Friday, April 19, 2013

Brook Trout Survey

A NC Biologist recently contacted our fishing club asking for volunteers to help out with a brook trout survey. Although my main interests were mostly based on selfish reasons I decided to volunteer. I felt worse case scenario I would know where brook trout are located. Emails went back and forth to setup where we would meet. The location of the survey was pretty remote and the recent rain made the approach less than desirable. The road was really a few steps up from a wide horse trail. Imagine that wet with large almost bowling ball size boulders here and there. The F250 quad cab creaked and moaned as it slowly crawled over the obstacles. There were more than a few times I double checked my seat belt. We made it to the starting site safely. We each were given specific tasks and a general overview of what was about to happen. The stream we were surveying was gorgeous.
The main way fish are gathered is looked down on by some. The biologist has a backpack that supplies an electric charge down to two poles with halos on the end.
Some argue that the shocking is too stressful for the fish. I wondered the same thing. After experiencing this first hand I can honestly say the effect is very minimal on the fish. The fish are only stunned for seconds and we missed almost as half as many as we caught. The fish many times revived before we could net them. If the halo stayed on the fish they stayed stunned. Once the fish were outside the range of the shockers they came to very quickly and disappeared.  I was in charge of the bucket at first. People would net fish than I'd hold the bucket so they could drop it in. The highlight was catching two smallmouth. It was strange to see these fish in what most would consider a predominantly trout stream.
 
Later I was able to take a shot at netting fish. In a way it was like fishing. There was a funny encouragement in the group. People cheered practically after each fish was netted. I guess it was reward for our efforts. When we felt we covered a considerable amount of water we returned to our starting point to record data.
Length and weight of each fish were taken. Then the PH, conductivity and temperature from the stream. We checked out 3 stretches of water and it was interesting to see the differences.
 
From a distance we probably looked pretty comical. A bunch of people with nets and buckets following a guy with two rods in the water.
We all learned quite a bit about the stream. I always thought seeing crayfish was a good sign. The biologist said that if the crayfish were a certain size it was bad for trout. It meant there was nothing keeping the population in check. We also literally saw the species change. In the lower section there were daces, chubs and smallmouth. Once we hit a certain elevation all we caught were brookies. Many were very small in the 3inch range. This means there are good reproductive rates but something could be keeping the fish from growing past a certain point.
Possibly it was these browns. This would make sense but we only caught 2 out of the 3 sections we surveyed. They were large enough to eat small brookies but not plentiful enough to cut down a population. There were no rainbow trout. The biologist we worked with was named Kevin Hining. He was a pleasure to work with. Everyone who participated was very friendly and fun. How could you have bad day in a place like this?
I wish I could take credit for these pictures but they were all taken by Harrison H. 

If you ever get a chance to do one of these fish surveys I strongly recommend it. It's a good chance to find out what exactly lives in a stream you fish. I really wish I documented and took pictures of our journey out of this place. We had to go out a different way we came in because of the rain and mud. The way we came out had steep hills and red mud. This stuff is basically clay and when it's wet it's like ice. The truck slid all over the road making me kind of happy I had to get out and push part of the time. At least I wasn't in the truck while it was sloshing around. There was one point where Kevin was bouncing the bumper to get traction. While moving up the hill the truck started fish tailing and Kevin went from trying to get traction to hanging on for dear life. The truck eventually got stuck. Even with that experience it was an awesome day and I'd happily do it again. It's worth it for these guys.




14 comments:

  1. The streams in NC look beautiful. Interesting point on the size of the crayfish, I never thought of it in that way. Pretty cool to be able to see first hand what trout are hanging out where, and put the pieces together on why they are where they are. Great post!

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  2. Electrofishing is a ton of fun - it's amazing what you'll find. I remember thinking one stretch of river was devoid of fish, only to struggle to keep up with running rainbow trout to the measuring station after we electrofished. Good for you to help out the fishery!

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  3. Trail The Outdoors, the streams are very scenic. Especially once you get past a certain elevation. Glad you enjoyed the post.

    Argosgirl, We know for a fact there were more fish than we shocked out there. You can only do so much before it becomes inhumane. You could tell the biologists first priority was care for the animals over how many specimans can we get. Glad to hear a comment from some one else who has done this. Thanks for sharing.

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  4. I've done this before too and it's a lot of fun. do you think it will change the way you approach a stream now? I remember large fish popping up in the most unlikely spots.
    awesome looking stream

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  5. Swamp Yankee, it's funny you say that. I should have mentioned it in my post. You are exactly right. All of the places where we were like there HAS to be trout in there we got nothing. Then under a rock in 5inches of water on the side of the creek 3 fish popped up. It doesn't really change my approach to fishing a stream but it does make me understand the importance of fishing all of the water. Even places that seem too shallow to hold fish.

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  6. "No rainbows?" Whazzzat in that photo? :) lol Loved the blog post. nice writing and good info. Looks like a great creek.

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  7. I think this would be really fun and educational. I'm in. I'll have to check to see whether Colorado recruits volunteers.

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  8. Way cool. Always wanted to do one of these surveys. Had a couple of opportunities but passed them up and I sure regret it. A buddy of mine went on one to a stream where the biologists were trying to reestablish brookies. They were having trouble keeping rainbows out. He said they shocked up a couple of wild rainbows and the biologists pitched them up onto the bank. My buddy said that was hard to reconcile with his "catch and release" mentality.

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  9. Howard, I hope they have something in your area.

    CA, I would not be cool with pitching any fish into the bushes. We didn't do anything like that. I have heard rumors of management tactics being used like that before. Never seen it in person though. The tactic wasn't to pitch the fish but it was if you caught any browns you weren't supposed to release them back into the creek. The problem with that is some people can't tell the difference between a brookie, rainbow or brown.

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  10. Thanks for presenting a good documentary on electro-survey work. I've often helped biologists do this work on brook and brown trout waters and considerate it important for a number of reasons. If you ever help with a stream improvement project, the before and after electro-surveys can produce some interesting data!

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  11. My buddy didn't feel too great about it either. There was a serious effort to reestablish brookies in that stream at the time. A ton of rainbows had already been shocked up and relocated to another stream. I guess it wasn't worth the trouble for a couple of leftover stragglers. The funny thing is that I fished that stream many times since and have always caught rainbows. Probably impossible to keep them out unless you have a barrier.

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  12. Excellent write-up Kevin! Great you got to do that and share with us! Beautiful location too!














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  13. Great write up! Enjoyed reading this, and kudos to you for helping out!!

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