On the hike out I nearly stepped on this friendly little guy. Glad I didn't, more for his sake than mine. Garter snakes have perhaps the most benign bite of any snake their size. Getting tread on is undoubtedly more painful than getting bit by a garter snake. Teeth like a largemouth bass's. And I'm speaking from the experience of numerous very much benign bites from non-venomous species. Sometimes the only way to get a garter snake, dekay's brown snake, or ringneck snake to calm down is to let it clamp down on your finger for a moment, so I take it in stride. I of course plant this firmly in the "don't try this at home or anywhere else" category... I know snakes almost as well as I know fish, and I think it is safe to say that most who are reading this do not know snakes well enough to get voluntarily bitten by one.
On the way back though northwestern CT I found myself on a small stream that I was sure would produce fish for just a short time. I made well of this brief opportunity to add a new stream to the list and came up with two gorgeous wild brook trout on the ever productive Ausable Bomber.
More than a week later I was doing some fishing closer to home and decided to pay a stream I hadn't fished in a couple years a visit. It had come up in discussion about wild brook trout with Mike Carl. He and I both thought there was a chance that, since the stream hadn't been stocked in recent years, it might have a chance to come back as a wild brook trout stream. Being that every time I had fished it before it hadn't produced anything but stocked browns and common shiners and electro fishing data hadn't turned up brook trout , I wasn't hugely confident. But this stream drifted into my mind more than once since that phone conversation, including twice in a dreams, and I was in the area, so I checked it out. For a while, nothing. Then... JACKPOT!
It isn't every day that I add a new stream to my list, and even less so that I add a stream in my home town. I've fished every piece of moving water that I possibly could. The fact that this one has brook trout now fascinates me, because it definitely didn't just four years ago. Amazing what things change in such a short time.
Garters must have been out in numbers this weekend. I saw a quite large specimen in southwest MA this weekend as well. It was more of the black and yellow variety versus the brown one you saw.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very exciting situation. Combine this with your essay about the home stream recovery, your hypothesis being the latter half of '16, plus '17 bringing a new year class into play, and we have something. Now just yesterday I was fishing a well known coastal stream, one that is heavily stocked and heavily pressured, not a WTMA, and I caught an 8" clean finned nicely colored skinny healthy fish with nice blue dots. Well, he might be stocked, but he is under 9" and I haven't seen them stock such small ones. The size cutoff is 9" in the stream. But this might be wishful thinking.
ReplyDeleteI also caught a big healthy rainbow with clean fins. And I ate it. The stomach was absolutely full as in packed, with insects. It has been feasting for some time. I caught it on my #16 black I suspect it was a fall stocked holdover. The fresh rainbows were ragged tailed and the fall is strictly rainbows while the spring is primarily browns in lower and brooks in upper.
So good climate may be aiding a recovery?
The hatcheries have gotten lazy and haven't sorted before stocking the last few years. I've been catching some tiny stockers, as small as 4 inches, in rivers that don't receive fingerlings. Saying "skinny" does not say "healthy" to me. A fat fish is a healthy fish. I doubt that 2016 brought a new year class into play, it was a terrible year for recruitment and that has been shown by electrofishing turning up very few trout that would have been a result of that season's spawning.
DeleteI can say with fair certainty that the only change to the stream that I was fishing is that it no longer gets stocked. There are wild brook trout in the next stream down in the watershed and every stream above, and brook trout are quick to fill a niche that opens up. I am very doubtful that catching one brook trout in one stream that didn't have brook trout before is evidence of an overall recovery or improvement.
Rowan your mention of brook trout as a simple fish is so true. Nothing high end needed to pursue this wild one.
ReplyDeleteWell done.
If we were so inclined all it would really take is a discarded length of line, a bent nail, and a piece of worm. Right along with the humble sunfish, brook trout are just... simple. And yet so perfectly remarkable.
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