Kennebec brown trout safely replenished through float stocking

Saturday, May 21, 2005

One recent year, after the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W) released spring-yearling trout into the Kennebec River, Joe Albuit at The Evergreens Campground and Restaurant counted eight ospreys feeding on hatchery fish within sight of his business. That autumn, he watched 14 or 15 mergansers doing the same thing with newly stocked fall yearlings -- an expensive problem. Each gobbled trout lost to avian, mammalian or reptilian foragers costs DIF&W anywhere from $1 to $3 each -- and more in certain circumstances.

After stocking trucks dump trout, the fish stay in a school for a few days and more and attract sharp-eyed predators. These feeding machines see hatchery trout splashing, and birds of prey flying along the river may spot the dense school, mulling around below the surface.

When the ospreys and mergansers caught Albuit's attention, the slaughter also aroused fishing activists around Solon, who started the ball rolling for solving the problem. They approached DIF&W with the idea to float-stock, which disperses trout immediately. Such a move would stop flocks of ospreys or mergansers from keying on a large school. Bob Mallard at Kennebec River Outfitters in Madison and then the Somerset Chapter of Trout Unlimited pushed for float-stocking this Kennebec stretch, and the program relied almost solely on volunteer help.

Last Tuesday morning, for the second May in a row, float-stocking volunteers showed up at The Evergreen Campgrounds boat launch and tied several tire tubes to a drift boat, large rubber raft and canoe. The volunteers who had gathered the tubes submerged holding nets in the center hole, homemade holding containers for trout transferred from the stocking truck. A boat and canoes were also set up at a boat launch far below the Solon campground.

After volunteers hustled about 1,000 brown trout into the nets, the flotilla drifted downstream from the two launches to spread fish along the river. The stocking truck released 3,000 more browns at various points.

I floated in Bob Mallard's drift boat while Ursus Productions filmed footage, which will be shown on The Maine Outdoorsman. I manned a rubber-meshed net for dipping them, which causes virtually no injury to the browns. The idea was to take two or three at a time from the submerged nets and put them into likely habitat, dependent on bottom structure.Ê

In a perfect world, DIF&W would have a widespread, float-stocking program going statewide, but such an undertaking would rely on massive numbers of volunteers, the likes of which Maine has never seen. For the time being, two Trout Unlimited chapters have float-stocking projects on the Kennebec and Androscoggin rivers, but I suspect it will grow as more TU chapters and organizations become involved.

Last spring, this Solon float stock attracted several DIF&W workers, which instigated people to say it was a waste of employee time for such a minor stocking. However, this first outing attracted many of the department's personnel, who were curious spectators more than workers.

This year, other than the two hatchery guys with the tank truck -- who needed to be there anyway -- just two other DIF&W people showed up, Bill Pierce, a public-relations guy, and Scott Davis, a fisheries biologist. Those two were helping an Outdoor Life magazine editor on a story as well as overseeing the initial part of the stocking. In the future, I suspect we'll see just one DIF&W person in addition to the hatchery truck workers.

Salmon and trout eventually disperse from stocking points where tank trucks dump them, and DIF&W studies show trout can travel miles. So, the aim of float stocking is spreading fish out to evade the initial, intense predation from critters, and yes, from humans following stocking trucks.

Float stocking achieves another huge goal in my humble opinion. It is a sensational public-relations vehicle for DIF&W. I have participated both years, and the volunteers get positively giddy -- sort of like kids on the playground the last day of school. The day gives the average person an opportunity to rub elbows with department personnel, which builds a healthy relationship between DIF&W and its customer base.

Through the years, I have helped DIF&W fisheries biologists with electro-fishing and trap-netting studies, giving me more appreciation of these professionals. They have hard, physically demanding jobs that can be dangerous at times.

Not long ago, I was sitting near the transom in a DIF&W boat. While the waves pitched the small craft around, Bill Woodward, a biologist, laboriously pulled a heavy, fish-slimed trap over the gunwale and transferred the brookies to a holding container. He then began dipping his hands into 41-degree water again and again to grab individual brookies for measuring, weighing and recording other data.

Bill fed me the information as I sat clean and dry away from the action. On that raw, gray morning, I could not help but think that DIF&W biologists have college degrees, several of them master's degrees, and often, they routinely perform harder, dirtier work than common laborers do. Float stockers get a small taste of that regimen, a very small taste.

Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, is a writer, editor and photographer. To reach him, send e-mail to KAllyn800@aol.com