So I went back a few days later--with shiners. And that worked:
Caught two Pickerel. One came home for dinner.
Last weekend I tried again without bait and was skunked again. So this time, yesterday, the 27th, I tried with shiners again. It was very slow fishing, but after almost three hours, I finally caught a really nice 12"calico. Then I had two more bites I missed--probably more of the same.
Well, that worked! I caught a trout! It was in the "upper" pool, but when I landed it I instantly recognized the fish--it was one I had caught at least once if not twice before--in the lower pool. The photographic record proves it. Unfortunately for this fish, I used a #2 hook. I had been on a #8 but lost two dead shiners to him on that hook. I saw it in the water taking them. So I figured that maybe the hook point wasn't catching it. Well, it got it in the eye, so I took it home. This is the 2nd fish I've caught on #2 and both times they've been impaled in the eye.
And the starboard side from December:
I harvested the fish and it was very good.
But more interesting was that it had a full stomach--and not merely from one of the earlier shiners. It seems to have been eating what are possibly case caddis:
I've read with great interest about the Farmington Survivor Strain program. That makes a lot of sense. But it must be expensive. I know that regular adult trout stocking is one of the most expensive stocking programs around--about $4 per fish I read somewhere concerning Michigan. What does it cost to do the Farmington approach? And if we did that in other rivers, could we transition to natural reproduction, or is there just way too much pressure?
Here's the unfortunate part about hatchery trout, excluding the survivor strain... there is now maintaining of genetic diversity. If you take samples of the wild populations that our hatchery fish were derived from and compared them to the current hatchery generation, the difference would be pretty startling... basically, "we" have made trout that grow fairly quickly and handle stable conditions well but are not nearly diverse enough to survive stream conditions effectively. With every generation we get further from a wild fish. That's what makes relict wild and native populations valuable... Just taking them to the hatchery to spawn gets you better genetic! Unfortunately that would be quite an expensive undertaking and only a handful of rivers actually fit the bill. Taking holdovers from, say, the Salmon River or Chatfield would get you better genetics but it would take years and years to get anywhere near as diverse a population as the Farmington. And you run the risk of a year or two of drought conditions bottle-necking the population. Wild and holdover trout are special animals... all the more reason to take care and tread lightly! As the proportion of wild to stocked trout on the Farmington has grown so has the pressure, and we both know that a significant number of the 50 fish a euro nympher catches and releases in two days do not survive the experience. Self restraint needs to become the new normal, not the current common 'catch every fish in the pool' mentality.
ReplyDeleteYes to all that as follows.
ReplyDelete1. Diversity. I think about commercial salmon and shudder. Basically our stocker trout could have told them so...
2. Chatfield. I met a guy my age ice fishing up there who told about fishing the creek there as a kid. There were lots of wild brookies. Now there are not any wild brookies as far as I can tell. Apparently we've been seeing losses --- inexorably -- in just my lifetime, which is really upsetting. I thought we'd been turning things around. But not really.
3. Farmington. Yes lots of pressure. Only fished it twice. Last January. Never been there in summer or "peak" shoulder seasons. I ogle Farmington River Rod Company videos to live vicariously.
3.a. Fishing pressure and catch every fish. Yes. I hear you on that. I've asked that same question before--as a rhetorical one--with other people. I frame it this way: "if the creel limit is 8, then do you stop at 8 caught, or stop at 8 eaten? What if you release everything? I say stop at 8..." with the same exact point about injury and mortality. I've read some really interesting papers (you've probably read them too) which confict each other on things like treble hooks, barbed hooks, dry hands etc. Some seem to show very low mortality, others significant.
Some species are worse than others. Then there was the striped bass study in Maryland. That was interesting.