RI Squid Fishing from Shore

May is Squid Fishing time in Rhode Island and Connecticut. The following text was taken from the Squidfish.net forum. The postings are from April 27 to May.

Goat Island Bridge, Rhode Island: There is a bridge between Newport city and Goat Island and that's where people fish for squid. The bridge is not that long, just a couple hundred yards. On Goat Island there is a Hyatt Hotel and a yacht club. The bridge is well lighted so squid are attracted to the area. People are allowed to fish only on one-side of the bridge so it gets crowded. On weekend nights a lot of people bring lanterns and the whole place is lit up and it's quite a sight.

Squid fishing in Rhode Island is the best around the East Coast. You can expect at least 2 gallon worth around the fall season. Spring season yields at least 5 gallon a person. It does get mighty crowded though. Elbow tight...??? I would rather say hand tight. That's pretty much all you can get over the bridge if you come late.

From Dartmouth to Newport, you want to drive 195 west to 77 to 138. You're better off using MapQuest and find directions to the Hyatt hotel in Newport. It's at Goat Island, and we fish on the bridge.

Anyways, first of all u need yourself a lamp with a rope and have it hanging off the bridge to light things up. Since you're a newbie at this, I recommend that you use a propane lamp. I use a petromax lamp (conventional fuel). Bird style jigs such as 'Yo-zuri's ultra lens' are best. Pink is the preferable color. If not opt for green. When getting jiggy, you want to drop your rig with the 1 once sinker/2 ounce if the current is moving too fast, to the bottom and gently raise the rod tip. And drop it down gently.

Mackerels too! Not a lot of squid, but plenty of Mackerels!!! I would like to call it the Big Mack-Attack! It was raining awfully hard but the macks ruled Goat Island!!! The macks ranged from a foot to 1 1 /2 ft! Bit Macks!!! There were so man people snagged them on their squid jigs! Awesome!!! My father racked up about 50 or so of these colossel macks!

Macedonia Brook

The Macedonia Brook that rolls through a state park and then meanders through the Kent meadows is arguably the prettiest 8-mile stretch of water in the state. It's not just the sight that is so idyllic as this picturesque stream, barely 10 feet wide in stretches, slips beneath the treed canopy in the center of the park. The sound also is therapeutic. The rolling rapids, their water levels raised by recent rain, slip over rocks and boulders to form small, gentle waterfalls.

"It's such a healthy little stream," said Mike Humphreys, the DEP fisheries biologist responsible for overseeing wild trout management in the northwestern corner of the state. "It has good water quality. It's clear. It's cold. There's a watershed forest and not much development. The percentage of trout that make it to the next year is 30-40 percent, and that's a good survival rate.

"In the lower Wild Trout Management Area, the growth rate is pretty incredible. There are wild brown trout in there up to 23 inches long. It's hard to fish, and [anglers] definitely need waders, but there's not much canopy to get in the way of fly fishermen. There's a great opportunity there to catch some monster trout."

Even the access to Macedonia Brook is picturesque. Routes 44 and 341 take anglers past classic horse farms, old barns, vintage farmhouses, miles of old fieldstone walls and, in mid-spring, large daffodil fields. The lower portion of the brook bisects land owned by the National Park Service. The Appalachian Trail crosses the farmland that borders the brook, with anglers gaining access by climbing steps that cross a fence. In summertime, the park campsites that line the upper sections of the brook are filled with overnight campers, and many tent sites and picnic tables are only 10 feet from the water.

Signs in the state park mark the two Trout Management Areas, reminding anglers that they are fishing in a special wild trout area and that there is a 9-inch length minimum. The waters are stocked three times in the spring with the DEP beginning at the Keeler Road bridge in the Sharon section of the park and working their way downstream.

The state has had so little rain this spring, Macedonia Brook was just a trickle on Opening Day. Last weekend's rain raised the stream to more normal levels - ideal for the two more adult trout stockings it will receive before Memorial Day. The brook already has had one visit from the state stocking truck, which also released its annual allotment of 1- to 2-inch trout fry. Besides the 9-inch minimum length limit in the wild trout management area within the park, fishing in the wild trout management area from the confluence with Bog Hollow Brook to the Route 341 bridge is limited to catch-and-release. "There are two different TMAs and two different management areas," Humphreys said. "There is no stocking in the lower TMA, but there are plenty of trout, and it's easily accessible by the Appalachian Trail on National Park Service land.

"It's a great spot for kids and young fishermen," said Joe Macritchie, campground manager. "It used to be a secret. Not anymore." "There were probably 60 to 75 people fishing here Opening Day, but it's not unheard of to find nobody there weekdays this time of year. Now, with the rain, the streambed is full. There are a lot of pretty streams, but not many are as pretty as this one." [Hartford Courant, Tommy Hine]

Aleback Herring: Fact or Fiction?

A regular reader of this blog and fellow blogger, Tom of sphere, noted that Blueback herring were stocked in the Bronx River not the allegedly fictional "Aleback herring". This antique photo of an aleback should be proof enough that the beer drinking Ale-Back does exist. It should also be noted that Aleback's companion, Alewife, can usually be seen chasing after him, especially on paydays.

While pickled herring is made with imported sea-herring, it's not as big a faux-pas as Rep. Jose Serrano's comment: "Today it's herring, tomorrow it's gefilte fish!"

Herring Stocked in Bronx River with Connecticut's help

Fish don't vote, but that didn't stop South Bronx congressman Jose Serrano was more than happy yesterday to meet and greet a bunch of flipping-flopping silvery alewife herrings, which have not populated the Bronx River since the Dutch settlers dammed it up back in the 1600s.

• Serrano, among those involved in cleaning up the once severely polluted estuary, came up with the federal funding to begin reseeding it with the small fish - which, it is hoped, will draw other fish and birds on the food chain to the river.
• Serrano, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Bronx River Alliance and other organizations tipped the first ceremonial netfull of the 12-inch herring into a bucolic stretch of the river running through the Bronx Zoo. Then Steve Gephard, supervising fisheries biologist with the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and his workers opened the valve on a tank atop a truck, giving 200 of the adult alebacks a watery slide down a large hose into the river.
• Once their eggs hatch, Gephard explained, the fish will work their way down the river, past the industrial wasteland alongside the Sheridan Expressway and Hunts Point and out to sea. Four or so years from now, they'll return up the river, to spawn once more.
• The advantage of having aleback herring once again in the river? "What we are doing is restoring an essential cog to the Bronx River ecosystem. At some point in the near future, you're gonna have thousands of these fish coming back. And others will come later."

"We're saying that we care about this river," said John Calvelli, senior vice president for public affairs for the WCS, which runs the zoo. "We're saying that it's going to be clean three to five years from now, and we're saying that we'll be here waiting for them to come back." [Daily News Bronx, by B Kappstatter]

Tom Anderson from Sphere commented: It would be easier to take the Daily News seriously is they had bothered to get the name of the fish right. There are blueback herring and there are alewives (both of the genus Alosa and both related to American shad), but there are no aleback herring. Also I'm pretty sure that pickled herring are made from sea herring, not river herring.

Kensington Hatchery & Atlantic Salmon

• * The Kensington Hatchery on Old Hatchery Road is one of three sites in the state involved in the Atlantic Salmon restoration project designed to bring the prized fish back to Connecticut streams. Since the early 1980s, the 46- acre Berlin facility has been devoted to hatching Atlantic salmon. As Albin J. Sonski, hatchery manager, puts it, “My job is to make fish.”
• * The facility is under the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, Fisheries Division, Bureau of Natural Resources. The four-man operation, the smallest in the state, requires the maintenance of 75 pond units. It is not open to the public.
• * Restoring Atlantic salmon in the Connecticut River basin is a joint undertaking by the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The project began with an act of Congress in 1983. The Atlantic salmon was native to Connecticut before the dams built for industrial purposes in the 1800s drove it to extinction in this region.
• * “Atlantic salmon is very difficult to raise,” Sonski said. The fish spawn in October and produce about 3 million eggs at the Kensington hatchery. The hatchery’s bio-technology methods produce about a million “eyed-eggs’ a year, about 850,000 of which survive to become fry, one-inch baby fish.
• * The federally operated hatchery in Mass. allocates 20,000 eggs to the Kensington facility. These eggs come from adults returning to the ocean. Of those about 1,000 will eventually become 4-year-old brood fish at the Kensington facility and the remainder will be stocked as fry. The brood fish are used only once by the hatchery and then released into streams. It sounds like a lot of fish, but the final outcome of the careful spawning, raising and stocking of Atlantic salmon shows a dramatic mortality rate. An anadromous fish, salmon are born in fresh water, later migrate to ocean salt water and then seek to return to the rivers for spawning. “They want to go into the rivers and they can’t. There are dams all over,” Sonski said.
• * Released adult fish are often killed by predators, including fishermen, and may die from any number of other causes, before they have a chance to return home to fresh water to spawn a new generation, Sonski said. “We do have returning salmon to the Salmon River and the Farmington River,” Sonski said.
• * However, Sonski said the status of the project is “scary.” There are just 150 to 300 adult fish that return to the rivers. “It’s been like that for several years,” he said. The best year was back in the late 1980s when one year over 580 fish returned. The fish are hand counted at fish traps located at fish ways at dams.
• * With the time invested — more than two decades — and the money, there is a lot of discussion and, of course, some controversy attached to the project, Sonski said. He compared the difficulties in raising Atlantic salmon to that of raising brown trout like the difference between “weeds and roses.” The hatchery also raises trout and stocked Connecticut rivers with about 150,000 fry this spring.
• * It’s going to take more time and more effort Sonski said of the Atlantic salmon project. Part of that effort is getting dam owners to work with the restoration project. There needs to be more accommodation to help the fish by-pass the risky plunge over the dam or the route through the dam turbines that surely will kill them. In 2002, legislation that included the Connecticut River Compact (and the Atlantic salmon project) was reauthorized for an additional 20 years. However, essential funding for the program was not fully addressed, according to information from the Connecticut River Salmon Association.
• * Sonski explained why he thinks the Atlantic salmon project is a valuable conservation effort. “It’s like asking why is it important to keep the American bald eagle from going extinct,” he said. [Kensington Hatchery involved in restoration project By Olivia L. Lawrence, The Berlin Citizen 4/20/06]

Bypass built at Cannondale Dam to aid passing trout

WILTON: For trout approaching the small, impassible dam in Cannondale, there is a new current entering the river. Environmentalists hope it lures the trout, leading them up a bypass built last fall to enable fish to reach native spawning grounds farther upstream. "Upriver, there's a clear area with lots of gravel that's good for spawning," said Jeff Yates, a member of the Mianus chapter of Trout Unlimited.

• Three dams on the lower Norwalk River have prevented anadromous fish from reaching upstream spawning areas for years. The Flock Process Dam, just south of the Merritt Parkway, is 22 feet high. For three years, environmental groups have worked on plans to help fish get past the dams. Besides Flock Process, there are Strong Pond Dam in Merwin Meadows, a Wilton town park, and the Cannondale Dam near the Cannondale train station.
• The dam and bypass are on private property, but an easement, acquired by the Wilton Land Trust, provides public access from Pimpewaug Road near the Cannon Road bridge. The bypass is a horseshoe-shaped, manmade trench that diverts water from the river at one end, above the dam, and returns the water to the river at the other end, below the dam.
• Bypasses have been successful in the state, including at a spot on the Saugatuck River, said Chris Malik, western coastal watershed coordinator for the state Department of Environmental Protection. "It's not at all unusual to create bypass channels when feasible," Malik said. "It's less expensive and more natural, and fish are more likely to adapt to something more natural."
• Anadromous fish will not use the Cannondale Dam bypass until they can get past the first two dams on the Norwalk River. The wild trout and brook trout in the river can use it, though they won't until the fall, when they spawn. Then the engineering of the bypass, designed by Milone & MacBroom, will be tested. "It had to be steep enough to draw the fish with the strong current, but not too steep so the fish couldn't effectively use it," said Yates of Trout Unlimited. "They're trout, not salmon."
• Plans for the Flock Process and Strong Pond dams are ongoing, officials say. The plan for Strong Pond is complicated by the presence of contaminated sediment in the water behind the dam, officials said. The plan is to vacuum much of the sediment and slowly breach the dam, Yates said. But town officials are concerned about the potential to flood Merwin Meadows, a popular park and place for families to fish.
• The DEP stocks the Norwalk River with brook trout from Ridgefield to Wolfpit Road in Wilton. About 4,000 trout were put in the river this year, and 2,000 more will be added in the summer. The river is a trout management area, which means trout smaller than 9 inches must be released if caught.

Pier plan fuels concern over oysters' survival

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• NORWALK -- Shellfish officials said they are concerned that a recent pier permit issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection will damage fragile oyster beds.
• The permit allows a property owner off Seaside Place in East Norwalk to build a fixed pier, ramp and floating dock that officials say will jut out 82 feet into Norwalk Harbor and the city's famed oyster beds.
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• John Frank, chairman of the Norwalk Shellfish Commission, said the structures will be in a part of the harbor where commercial shellfishermen frequently dredge for oysters. The dock also will likely rest on the bottom of the shoreline during low tides, potentially hurting the city's oyster population, he said."In this case, it's one of the few places in Norwalk where we can get oysters, and we're willing to fight for it," Frank said.
• Oysters have been on the decline in Norwalk for a number of years since being hit by two parasites, MSX and Dermo, in 1997. The parasites destroyed state beds, killing about nine out of 10 oysters.
• Shellfishermen watched the state's oyster bushels drop from a high of 894,000 in 1992 to a low of 24,000 bushels in 2004.
• Oyster beds have just begun to recover from the epidemic and are showing signs of a robust year, said Norm Bloom Jr., who owns Norm Bloom & Son shellfish company.
• "The oysters are doing good. Everything we have is living, so the more areas and beds we can protect, the better it will be," Bloom said.
• David Evans of 11 Seaside Place submitted his plan for the dock to the Norwalk Harbor Commission and Norwalk Shellfish Commission last year. Both agencies rejected the plans because the dock would lie on city shellfish beds at ebb tide and harm the beds, harbor officials said. From there, his plans were submitted for review to the DEP, the state agency that issues pier permits.
• DEP officials revised the plans so that the dock structure would not hurt the city's oyster population, said Dennis Schain, an agency spokesman. The tentative plan, called a notice of tentative agreement, was released by the DEP on Nov. 22 and included a 40-day comment period. Members of the city's Shellfish and Harbor Management commissions submitted several suggestions Dec. 29 on ways to improve the plan.
• DEP officials took Norwalk harbor officials' comments into consideration as they modified the plan to create a pier that would not hurt shellfish beds, Schain said. "We believe the approved structure will allow for a dock at this property while protecting important resources, including shellfish," Schain said.
• Charles Evans, director of the Office of Long Island Sound Programs, said in a letter announcing approval of the structure that several modifications were made to the plan. The revisions reduce the length of the fixed pier, trimming the entire structure by about 15 feet.
• The DEP issued the permit to David Evans on April 10 but did not seek input from Norwalk officials on the final version of the plan, Harbor Management Commission Chairman Tony Mobilia said. "We are upset because we didn't get a chance to review this permit since the plan was revised and we never got to see the revision of the application," Mobilia said. "We usually have a chance to review it and, in this case, that did not happen." Mobilia plans to discuss the effect the pier will have on Norwalk Harbor with the Harbor Management Commission at its meeting Wednesday evening.
• "We don't want to stop the guy from getting a dock," Frank said. "He has a beautiful location in a subdivision that has been there for about 100 years. No one has ever had a dock there because there's no water at low tide, but you can't fault him for thinking he could improve his property if he could do it." But Frank said his commission has an obligation to ensure minimal damage. Schain said Norwalk officials can do little now that the permit has been issued besides file an appeal as an "aggrieved party" with the state Superior Court.
• Frank said he wants to see whether Norwalk officials can stop the pier from being built or help the shorefront owner revise his dock plans with a more environmentally friendly design. Frank would rather see a 25-foot pier installed with a boat lift, an alternative he said will protect the oysters.
• "I think they made a mistake, and if we go about it right, I think it can be reconciled without a lot of ceremony and without anybody being embarrassed," he said. [Stamford Advocate, by Alison Damast]
  

Farm River State Park: Wireless Internet Access

In a first for Connecticut, a state park is about to go wireless. Farm River State park, a 57-acre waterfront site, will soon be a center for environmental study and education, an outdoor classroom for a New Haven magnet school and a base for boating programs. An additional 15 acres feature a marina.
The state, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Trust for Public Lands, bought both parcels in 1998 for one and three-quarter million dollars. Its management is under contract to Quinnipiac University in Hamden.
Using an $86 thousand dollar state grant, the state park will become Connecticut's first to have wireless Internet access.
Students also can use the wireless park to do "real-time environmental monitoring," including water temperature, quality and salinity, he said.
In addition, Smits said he will place a Web camera near nesting ospreys to be viewed by students on computer screens.

Best places to catch a fish in CT

1. The first two weeks of the trout season provide the best trout fishing because that's when the most trout are available. Every angler has his or her best fishing spot; the following is a guide to some of Western Connecticut's prime inland waters.
2. The three best all-around trout, bass and panfish lakes are Candlewood in New Milford, East Twin in Lakeville and Highland in Winsted. The best pike water is Bantam Lake in Morris, West Hill Pond in New Hartford is the favored loch for kokanee and Squantz Pond is the best walleye water.
3. The best trout rivers are the Farmington and Housatonic most of the year, and the Naugatuck and Pomperaug until Memorial Day. The Connecticut River is the best multiple-fishery river.
4. Candlewood Lake is an excellent bass and trout fishery. It has healthy populations of smallies and bucketmouths. Smallmouths in the three- to five-pound range and largemouths of five to eight pounds have been reported in the last few seasons. Those big bass released last year should be super size this season.
5. Candlewood trouters catch many browns and some rainbows in the three- to five-pound range and a few bruiser browns that weigh six to nine pounds. Experienced anglers claim that Candlewood has the most big brown trout of any water in the state.
6. And the Squantz Pond arm of the lake has its share of large trout and some walloping walleyes that measure more than 22 inches. It should be a great year for catching perch-pike!
7. East Twin Lake has fast become one of the best trophy trout lakes in the state. The large population of alewives, slot limits and a healthy trout stocking program are the reasons why. The 16-pound, 14-ounce state record brown came out of East Twin in 1986 before the DEP Fisheries' focus changed from kokanee to brown trout. East Twin may equal or have exceeded Candlewood in the number of big browns per acre. Lots of bruiser browns are expected to leave East Twin this spring.
8. In addition, the lake has a good supply largemouth, calico and smallmouth bass. The DEP trophy records of East Twin Lake list several calico bass in the two-pound range, many chain pickerel ranging from five to 6.5 pounds and a few lunker largemouth bass. East Twin has a healthy population of bluegills that are fry-pan size.
9. Highland Lake has a triple-treat fishery. The lake has many three to five-pound bronzebacks and five to six-pound largemouths. Trophy Awards records indicate a long list of smallies that were reported caught in the four- to six-pound range. Highland Lake is classified as a lake that supports fishable numbers of holdover browns.
10. One excellent reason to go trouting in the lake is the number of husky browns that have been recorded over the years. There are two reasons why large browns inhabit the lake: The state stocks the lake well, and it has a healthy alewife population. It is known that four- to six-pound browns have come out of the middle basin with great regularity.
11. At Bantam Lake, the ultimate exhilarating experience is hooking into a mini-locomotive: a northern pike. Northerns in the 32- to 40-inch range are caught regularly. A few small gators that stretch the tape from 41 to 46 inches are hooked each year. Some pikers believe that the new state record pike, one over 29 pounds, is in the lake. Note that all pike have to be returned until May 1 when the season opens.
12. Since the demise of the kokanee program at East Twin and Wononscopomuc, West Hill Pond is the best choice for catching kokanee for several reasons. Some 50,000 salmon fry are stocked annually by the DEP, and for many years the salmon in West Hill have grown larger than those in Lakeville. [The best places to catch a fish by BOB GREGORSKI Republican-American ]