Region A- Southwestern Maine

Each summer regional staff electrofish two streams as part of a statewide brook trout monitoring program. These streams are different from our regular summer stream sampling in that they are intensively electrofished in such a way as a population estimate can later be calculated. That is, we can determine roughly how many brook trout there are in our chosen stretch of stream. We choose the best trout streams we can manage for this task so it is always exciting to observe the abundance of wild trout we still find in southern Maine streams.

This kind of work also allows us to become very familiar with a stream in fairly short order. With electrofishing there is no guesswork. You never have to wonder of you spooked the fish, if they weren’t biting, or if there weren’t fish in that hole. I won’ t pretend that I net every single fish the electrofisher shows us, but we do catch the vast majority and it becomes a real eye-opener.

Earlier this month, the day before we sampled one of our brook trout monitoring streams I took a few hours in the morning and went worming for brook trout at a few likely spots. Water was low and I was fishing small streams so legal fish were few and far between, few enough so I released all I caught along with plenty of 4-5 inch pretenders. Since our brook trout monitoring stream was right on the way to work I stopped to dunk a worm in a couple of pools that have historically held a decent number of legal brook trout. As usual, disaster struck right when I was about to begin fishing the best/first pool on the stream.

First cast I felt a nibble so I set the hook on nothing but air and water, the line flew out of the water and wrapped itself around a “flimsy” piece of grass. Rather than expose myself to the pool, I flicked the rod up and broke the handle off my cheapo bargain rod sending rod and reel splashing into the pool.

Despite having hopelessly spooked the trout I plunged doggedly on, and held the reel to the rod for my next cast with which I buried my only hook into a nice meaty log. The next day we electrofished that pool in the course of obtaining our annual sample and I netted 12 legal trout, all of which were released still wearing that smug grin on their pointy little faces from foiling the fishery biologist the previous morning.

So, take a morning off, sneak up to your favorite pool (or explore up a new favorite), throw some hardware or flies at our still abundant wild brook trout and show them who’s boss. Obviously they know I’m not the boss.


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