Lake fishing has been a long tradition in Maine and especially the Lakes Region. Brook trout, togue, salmon, bass, cusk, whitefish…area waters are home to them all. But as recreational fishing continues to grow in popularity, it is necessary to stock the rivers and lakes so as to sustain healthy populations of certain inland fish. That’s where Maine’s inland fisheries biologists, fisheries and hatcheries come in.

Every spring, biologists from Maine Inland Fish and Wildlife team with hatcheries and fisheries to replenish the lake’s supply of salmon, trout and splake. These fish are known as spring yearlings and are eight to 10 inches long. In region A, which the Lakes Region belongs to, 130,000 trout (86,000 brook, 55,000 brown and 2,300 lake), 11,000 salmon and 3,000 splake are being stocked this year.

Last Tuesday morning, biologist Brian Lewis and a team from Dry Mills Hatchery and Governor Hill Hatchery met at Tricky Pond in Naples to “scatter-plant” brook trout in the water.

“Most of the fish we put out, we just put out from shore like on rivers and lakes and such,” Lewis said. “There are some lakes, like this one, where we prefer to boat them out from the launch, out in deeper water and scatter-plant the fish. We do this for a number of reasons. Say if, at the best access point for instance, there is a major outlet or a dam. Now brook trout gravitate to flow, so you’ll have a bunch of brook trout pretty much stocking the stream instead of the lake. Another reason is sometimes there’s a lot of predation issues and we want to scatter the fish out away from the shoreline where the major predators exist. Another reason we do it is to spread out the catch. We try to spread it out as much as we can.”

For Tricky Pond, Dry Mills Hatchery transported 800 of its brook trout to the site to be scatter-planted. Lewis and Carlton Bryant of Dry Mills along with Raymond Clement and Jim Knight of Governor Hills Hatchery helped safely transfer the Dry Mills’ trout from the tanks on the Dry Mill truck into a tank on a motor boat, using nets and a tube connected to the tanks. Brian then drove the boat into deeper waters of the lake to release the fish, flushing them out through a pipe that ran from the tank out the back of the vessel. They released the fish in increments so as not to ‘stress’ the fish, as Lewis says. One load of trout was transferred from the trucks to the boat tank, along with water, scatter-planted by the motorboat and then another. In less than an hour, Tricky Pond was stocked for another summer season of recreational fishing.

Not every lake is as easy to stock as Tricky Pond. In regions of Maine where it is hard to transport fish by vehicle, the fish are flown to the lakes and released by pontoon planes at low altitude.

“We’ve got a tank on each pontoon and we can put 90 pounds (of fish) on the sides,” Bryant said. “And when they get up there, they drop down and turn a toggle switch that turns the tank upside down and the fish go out.”

Spring is the start of the year’s stocking. The spring stocking begins in April and goes on through the end of May. Stocking is suspended in the summer and then in the fall, fall yearlings, 12-14 inches long for brook trout, are release into the lakes and streams to maintain healthy populations until the spring comes.

The number of fish that are stocked in each body of water each year is determined by the number of the smelt in the water, smelt being the main food source for trout and salmon.

“Data collection is done to assess trends and conditions of inland fish,” Francis Brautigam said, regional fisheries biologist for the IF&W, “We use a hydroacoustic boat to measure and quantify the smelt biomass. This comes up with a total count of smelt and from it we can develop an index of what the lake can support. In the fall, we go out with nets and check the health (of the fish).”

In the past, there has been illegal stocking of non-native fish into area lakes. Because of this, non-native fish such as black bass, black crappies and chain pickerel now pose a threat to native fish populations. Just last year, the IF&W reported that Northern Pike had been found in the lakes. Any non-native fish caught are to be reported to the department.

The Sebago Lakes Anglers Association estimates that “upward of 80,000 anglers” fish the Lakes Region each year. With summer on the approach, biologists like Lewis along with local hatcheries and fisheries are working quickly to stock the thousands of rivers and lakes in Maine. So next time you pick up your rod and head to the lake, tip your fishing cap to the biologists, hatcheries and fisheries who work to help protect the tradition.

Carlton Bryant of Dry Mills Hatchery passes a net full of brook trout to inland fisheries biologist Brian Lewis at Tricky Pond boat launch. Dry Mills supplied the 800 brook trout that were scatter-planted in the pond by motorboat Tuesday morning.

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