Diquat Madness & The Proliferation of Fear-Based Rhetoric

 In April 2024, while pulling my canoe after a mostly unsuccessful day, I ran into a few environmental scientists that were curious about water levels and asked if I'd been out a lot recently. "We take it the river has fallen a lot over the last week," one posited. "Oh yeah," I replied, "quite a few feet". "Yeah, we're not always used to seeing the species we're surveying for six feet up in the trees." he said. These scientists were from a team working with the Army Corps of Engineers, and the species they were surveying for was a highly invasive aquatic plant called hydrilla. Hydrilla's presence in the Connecticut river is relatively new, with first confirmation coming in 2016 in Glastonbury. It is especially noxious, because any time a piece is broken off, it can sprout new roots and make a new plant. This makes it uniquely hard to control as manual removal is not longer an option once density reaches full blown infestation. Control is important, both ecologically and socially, because hydrilla is so prone to rapid spread that it has significant negative impacts on water quality, fish, native aquatic plants, and outdoor recreation like boating and swimming. So control in some form or function is paramount. And this crew was doing preliminary study for herbicide treatment. Work has been done for a number of years studying both the plant itself, monitoring it's spread, and testing possible methods of mitigation and control. This new project sought to determine the efficacy of herbicidal treatments, and the water body I was leaving was to be one of the first test sites on the first year. One of the herbicides in question is called Diquat, and though it's use and application at one site went without major public backlash in 2024, the same cannot be said for 2025. 

FOX61 interviewed protesters they described as "environmental activists" at the state capital as they voiced their concerns on the use of Diquat. One of those interviewed was Selina Rifkin, whose sentiment isn't an uncommon one currently "Spraying horrible chemicals that kill everything into our lakes and rivers. It isn't necessary." A Change.org petition headed by a photo of a handful of dead, floating fish, evidently European species- it looked like crucian and barbel to me -got the messengers point across. Diquat is going to kill everything, these folks firmly believe that. If this were true, there'd certainly be reason to protest it. How could the Army Corps so brazenly poison our waters, and why would CT DEEP sign off on it? 

Way back before I ever put pen to paper about fishing, or knew almost anything at all, my best friend and I dumped a bucket of Diquat is his farm pond. I kid you not, I have real world experience with this poison that kills everything. Young, dumb, and frustrated with summer weeds making it hard to fish the pond the way we wanted to, we sought weed control as a way to better our fishing. His dad got is a big ol' container of Diquat. We read the directions, didn't wear any safety gear of any sort, and did our best to distribute the whole jug's worth across the tiny bass pond. Memory serves me that it did kill off a fair bit of the heavy vegetation, and to our untrained young eyes, nothing else. There certainly was no fish kill, the pond still to this day is loaded with bass, sunfish, bullheads, and all of the wonderful creepy crawlies that those fish eat. We also didn't die, despite definitively doing it all wrong. Hearing and reading a lot of comments about this same herbicide "killing everything" seemed a tad strange. Of course, my experience is anecdotal at best, though perhaps of higher value than much of the commentary currently circulating because at least I have some actual first hand experience... but that isn't enough, not for me. So let's dig into everything we can, shall we? Let's start with the basics. How does this Diquat stuff work?

Diquat is short for diquat dibromide, or 6,7-dihydrodipyrido (1,2-a:2',1'-c) pyrazinediium dibromide. Now that sounds scary... but I'm not a chemist, and if it sounds scary so might this: β-D-galactopyranosyl-(1→4)-D-glucose. That's lactose, that's in natural milk... not scary at all, you just aren't a chemist, most likely. Chemicals always sound scary if you aren't hugely familiar with chemistry and reading chemical formulas. That's fine, neither am I, but we're going to have get a little cozy with chemistry here to understand what 6,7-dihydrodipyrido (1,2-a:2',1'-c) pyrazinediium dibromide does. Basically, it binds to photosynthesizing cells and inhibits that key processes of plant function- turning sunlight into energy. The chemical accepts electrons from Photosystem I, one of a plant cell's two photosynthetic systems. That electron is used to create a reactive oxygen species (ROS), which damages the cell and prevents NADPH and ATP production by that cell. NADPH helps make glucose, lipids, and nucleic acid, and ATP provides energy. It also destroys the cell membrane. Without these things, the cell dies. And when all of an aquatic plant's photosynthesizing cells die, it dies. That's how Diquat kills hydrilla and other plants. It than binds with particles of soil and sediment, usually leaving the water column free of detectable levels within a day or two, though it remains undegraded in sediment indefinitely.¹ Diquat is also used as a desiccant on potato crops and some seed crops used for feed. A desiccant, if you aren't familiar, is something used to dry things out or keep them dry. 

It is entirely reasonable to have concerns about how a chemical compound that completely kills a photosynthetic cell might effect other cells, including ours and the species we care about. This is especially true given that Diquat is banned by many countries and the European Union (many of the people I've seen bringing that point up are also the sort to suggest that the European Union is an overbearing, freedom less hell-scape, so that comes off as a little rich. Sorry, I call it like I see it... you can't have this both ways). Let's start with humans, since we tend to be a selfish lot....

A 63 year old landscaper in Florida admitted himself to the hospital about 90 minutes after drinking a gulp of herbicide from a Gatorade bottle. He would die soon after from multi organ failure. The medical professionals involved in his case did a brief case study highlighting it, as well as the need for further study on diquat poisoning. It doesn't read pleasantly. Upon admission, he was having uncontrollable urination, diarrhea and gastric emesis. By his fourth and final day is the hospital, effects had reached his brain. "On day four of hospitalization, the patient was noted to have new onset dilated pupils and was taken to receive a CT scan of his brain, which showed diffuse cerebral edema and toxic encephalopathy with cerebellar tonsillar herniation and mild hydrocephalus." ² Basically, in the body, the ROS previously mentioned makes hydrogen peroxide. Normally the body detoxifies hydrogen peroxide, but this reaction from the Diquat cycles over and over, overwhelming any chance of that. The case study notes that Diquat poisoning is quite rare, hence the need for further study it sites only 30 cases from 1969 to 1999 with a 43% mortality rate. It also sites that nearly all similar cases in which more than 12 grams of Diquat were consumed result in death within a few days. The same ROS that causes a photosynthetic cell to die leads to multi organ failure. Scared now? It's important to consider concentration. Of course, drinking a full gulp an herbicide that makes a reactive oxygen species and spurs cellular havoc is a potentially deadly proposition. So far no study I can find indicates health risks from exposure to a water body treated with diquat within just a few days of treatment, and that comes down to Diquat's affinity for organic molecules. After dispersion in a water body, it binds with with plant cells it kills, but also with tons of organic particles in the water column and in the sediment on the bottom. It becomes a more or less inert there, no longer present in the water column and allowing aquatic plants (hopefully the native ones, replacing the invasives killed by the diquat) to grow unabated. This is what I watched happen in that pond all those years ago. There was no noticeable evidence of a herbicide in the water just a short time after treatment. Sunlight also degrades diquat based on numerous studies, one citing a photodecomposition half-life of 1.6 weeks.³ So, without too much time passing, the science says there shouldn't be much to worry about so far as swimming, contact with the water, or consuming fish goes. Diquat is dispersed at low concentrations compared to the fatal dose and is largely undetectable in just days. It isn't recommended to drink water treated with diquat within three days, but, speaking as someone on and around it all the time, you don't want to drink from these Connecticut River backwaters anyway. It might kill you on a good day, Diquat or not. 

Onto other species... that Wisconsin DNR fact sheet makes mention of study on fish, all very Wisconsin. Walleye showed signs of poisoning when contained in diquat treated water, other game and panfish did not. Some fish kills have been recorded in diquat treated waters, especially small ponds. This is most likely a result of oxygenation, as rapid vegetation death and decomposition can use a lot of dissolved oxygen. This shouldn't be a significant problem in the Connecticut, where tides cause a significant amount of water exchange day in and day out. The bigger problem comes with macroinvertebrates, which are indeed vitally important. The same fact sheet states "...certain species of important aquatic food chain organisms such as amphipods and Daphnia (water fleas) can be adversely affected at label application rates." The Army Corps project isn't dismissive of the potential impacts on wildlife, as anyone who cares to sit and read available drafts and proposals for this project can find. Pretty plainly though, labeling Diquat a "poison that kills everything" is more than misleading... its just plain wrong. There is validity for concern with both human and environmental impacts, but most of the posts making the rounds on social media lack rigorous research, citations, or anything that would make them trustworthy. And that's just where the problems start. 

That same environmental activist interview by FOX61 than I mentioned earlier, Selina Rifkin, later on said "There could have been an educational campaign about what this is. There could have been a call for volunteers to pull it out by hand. There could have been some kind of examination of the other possibilities for getting rid of it is, this is, this is a financial option, and it's the easy solution." This is the point where I must admit, I get a little bit pissed off and say... are you kidding me? Every single thing she lists there has been done already, it takes just seconds to find that it has been done, and if anyone actually cares one iota about this issue these words wouldn't leave their mouth. There's a sign at just aviation every launch and put in on the lower Connecticut that tells me what Hydrilla is, how to prevent the spread, and has a nice little picture of what it looks like. The education is there. The Connecticut River Conservancy regularly holds manual water chestnuts pulls funded in part by grant money from the state's AIS program... I've already written about that. The volunteer effort is available. Information on why manual removal can in fact worsen hydrilla is immediately readily available with a Google search. Manual removal alone will not work. And this entire Army Corps hydrilla project has been about finding the best option to control the hydrilla through multiple means (read here). CT DEEP has also been exploring management options since at least 2021. In hours of research prior to and while working on this cursed blog post that I shouldn't have to write, I found source after source after source that partially or wholly refutes every argument being made by the Jonny-come-lately diquat protestors. We are a lazy, triggerable, reactive society that absolutely fails to find the forest through the trees time and time again. I'm not even here to say there isn't some merit to suggesting diquat shouldn't be used, I'm not convinced that it will be an effective treatment on its own. But it also doesn't take much research to make sense of this Army Corps project, why it's underway, and why they're using Diquat on a limited number of waters. Unfortunately, if you've made it this far, I doubt you're the sort that is causing this outrage. If you are though, thank you for sticking around. Please, go to your next argument, make your next comment, attend your next protest, or donate to your next cause armed with legitimate arguments instead of reactionary social media posts. Spend some time researching the topic with actual doctors, scientific papers, and as many different sources as possible. 

Media (both social and mainstream news) failed us on this one, as it has in the past and will continue to in the future. Facebook and Instagram made it easy for people to pass along inaccurate posts. FOX61 and others did a poor job of pointing out inaccuracies in the demonstrator's statements. A petition circled with a blatantly fear-mongering header image, with thousands of signatures and counting. I'm sick and tired of this; if all of these people could have put this energy and effort into being informed and taking action on invasive species, there'd be no need at all to apply herbicide on the Connecticut River. But here we are, fighting a government that's desperately trying to undue the problems we cause, then complain about, then complain about the potential solutions to, then complain about the cost of. It's all very tiring. I have very little hope anymore, but if so many as one person walks away from reading this less inclined to hop on the disinformation train, I guess I've done my part. Read as is spoken through clenched teeth while smashing my mouse to smithereens against my desk: Now its time for me to go clean, drain, and dry the canoe after another day of pulling water chestnuts on the big river, trying to beat a problem that could one day hit me right in the wallet the same way hydrilla has been.

Currently, the Diquat treatment has been postponed till 2026, reportedly for funding issues. 

¹ Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 2012. Diquat Chemical Fact Sheet, 

² Daniel M Aloise, Adam Memon, Ana Zaldiver. 2022.  Diquat Herbicide Organophosphate Poisoning and Multi-Organ Failure: A Case Report

³ Smith, A.E. and Grove, J. 1969. Photochemical degradation of diquat in dilute aqueous solution and on silica gel. J. Agric Food Chem. 17:609-613.

More: https://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Portals/74/docs/Topics/CTRiver/Images/Fact%20Sheets%20-%20updated/FACTSHEET-CTRiverHydrilla-ExecutiveSummary-May2023.pdf

https://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/Projects-Topics/Connecticut-River-Hydrilla/

FOX61 Article: https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/hartford-county/hartford/protestors-voice-concerns-over-diquat-use-in-rivers-lakes-connecticut/520-e3bc1018-b506-4f04-9795-f1c8b9d91079

Video overview of Florida landscaper case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmu48JYFTBc

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, Javier, Ryan and Dar 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. 

Aliens in Our Waters & The War Against Them

Noah and I paddled our way over the milky waters of Lake Champlain's South Bay one warm summer day toward a shallow cove. We were on the hunt for bowfin and longnose gar, and in that grey stained water, a weed-bed was calling our name about a half mile away. In other clearer parts of the lake we'd had success finding bass and bowfin around aquatic vegetation, so reason suggested that weedy area was a good place to start. As we closed in, we could tell it wasn't the sort of weed-bed we were used to in other parts of Champlain: the bulrush, the pickerel weed and it's lovely purple flowers, the elodea that the bowfin love to gracefully slide through. These weeded areas are always full of life, harboring little schools of shiners and young of the year sunfish. Dragon and damsel flies hover and perch on the vegetation that perks above the water's surface, and birds skim around chasing them. This was very different. It was a thick, homogenous, deep green mat with a lone, straight-as-an-arrow path cut through it. This was a water chestnut mat, and the path through it had been cut by the boat equivalent of a combine harvester- in fact we could see a few of these vessels working not far away. The state of New York was operating these to put a damper on the rapid spread of the chestnuts, which just so happen to be one of the most virulent invasive aquatic plants in the northeast right now. Water chestnuts take hold hard and fast, outcompeting native vegetation and creating a thick, green mono-culture, a mat that is impenetrable by kayak and not suitable for the fish and invertebrates that evolved to live in our waterways without it. The only way Noah and I could get into the cove filled with the water chestnuts was through the path created by the harvester, and within the clearer water and visibility of that open pathway was the only place we could find fish anyway. Even the most weedless of hollow-bodied frogs wasn't pulling a bowfin up through the lawn-like chestnut mat. 

Water chestnuts, or, more accurately, water caltrop, are native to temperate portions of Eurasia and Africa. They emanate from a devilish looking seed, a dark, spiky thing an inch or two across that lodges in the muddy bottom... or your foot, if you step on one. A thin but fairly strong yellow stem protrudes  from the seed and rises to the surface, where it blooms out into a concentrated radiating cluster of angular, deep green leaves.  Water caltrop usually peak in July, when they form the thickest and most heinous of patches in the moderately shallow, slow water they prefer- around which time they produced the seeds that will be their next generation. From one year to the next, un-managed patches will grow rapidly. They're transplanted occasionally by boaters but also by large waterfowl. The species was introduced to the Northeast in 1877 in the Cambridge Botanical Garden. It took but a couple years for it to make it into the Charles River, and though the spread to the rest of the northeast was not direct or immediate, Trapa natans has since made its way around the Northeast and Mid Atlantic. The Hudson River and Lake Champlain in New York, Lake Nockamixon in Pennsylvania, Burke Lake in Virginia, and the Connecticut River through the heart of New England are just a tiny list of the places that have been invaded. The Connecticut River, though, is my home. I've watched the effects here first hand, and it has been astonishing... gut wrenching, even.

In 2016, Noah and I came across a small, round patch of water chestnuts in a shallow, muddy backwater. We knew that they would be a potential problem, but weren't fully knowledgeable yet. Eight years later, nearly to the day, I stood at the edge of the very same cove looking at the most visually striking example of an aquatic invasive mono culture I'd ever seen. One species of plant had taken over just about every inch of the cove, acres upon acres. Anyone who wanted to paddle to where we found that one little ten foot diameter patch eight years prior would have been in for a monumental effort, and a worthless one too. Where we'd caught bass in milfoil beds, had run ins with big pike on channel edges, and sight fished to tailing carp on open flats was now all just a lawn of water chestnuts, devoid of the diversity that had been there. Yes, some of that diversity had been detrimental non-natives too, but as bad as common carp can be for an ecosystem they don't belong in, the water caltrop are a bit worse, or at least more visibly impactful. 

Not far away, my brother and I crept the Otter through a different cove, looking for a pair of sandhill cranes that I'd heard calling and then spotted a couple days prior. We were having no luck finding the birds, but had less trouble finding problematic plants. 

Water chestnuts can be combatted with manual removal, something that isn't always productive on all aquatic invasive plants. By carefully pulling at the main stem of each plant, the whole thing- seed included -can be removed. The seed, that devilish looking little spikey thing, is the key: leave the seed in the muck and a new plant will just pop up. We carefully pulled as many plants as we could, rinsed the muck and living critters off of them as well as we could, and piled them into the boat. When there are hundreds of thousands of plants, this can be a very intimidating task. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

Though Malachi and I put just a little dent in between the two of use, it was satisfying. The canoe sat a little lower in the water on the way back to the launch, and we had to haul the heavy masses as far from the water as we could in my Ranger net to get them somewhere they'd dry out and die without being washed back into the water by rain. This wasn't my first go, though it was my first year devoting time to the effort. But there are groups that have been attempting to hold back the invasion for a number of years now, brave volunteers at the front lines combatting invasives with hardened resolve. 

One of those organizations is Connecticut River Conservancy. I talked with Rhea Drozdenko, who has been with the organization for two and a half years and coordinates water chestnut pulls and other aquatic invasive species efforts, about it. She worked at Wesleyan University before coming to CRC, and wanted to do something that combined her experience in advocacy and outreach with her love and passion for the Connecticut River. "Once something gets out of control its really hard to bring it back" Drozdenko said of the water caltrop situation. "The plant grows exponentially. One seed can produce ten or so rosettes and those rosettes can produce another ten seeds." Each summer, when the growing season occurs and those thick green mats of rosettes form on infested bodies of water throughout the state, Drozdenko and CRC set out with volunteers in two to combat the invasion and try to slow it down. On weekends they gather 20 to 30 volunteers at any of a number of sites to do manual removals. They generally start around 9:00a.m., paddle out, carefully pull as many plants as they can, then return to the launch to dispose of the water caltrop. "It's a pretty labor intensive process, but also a fun one, too," Drozdenko says, "you don't have to have any experience with it, we'll take anyone and show them the ropes of it. You don't even need your own boat, we'll have all the equipment that you need." And they're making some progress too! "There's one site we have which used to be a major infestation. The past two years we've seen 50 plants tops, so its not a site we bring volunteers anymore." Plenty of sites have a lot to pull though, and CRC disposes of the plants they remove in a couple of ways. For one site they have a contract with Blue Earth Compost, a company that specializes in turning food products and other organic waste into soil products. At other locations they just haul the plants high away from the water line to where they can decompose naturally without washing back into the river or pond. Manual pulling isn't the only focus, though. "Pulling is great, but prevention is much more important." says Drozdenko. It take much less effort and money to keep water caltrop from spreading from one watershed to the next than it does to get it out once it does establish. Now, some sites are to infested for manual pulls to be all that useful. "We're hoping to move into herbicidal management," she tells me, "the Army Corps of Engineers is doing a several year filed demonstration on hydrilla there, and anecdotally we could see that the herbicide for the hydrilla had an effect on the water chestnuts as well." All of this manual pulling, herbicide, and prevention does have cost though, and it is very important that the funding is available to organizations and agencies focused on combating aquatic invasive plants—enter the AIS Stamp. 

A dragonfly rests on native marsh grass. Native vegetation plays a key roll for the ecosystem at large.

In recent weeks I watched anglers and boaters getting rather angry about an additional fee they felt was suddenly being thrust upon them, with cries about a "new tax" ringing around the Facebook groups. It reminded me of times not long ago when CT added the trout stamp to counteract the fact that virtually every dollar of license sales was going to keeping the hatcheries going, despite the fact that plenty of license holders don't trout fish. I wanted the scoop, and Gwendolynn Flynn from CT DEEP's boating division provided it. "In 2019, our legislature added a five dollar fee to the vessel registration. Some people noticed, some people didn't notice." There's always a bit of a disconnect between the constituency and the legislature, because most people just flat out don't pay attention and think they don't have time to. Unfortunately that can lead to a bit of chaos. When some modifications were made to take the fee off the vessel registration, people noticed and they didn't like it. But it's vitally important to fund the fight against invasive plants as they stand to inhibit fisherman, boaters, and other recreators alike. "Prior to the AIS stamp in 2019, there was nothing, there was no state funding," says Wendy Flynn. But the new fees now fund groups that combat the problem both directly and indirectly. "That money is turned around into a competitive grant program, and non-profits and municipalities can apply for this money for control, research and education of aquatic invasive plants and cyanobacteria." Our dollars as resource users go directly back to benefitting the river that we love and use. In fact, the operations performed by Connecticut River Conservancy benefit from the AIS stamp and fees: "We're recipients of the AIS grant, that money goes to organizations like ourselves that do removal, management, and prevention work" Rhea Drozdenko told me. 

I, for one, am glad that this problem is being taken seriously. I've watched these plants progress, not only with water caltrop but with hydrilla as well. Aquatic invasive plants pose a very real threat to native plants, fish, and insects. They fill in water that would otherwise be open, making recreating harder. And they take away the wild, native soul that our waterways have. We need to covet and protect the native plants that evolved in our ecosystems. They're invaluable, no dollar amount could be placed on their beauty and their ecological rolls. But these plants are snuffing them out. It takes a lot of work to put the bear back in its cage once it gets out. Thankfully, it seems to me the right people are on the job. And I'll be out there too, in my little canoe, pulling up wads of water chestnuts, getting muddy, doing my part... would you care to join me? 

Helpful link:

www.ctriver.org

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/39f2d565ea304c0aa97335ad2d3c7f0d?org=CAES&views=Instructions-1

https://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/Projects-Topics/Connecticut-River-Hydrilla/

https://portal.ct.gov/deep/boating/faqs/faq-ais-stamp

Thanks to Rhea Drozdenko and Wendy Flynn for their help on this one. 

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.

Gotta Be a Mango Tree Here Somewhere

 The rumble of the Honda 2.3 disturbed the cool, foggy south Jersey morning as Joe Cermele navigated his Clackacraft up a winding, murky river. In the front was Drew Price, wearing the weary, somewhat tired, but a little bit hopeful mask that anyone has on after three days of doing little other than fishing. I had the same mask on. We'd fished hard in my neighborhood for two days leading up to this. It had been pretty good, too, and I'd managed to get Drew on 11 new species and hybrids on the fly in all sorts of water, from mile long jetties to tiny cemetery ponds. There were some notable chunks of inactivity but there are pretty much any time you voluntarily fish for about 14 hours straight two days in a row. 

Fishing that hard can be a bit of an unfamiliar concept to many folk that call themselves fisherman. Even avid fisherman aren't frequently fishing that hard. There's probably the healthier way to fish anyway, here and there for a few hours throughout the week or some long hard trips scattered through the year. Drew and I beat ourselves up, this wasn't the first time. Last fall I drove up to Vermont to fish with Drew on a boiling hot day after he had a client, pounded big bowfin that afternoon, beat up drum the next day, floated for musky the day after that, I went out on my own and stuck a nice one on foot the day after that, drove to Saranac Lake the next day, I slept in my 4Runner next to the Ausable that night and fished in the Adirondacks all day the next day, then went back to Drew's area to microfish....

Fishing hard this way isn't great for the body or the mind, and I'm not quite sure we do it. A focused angler may not drink as much as they should, or will miss a meal here and there. When we do eat, it isn't infrequently absolute garbage. We may apply sunscreen at the start of the day, or wear good protective clothing, but there's always something exposed that gets singed. On this trip it was my lips. They felt and looked more or less like a desert watering hole in a drought. I was applying chapstick prodigiously but it wasn't saving it. As I type this some cracks and cuts are still there. 

All that hard fishing was the lead in to this river, and a highly intriguing target species. The catch that started it all happened in Crofton, Maryland in 2002, tipping of fisheries biologists to the start of an invasion. Soon the media was running with it, building a mythical reputation around the species, one that almost matches fear mongering in current events. No, Channa argus won't climb out of the Potomac and eat your pet Chihuahua. Invasive fish are certainly not joke, and the northern snakehead should never have ended up in the waters of the Mid Atlantic states. But the media ran with it and ran hard, while other arguably more impactful invasives didn't get nearly the amount of press. I wasn't hearing rumors about blue catfish climbing into people's lawns with evil intent.... 

Northern snakehead did spread, and certainly hurt native species, but along the way they've attracted quite an angling following. Joe Cermele is one such devote of the snake, as evidenced by his profile image image as Fishing Editor for Outdoor Life and in the many media forms he's presented over the years, from video to articles to podcasts. Cermele is ate up with the snakeheads. And he really wanted Drew and I to see just why it was he was so taken with these invasive fish.

We had completely unearned hope in the boat that morning. As anglers, if we can't be optimistic what do we have? The mist rose off the water in cool tendrils as the light of the new day shot across the sky in yellow and orange. Piscivorous birds lingered on the banks and dead trees until the rumble of the motor was too loud for them to abide. Gentle ripples and swirls emanated from surfacing gizzard shard. Carp bubbled, rolled and tailed along the banks. It was quiet but lively away from the main artery of the turnpike and the grime and garbage that lined it. This all felt very Apocalypse Now, though we cracked lines from a drift boat, not a PBR, and instead of Colonel Kurtz the foe we hunted with extreme prejudice was a fish with an elongate dorsal fin, narrow face, and ornate, python like patterning along its flanks. 

 I flexed my fingers as I watched a great blue heron take off from its morning hunting spot. My hands didn't quite feel all there after one day of making cast after bank pounding cast, and looking down I flexed each finger one at a time. I regretted fly line choices, as the floating line I'd brought wasn't quite short and punchy enough in the head for this sort of fishing. It had made me work harder and both my callouses and muscles felt it. I acknowledged this with some indifference and looked back up to the bank, eyeing bits of structure that could hold what we were looking for. Some edges held an almost clover like vegetation that stuck up from the water's surface on short one to four inch stems, bright green and tightly packed, looking like the perfect place for a notorious predator to lurk. The streaking, out-of-nowhere strike of an angry snake was hard to picture but easy to want in that moment. The day before we'd seen but two fish, and only one of them had bothered to move to a fly and had done so only tentatively. Their lack of interest in all of our offerings and seeming absence from most of the water that should have held was a source of frustrating bewilderment for Joe, and Drew and I just had to follow the lead given our lack of experience. Yet we were still optimistic as we started again... why? We always are, each fresh start makes a fisherman feel like things are new and fresh. And they are, to some extent. But if we'd really thought about it, this day wasn't so different. The night was about as cool, the forecast high was the same. The barometric changes were there but minimal and the wind would kick up from the same direction. The moon was only a day advanced and the flow and water clarity was the same. The only real change was an early start, which Joe admitted rarely factored into snakehead success. 

When he'd gotten where we needed to be, Joe cut the motor, got in the rowers seat and Dre and I began pounding banks with loud topwater flies once again. Signs of life were positive and it wasn't long before a few largemouth bass showed interest. 

But that was just a tease. This day would beat us into submission too. We torture ourselves sometimes. I'm not quite sure why. 

 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, and Hunter 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.

Invasion of the Knobfin Sculpins

 An alien has invaded CT's Pomperaug River and its tributaries. This creature lives in the holes and crevices of the bottom, eating native fish's eggs and young, devouring macro-invertebrates, and breeding like rabbits. This creature is called the knobfin sculpin, Cottus immaculatus; and it hails from the Ozark Mountains of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas. Small though it may be, the knobfin sculpin has wrecked havoc where it was introduced accidentally. The native minnow and salmonid numbers in the Pomperaug watershed have crashed, and the is indication that insects have been impacted as well.

Not long ago, Garth and I went to the Pomperaug with a dual mission: first, catch out lifer knobfin sculpins on hook and line. Then, observe the situation in that river and its tributaries and determine if the sculpins have in fact had a significant negative impact. 

The first goal was extraordinarily easily accomplished. The sculpins were very abundant. Looking around larger rocks in the stream bed I could see holes with little cleared out patches of sand or pea gravel at their entrances. I knew right away what these were, as I've caught slimy sculpins and mottled sculpin already and have experiences their habits. These were sculpin "dens" and there were surely fish under these rocks. Indeed, jigging a nymph in front of these holes often resulted in a knobfin rushing out and taking the fly. Garth and I each had our lifers with relative ease. 

Life List Fish #187: Knobfin sculpin, Cottus immaculatus, Rank: Species

Now, there are two ways to catch sculpins that live under rocks. The first, the polite method if you will, is what I just described. You knock on the door, gently wiggling your offering at the entrances of the sculpins' homes. The second method is a bit more rude. You can rip the roof right of their houses. If you are careful, you can lift in-stream rocks, revealing the sculpins underneath, and believe it or not they will still eat. I think that says something about just how ravenous they are. I should add, absolutely do not move rocks in CT streams that have slimy sculpins. They are a species of special concern in this state and such actions are highly detrimental. On the Pomperaug though? Have at it. De-housing invasives isn't exactly bad. 

After catching a few knobfins I set about trying to see what else might be kicking around. Garth and I both saw a handful, and I really mean a handful, of blacknose dace and juvenile white suckers. And I mean very few. In a river the size of that which we were on these species should have occupied certain niches heavily, such as tailouts, eddies, and backwaters. We didn't see as many as we should have. The only trout present seemed to all be of hatchery origin, and subsequently don't portray a successful ecosystem. I only observed adult white suckers in one spot, and not many of them. Fallfish or creek chubs and their spawning mounds were absent. No other minnows, darters, or shiners were observed. Insect levels seemed low. 

It truly does seem that the knobfins had invaded this habitat. They are the quintessential invasive. Thankfully, unlike some introduced species, nobody is so obsessed with fishing for them that they're inclined to advocate for their continued protection. There could be a problem, however, if someone thinks they'd make good bait and moves them elsewhere, releasing them when they're done for the day. No live bait should be moved from water to water. Live bait should not be released alive. Mottled sculpins need to stay where they are now and spread no further. If they are moved, the consequences could be shocking. The Pomperaug certainly is a different ecosystem now, and a much less healthy one. What exactly its future is remains unseen. With at least one listed insect, a seemingly extirpated brook trout population, and ever dwindling native fish biomass, it doesn't look good. 

 Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, and Jake 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.

Fly Fishing For Invasive Goldfish

 Recently I took a quick ride south to a park pond. I was after an invasive species. I often fish for non-native and invasive fish, as there are plenty of them around (definitively, of course). I don't fish for this species that often though, as they haven't really taken hold here in Connecticut just yet. In other parts of the country, they've filled significant niches, displacing native species and causing ecological issues, as an invasive must do to be designated as such. As with other cyprinid species, goldfish in large numbers can cause increased water turbidity due to their bottom-based feeding strategy, diminishing plant life and degrading water quality. These negative impacts could well happen in Connecticut if they are allowed to spread. Concerningly, two of the places I know of that contain them drain indirectly into the Connecticut River. Fishing is not permitted in either and it seems the goldfish are welcomed by those managing those waters. In another case, a pond had a large number of big goldfish that were thankfully eradicated before they spread into the river below. On a couple of occasions I've seen individual goldfish in rivers where they were likely dumped as unwanted pets. This day, though, I was heading to an isolated pond where the goldfish couldn't leave. They still shouldn't be there, but it's less of a concern for spreading. 

This pond ecosystem itself is an odd one. It contains a single large common carp, western mosquitofish, and the goldfish as the non-native species. For natives, it contains pumpkinseed sunfish, golden shiners, and brown bullheads. Being a tiny, man-made pond it doesn't represent a great example of how these species would interact in a natural ecosystem, but the golden shiners seem to be quite stunted there and rarely attain the sizes I see in similarly sized waters that don't contain goldfish or mosquitofish, so maybe there is a negative impact at play. 

The goldfish themselves are finicky creatures and tough to fool with a fly. They often school up tightly at the surface in the spring and sit motionless, just sunning themselves. When they aren't doing that, if you don't chum you won't see them. At all. They may as well not be there. I wasn't prepared with chum so it was a good thing they were sunning. That didn't make it an easy task though. I spent the better part of an hour fishing to them with unweighted nymphs, soft hackles, and a few dry flies. I had them move to the fly numerous times but discerning the take is often the hardest part of the whole deal. I rarely feel it, and with goldfish the size of these at a distance more than 25 feet seeing the exact moment they nip the fly is a real trick, one I usually don't perform well. Eventually though I usually manage to make it work, and this time I did get a nice orange one. Only the one, but I'll always take one over none. 

Goldfish are tough to get a handle on once they do take over. As is often the case with similar species, angling can't really stop them, so even if you kill every one you catch you aren't doing any good. Because of the habitat they spend most of their time in, mechanical and chemical methods of removal often either don't get them all or are too indiscriminate. So the best strategy is actually curbing future infestations. Anglers should report seeing goldfish, especially in interconnected waterways, to their state environmental protection agencies. It's also important to pass on information and educate, since goldfish are a common pet that is all too often released into the wild. The ramifications of goldfish taking over a watershed are not insignificant and should be taken seriously. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, Streamer Swinger, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, and Jake 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.