course, I don't know what made the individual we followed back track, or why it followed certain topographic contours, or why it seemed to slow when it did. If I did know that, this would all make perfectly good sense to me I'm sure. But I'm no moose. My foolish human brain wasn't evolved nor trained by life around making the same decisions that a moose has to, so I was anthropomorphizing some I'm sure. We can't help that, we think "what would I do if I was a moose", when what we should be thinking is simply "what does a moose do". In complete ignorance of what a moose does at any given time, I have to think it's path was meandering and illogical. In reality, that moose's path made complete sense... to the moose. It is under no obligation to make sense to me. 

After placing the camera, we made our own tracks out. It's very probable that a moose would look at these and think they made no sense at all. I've been followed by animals before, usually coyotes. In my mid teens I spent a lot of time wandering the woods in deep snow, and on many occasions I'd find coyote prints following my own as I back tracked not infrequently. This never worried me at all, though there are rare instances of coyotes killing. Most coyote-human interactions are extremely benign. Often, claims of coyote "attacks" wouldn't be best characterized as such, and instances of coyotes biting people as the aggressor aren't very common, though they're becoming more frequent with time.² I've never once felt threatened by coyotes. But they do follow my tracks sometimes. Why? They probably aren't hunting me, I know that. A lot of the time, I got the impression they were using my path as easier passage. The snow was light and powdery many of these occasions, such that travel would be slow going even for a light canid. My path, plowed deep as I dragged through the snow pushing stubbornly onward, must look quite inviting to any traveling animal. Perhaps it was curiosity though; I wasn't likely to spot tracks over top of mine in these woods were there not snow. Maybe I'm being followed more often than I think.

¹ I found this source through Christian McBurney's article "When Deer Became Extinct in Rhode Island" on smallstatebighistory.com, a great site with a lot of Rhode Island historical articles. The book itself is the second very old piece of locally specific literature I've now read a chunk of for the sake of one of these sorts of blog posts. It can be purchased or is available archived online and is interesting in its own right. 

² Coyote Attacks on Humans in the United States and Canada, L. A. White and S. D. Gehrt, 2009.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Solitudinous

 There's no such word, but these are the sorts of things that come to mind when you are by your lonesome, laying on the forest floor focusing on breathing and stretching to relive tension in your back. I find I really feel do fatigue now, that close to two decades of  tromping around in the woods, rivers, and urban landscape with a variety of shoulder-mounted carrying cases- be the slings or back packs -loaded up with cameras, fishing tackle, and necessities did eventually start to do damage. So I can't just ignore it anymore. I have to pick and chose what I carry and how I carry it, and I need to rest and stretch. And so that's what I was doing, twisted into an odd pose on the forest floor, trying to get my diaphragm to do what I'm told it should do instead of what years of bad posture have taught it to do; and trying to stretch the muscles in my shoulder so I wouldn't keep wanting to kill myself so much. It would be a rather odd sight were anyone to come upon me, but such an encounter would be doubtful. This was BFE, if ever such a place existed. I'd just caught the first fish of the day. She was a lovely little brook trout no more than four and a half inches in length and had come up for a dark colored deer-hair caddis. I was fishing the way I wanted to this day: with a dry fly. This was to spite fairly cool water temperatures. I'm sure that I could have tempted a few more and perhaps larger fish with a nymph of some sort, but there was no need. Some bugs were active, including the cursory winter stones which occasionally skittered across the pools. I only saw one meet its demise in the rise form of a fish, though. A few hundred yards in and the plop of the little char as I dropped it from by barbless hook back into the stream told me I could take a rest. 

So there I lay in the dappled light on the forest floor, stretching and thinking about everything and nothing. It was a very bright, bluebird day. A cold front had passed through overnight, draped from a low pressure center that tracked through Canada. In front of it had been seasonably warm air in the mid to high fifties, as well as some rain and clouds. Though the air behind the front wasn't cold necessarily it was cold-er. And wind came with it. It whipped the tree tops about a bit and I occasionally heard a branch come down. Not big ones, really, but enough to make me wonder if one might clock me in the head at some point. The sun and the deep blue sky felt a bit contrary to the wind, but the two do often come in tandem. Those dry, clear, bright post-frontal day are wind makers. The blue was brilliant though, and the radiant heat from our burning gas ball was doing wonders for my hands that had gotten a little chilled coming in contact with the water. 

When I did finally stand back up I felt a fair bit better, but everything was bluer than it ought to be. The bright sky had left a lasting tint to my vision that lingered a good few minutes. I shouldered my sling pack, this time backwards to try to counteract the lingering soreness in my right shoulder, and told myself to just leave it in the car next time. I'd be far better off pocketing a box of flies and spool of tippet, and did I really need the camera? 

I worked my way down stream, being picky about where I fished. This wasn't the time to try to eek a fish out of every nook and cranny, I just wanted to fish some of the longer runs and pools. I didn't used to fish down very often. It was Alan Petrucci that changed my direction in that regard. Prior to knowing Alan I fished pretty strictly upstream, trying to stay behind and out of sight of the trout. This worked fine, but I learned from Alan that I could put my fly in places while going down that one just couldn't get it to while going up. I still fish up sometimes, but not always. 

I reached a run that that looks perfect, and eased into a position on the bank well above it. I gathered my fly line in hand, pulled back, and let it fly in a short bow and arrow cast. I then fed line to let the fly drift down the run. When it had drifted a distance I felt sufficient, I let it come about and hang in the current. A waking dry fly like this has almost universal appeal to Salvelinus fontinalis. On one of the popular and pressured stretches of river in northern Maine I was told to fish stonefly nymphs, that a mono rig would serve me well, that these brook trout were harder. I listened, but only for a bit. Frustration and my own rationale wouldn't let me fish a mono rig to a big wild brook trout, it felt counter to what should be done. Perhaps luck is a better friend to me than I usually suspect it is, but I had absolutely no difficulty catching robust brookies and landlocked salmon on a skated Hornberg. Don't let these nymphing nerds fool you; brook trout love a skated fly. And even in that barely forty degree water in Central Connecticut, it worked a charm. Up came a brookie, and I whiffed him like I was trying to. I played with that fish for a little while, getting it to come up again and again. Eventually, despite my best efforts, the hook did get stuck in that trout's mouth. 

I took another break, though not a stretching one. My camera had come out of my bag for the fish, may as well use it. I'm not sure why photography has always been a compulsion for me. From a technical standpoint, I remain very much an amateur. But there's been a camera in my hand on and off for almost as long as I have memories... pointed at the sky, at animals, at water. It's just something I do because it feels good and because I like pretty things. 

The stream took me down a little further, where a brushy meadow turned me back around. I rested again there though it hadn't been more than ten minutes since the last one- but only because I spotted a fish and decided to watch it for a little while. Eventually though the deer trails took me back to the car. It had been a satisfying little morning. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, and Evan for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

March/April Updates & Guiding

 Winter still maintains it's grip across Connecticut as I write this, though daily high temperatures this week are creeping up this week. This was a real winter, there's been ice for weeks and weeks. Many of the places I fish are holding onto well over a foot still. That's been extremely refreshing. I've taken a substantial break from open-water fishing. The trout fishing has been poor, both as an apparent result of severe drought mortality last fall and generally poor conditions for fishing through the winter, so it hasn't been hard to forego. Taking advantage of the hardwater has been worthwhile though, and I've been using it to intricately analyze one body of water fairly close to home. The analysis revolves around panfish and bass there, though it holds more than that. Jigging has just been my focus. I'll be on six consecutive days at that location after today, and it has been very engaging and interesting, as well as exceptionally productive in terms of quality panfish. Panfish is something I'd like to guide for more. Though I've got a handful of very dedicated perch clients and have guided for crappie as well, it doesn't make up a lot of my guiding time and I'd like it to for a variety of reasons... highest up being that it's just a lot of fun. And of course there's something to be said for the consistent quality to be had. Panfish over a foot aren't available everywhere, but I've got um. Going into March I plan on making at least two dedicated trophy panfish trips a week, whether I'm guiding for them or not. Last year, I put John Kelly on a fly tackle length record yellow perch, and we're very keen on getting a larger one this spring. But for now, it's still an ice game for at least a bit. 

Garth with a very nice crappie.

Though I do love ice fishing, I'm of course greatly looking forward to this spring. April is already very heavily booked, mostly for carp with a smattering of smallmouth and pike trips in the mix as well. Currently, I've only got the 8th and 29th fully available in April, so if you were looking to book, well, better get on that. March has much more availability, and though a lot of smallmouth and carp fishing will be on the docket the day to day standbys will be trout and salmon throughout the month, both floating and walk & wade, and pike. You can contact me at brwntroutangler@gmail.com to book. On the 22nd I'll be a panelist at the Saltwater Edge "On The Fly" forum. The event starts at 9:00am, at 1376 W. Main Rd. in Middletown, Rhode Island. I'll be talking backwaters and marshes, and highlighting some under targeted species for the fly rod. 

On Patreon, I've built up a very nice backlog of posts and videos so that I'm less likely to get caught a few days behind the way I have sometimes in the past. It also means I can give you all a better idea of what's coming up there in the coming weeks! You've got some guides to weather forecasting for fishing purposes coming up, including a video on fronts and some deep dives on specific frontal setups and the fishing that resulted from them. For the coming weeks the Quick Tip videos will be focused on some easy organization tricks and fly tying material reuse and recycling. There's also a post about dry fly fishing Maryland's Savage River and some ice fishing posts coming up. So stay tuned, and join on Patreon if you want more how-to related content, videos, and stories. I post four times a week there. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor and Eric for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Proposed Bill No. 6248 & The Housatonic Problem

 During the January session, CT's 33rd district representative Brandon Chafee introduced Proposed Bill No. 6248, referenced to the Committee on Environment. It is titled "and act establishing a moratorium on fishing for striped bass in the lower Housatonic River", and reads "That the general statutes be amended to establish a moratorium on fishing for striped bass in the lower Housatonic River until the populations of striped bass recovers". 

I commend Rep. Chafee for making an attempt at bringing this issue into legislation, because the Housatonic and especially it's holdover striped bass are a source of problem and controversy. Poaching is rife there, as a plethora of undersized male stripers make their way up the river in December and spend the winter, filtering back out in March and April. There are some large fish and some females that come in as well, but it is known mostly as a place to go in the winter and do what I often call "beating up toddlers". With a spinning rod and paddle tail on a jighead  you can, many days, catch as many 14-20" striped bass as you like, with people bragging about catching into the triple digits. I did it once too, and it left a sour taste in my mouth as soon as I really thought about it. It's gratuitous and unnecessary, and frankly isn't even all that fun after a while. But the real problem is the sort of poaching these easy targets encourage. Just this December CT EnCon officers and their K9, Luna, sniffed out a haul of 34 undersized bass. 

This isn't an isolated incident, as many anglers that have spent time on the Housatonic will tell you. It's enough of a problem that legislating a solution makes sense, but what of Bill 6248? Would that work? 

I'd argue that no, it will not. One problem is that "striped bass fishing" is not legally defined. This means that all one needs to do to be legal is simply not be in possession of a striped bass. Boats illegally targeting striped bass in the EEZ, where it is illegal to do so, routinely play that game. As long as they don't have a striper on board, they aren't likely to be prosecuted. To make that moratorium on striper fishing work effectively, legal definitions would need to be drawn up.  I'm not against that, necessarily, but it does leave wiggle room and wouldn't be any easier to enforce than the current situation. 

Arguably, a better strategy would be a full blown closure, and ideally a seasonal one. The problem time is typically from December to March, and the problem area is from the Derby Dam to Washington Bridge. A total closure of fishing, regardless of species, in that time frame and stretch of river. This has precedent. When we had trout seasons (and I personally really wish we still did) most rivers were closed for a month and a half or so. Under this case, anybody fishing for the vulnerable holdover bass, and that's really all that's worth fishing for down there that time of year, would be breaking the law, regardless of tackle choice. There isn't a way to sneak around the legal definitions and pretend you're targeting something else. 

Another strategy, and one that would have benefits outside of the Housatonic, would be hiring new EnCon Officers and increasing the fines for environmental infractions. As it stands, the fines and ramifications can often be equated to a slap on the wrist, and judges have tended not to take them seriously. This is a system failure, in my opinion. We should be placing higher value on our resources, and penalizing higher when people abuse them. These actions could take significant strides towards reducing the poaching problem and fishing mortality that occurs on the lower Housatonic. We can push for this, and we should. Find your representative here: Find Your Legislators- CGA, and email or call them to encourage a more enforceable, stronger version of Proposed Bill No. 6248, with emphasis on a closed winter season for fishing the lower Housatonic, and increasing fines for poaching infractions. 

My Search for a Connecticut Moose

 The late Douglas Adams will always be one of my favorite writers. Though it was his fictional work, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels were my first introduction, thanks to my father, I later found an grainy presentation by Adams on YouTube in which he read a portion of a non fiction work of his called Last Chance to See, in which Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine travel to see species on the brink. His description of a critically endangered, flightless parrot from New Zealand called the kakapo bit me hard, I had to read the book. Some time later I came across a documentary series that took place after Adams' passing, in which Carwardine was joined by Stephen Fry to revisit the places and species from the book. Sadly, in the intervening time, one species, the Yangtze River dolphin, had been declared extinct, and another, the Northern white rhino, was right on the precipice. 

I must say, I'm not a mammal guy. I've never been than smitten by megafauna or by mammals of any kind really, not in the way some people are. That isn't to say I dislike or disrespect them in any way, they just don't appeal in the way reptiles, amphibians, and fish do. But something about the episode on the Northern white rhino stirred a curiosity in me. Now, there's little chance I'll get to Africa any time soon, and very sadly in the time since that episode the subspecies has dropped to just too female individuals. The last male, an individual that had been named Sudan, died in 2018. Though scientists are trying hard to find a way to save the genetic lineage of the Northern white rhino, there is little to no hope that I'd ever get to see one in the wild. But it did make me want to see big mammals. Perhaps that's because I have an innate need to be made to feel small by the things I pursue, like I could be crushed, consumed, or trampled. There are a few things that have made me feel really, truly alive and they all revolve around that. An apt description of the feeling I get alludes me, but it is a form of excitement that nothing else has matched. It's sort of an out of control but in control feeling... something big and indomitable has the stage and is actually in control, but if I can stay quick of wit and reactive, I have just enough control to still see the show and not be killed. I get this from seeing large sharks and I get it from being in the path of violent weather. And one time I got it when a moose charged me. 

Northwest Maine is a very good place to be if you like moose, though they've never been the reason for my own visits. But they're out there. One day, solo and ambitious, I ventured from a rented cabin out miles of logging roads in search of beaver ponds with brook trout. The woods in Northern Maine are essentially a farm, patch worked by clear cuts and plots in various stages of re-growth, some re-planted with pine, others left to their own devices. They're interlaced with roads that vary in width, dryness, and ease of travel. One I happened upon had been booby-trapped by beavers. A small culvert underneath was plugged with wood and the tiny stream ventured out onto the road grade, flowing through the deep ruts of whatever truck had been through last. Astonishingly, there were tiny brook trout in those ruts. The water wasn't much more than a foot deep but they were there, rising occasionally to who knows what. So I caught wild brook trout out of a road. Just a few hundred yards past that though, I was stopped dead in my tracks by what sounded like a car driving through the woods. To my northeast was a plot that was filling in with paper birch, often a tree that will take hold first in these clear cuts. These were young trees no more than twenty feet tall and most much shorter than that, bunched so tightly that you couldn't see into the tree-line more than ten feet or so. I could see the tops of trees moving further back as something wicked this way came. That is as disconcerting a thing as I'd ever seen. I quickly backed off the road into similar tightly bunched birch of the other side, not turning my back, until I could just barely see the road. I never actually saw it, but a moose was back there, huffing and stomping around, and they say moose don't bluff charge. I figured I was out of sight so I just stayed as still as I could, trying to control my breathing and slow my heart back down to something appropriate while hoping that the breeze wouldn't give away my position. The moose moved on after a bit of pacing, and I waited until I couldn't hear him (perhaps more likely her, given the early summer time frame?) and moved on myself. That experience was a very, very exciting one. It gave me that feeling, whatever it is. I think seeing massive rhinos reminded me that large mammals can give me that feeling. So it was decided that it was very much time to see a Connecticut moose. 

CT DEEP estimates that there are more than 100 individuals in CT's established moose population. They do a fair job of remaining elusive though, as the number of sighting each year is generally much smaller than the estimated population. In a busy, developed state this may shock some but it doesn't surprise me much. Non-human animals are cleverer than we like to believe, and that includes their intelligence in keeping away from us. Not all that long ago, though, there weren't many moose here at all. Likely owing to the vast deforestation that took place not long after colonization, there were no moose in CT for better than a century. In fact, the first photograph of a Connecticut moose was taken in 1956. With forests re-growing across Massachusetts, moose were filtering south, and by present day have established themselves well despite some habitat deficiencies. 

If you're a good angler- one with a naturalist's eye -you know how to discern the habitat of your query. Knowing what the fish need and are evolved for is most of the battle. With time, discerning what makes good habitat becomes second nature. This is no different in hunting, even if that hunting is with a camera instead of a firearm. Drawing from past experiences in moose territory, everything I'd read or watched about New England's largest land animal, and available sighting information, I hit the maps. I read satellite imagery like I'd read a river. Instead of rocks and current I was looking for topography and forest age. I looked for sparse canopy, logged areas, and wetlands. I picked a spot to focus on much in the way I'd pick a stretch of river, then my partner Emily and I went there to try our luck at finding some tracks or sign. 

Though Connecticut's moose population has seen a fairly recent bump in numbers, New England's largest land animal isn't without its threats. One of the scarier risks comes from a different, far smaller animal. As warmer winters become progressively more and more normal in this part of the world, some species are taking advantage. One species, Dermacentor albipictus, is breeding and proliferating at unprecedented rates. At just millimeters in length, the winter tick might seem a poor opponent of the moose. But by the thousands their impact can be fatal. An adult moose might survive a severe infestation, but calves, it seems, are not. Data from Maine indicates the loss of almost 90% of tracked calves... that's pretty staggering. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has increased the number of cow permits to hunters to determine if lowering densities can break the tick's cycle. A changing climate compounds other anthropogenic and natural problems, and in one example of many, forces active management to preserve an iconic species that may otherwise not need any such help.

I hoped we'd get to see a robust, healthy Connecticut moose instead of one infested in winter ticks, but beggars can't be choosers. The more I read about moose the more I wanted to see one close to home. Stepping foot in the field for the first time with that specific goal in mind made me feel alive. And when, not hours later, I was looking at a quite fresh set of tracks in the snow, it wasn't an insignificant morale boost. Fresh tracks, a few piles of poo, and even two spots where she'd bedded down convinced me this was a place to put a trail camera. 

I'm not quite sure why my affinities for certain animals are so much stronger than others. Usually preference is only a thing I notice in their absence. When I'm not around any animals, reptiles and fish are my favorites, but as soon as I'm looking at a flying squirrel, well that's the greatest thing that has ever existed. This is even true of species I've claimed not to like, such as dolphins. Dolphins are a bit too much like us sometimes. They're clever and have the capacity to be sadistic, they have a propensity toward un-consensual acts, and they can be a bit mean sometimes. But put me near  a wild dolphin and I can't help but smile. They're beautiful animals, and I can't help but be happy to see them. So, though I don't call myself a mammal guy, I can't help but feel a bit more alive when I see a bear, hear coyotes calling in the dark, or look down at a big ol' pile of moose poop on the forest floor. 

One of my favorite places I've ever fished is a serene, high elevation brook trout pond in northern New England. Though certainly not alpine, or even all that close to it, it's the closest I'll feel to it within ten hours of home. The stunted pines and pale granite boulders that line the perimeter aren't something we see at lower latitudes and elevations. Nor, as I experienced one July morning, is the hypothermia that you can still get if you sit too still for too long next to one of the spring seeps that keep the pond cold and the brook trout that live there happy. The air coming off that spring had me shivering in very little time, and when I dipped my thermometer in the water it read an astounding 39 degrees! In July! But as cold, stunted, and stark as that ecosystem always felt- and indeed, there are only two fish in that pond, dace and brook trout, neither of which need much nutrients to eek out an existence -there are also some large terrestrial mammals up there sometimes. I remember coming across moose poop just the other side of the same ridge once, while prospecting for smoky quart in miarolitic cavities in the granite. It was on a very steep grade, in habitat my uninformed mind didn't at all associate with those large ungulates. But what I did expect to see up there, and would run into on my way back from that pond after that morning of catching stunning native char after getting far too cold, were bear. This was national forest, and patch work logging occurs just a step or two down in elevation. There, after a year or two, emergent vegetation dominates the small logging cuts. Some of it produces berries. The bears take advantage of that, the dead wood harboring loads of insects, and of course the large number of mindless campers, some of whom do a poor job of keeping their own food under wraps. As I popped off the steep trail back onto the logging road on my way down from the pond, a sharp "whufff" caught my attention. My eyes snapped over to the other side of the road, and at the base of a big old pine sat an adolescent black bear. He made a sort of motion that would probably have been associated with a gruff "I'll f*** you up bro" had this been an adolescent human. I raised my arms, made a forward stomp, and said "No you won't, bear". He turned is head behind the tree for a second and then glanced back with an almost sheepish look, then dismounted from the tree and took off down the hill. It wasn't my first interaction with a bear, nor would it be my last, even just that day. They're one of the more common large mammals in the northeast now, and they've done a good job of making themselves at home even in suburban areas. Unlike moose here in Connecticut, which are more of a novelty encounter than anything, bears have become a divisive issue. They're here in numbers again and that has implications on how people live. We need to know how to respond to their presence and they force us to be more aware of our surroundings and behavior. I wonder if the moose population will continue to rise it Connecticut, and is so, whether it will have similar implications and effects? 

Back in the woods after a freshly fallen snow, I broke trail to check a camera I'd put in the area with all the moose sign. There's a magic about the woods when it has a fresh coat of snow. Sound gets muffled, things feel still, and any animal's recent movements on the ground gets recorded cleanly. Out in the open mixed hardwood forest there was a crunchy layer on top of the snow that prevented me from being as stealthy as I'd have liked. When I dropped into the valley toward the meadows, and under the canopy of the hemlocks, the character of the snow changed. Down there it was a soft white powder, and my footsteps became as muffled as everything else. There were tracks here and there: deer, coyotes, red squirrel, bobcat... but this time no moose. 

No matter. I carefully made my way to the camera trap to see what may have passed in front of it over the previous weeks. 

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