Taking a look at environmental issues and future of brook trout: Outdoors column
I was wading up Oriskany Creek from Route 5 on a perfect spring morning.
The water was a good color, a bit dark, since it had rained hard the day before, but about right for what I consider good fishing.
The trout tend to be aggressive and even a little reckless under such conditions.
I was casting salted minnows on an ultralight outfit, as I often did back then, and I picked up a fish now and then. They were nice fish, maybe 10 to 14 inches.
After a while, I noticed a foreign matter in the water. It was grayish, kind of filmy. It looked like dissolved something or other. As I moved along, it became thicker and more solid, and after a while it became obvious what it was - toilet paper.
Soon, it was joined by the kind of things you might imagine accompany toilet paper. I couldn’t believe it, and my stomach started to turn.
I climbed up on the bank and continued upstream. After a while, I came to a big pipe on the east side of the creek that was spewing out that junk. I didn’t know it then, but that was the Clinton sewage outlet.
This was in the days shortly before the Clean Water Act was passed in 1974, and the communities up and down the creek had treatment plants that were very inefficient to say the least. If they had treatment plants at all. I’m sure many homes also discharged sewage directly into the creek.
The next day I called Jim Luz, the environmental guy at the Department of Environmental Conservation office in Utica, who outlined the problem for me. Clinton’s sewer plant could trap solid waste. However, a hard rain could flood the system, and whatever had been caught would be picked up and thrown out into the creek by the rising water.
“But,” Luz explained, “if the water is cold enough, the fish love that stuff.”
Ugh. Even then, I rarely killed a trout. After that episode, I was not going to eat one from that part of the creek.
There are a lot of nutrients in sewage, and in some places, they grow big fish. The Bow River that flows through Calgary is a good example.
The city’s sewage is heavily treated in the city’s plants, but enough phosphorus and nitrogen remain to help boost a large forage base, and the Bow is known for commonly producing 18- to 25-inch trout.
There are other factors involved, but treated sewage is a major contributor.
I was reminded of this experience when I recently read that an angler had caught Atlantic salmon in a tributary of the Thames near London. This happens sometimes.
There has long been a restoration effort on the river, which hosted a major salmon run for millennia until it was destroyed by industrial and human waste produced by a rapidly growing metropolis. The same was true of the Seine and its massive city of Paris, but after fishing in the river a couple of years ago, I learned that recently, because of improved water quality, it now has a salmon run of its own.
Most scientists seem to think the occasional salmon in the Thames are just strays, and that the restoration has been a failure. However, it does give hope that someday the fish will return in a big way.
The willingness to deal with environmental problems might give hope to the future of fisheries here. The one I’m thinking of now concerns brook trout, New York’s official freshwater fish and perhaps the handsomest fish that swims. Global warming is thought to be a huge threat to brook trout, which need clean, cold water to thrive.
Brook trout occupy only a fraction of their pre-colonial range. European settlement and the introduction of non-native species like brown trout had much to do with that. (Brown trout were despised by a great many anglers after they were brought here in the 1880s because of their presumed habit of eating and displacing brookies.) There are several studies that suggest that warming waters are even more of a danger to the only native trout of eastern North America. Recent work by Cornell University scientists suggests that just 5 percent of Adirondack lakes will be able to sustain brook trout populations if summer temperatures continue to climb.
So, what do we do about it?
Are wind turbines and solar fields the answer? Atomic energy? Something else? The impacts go far beyond trout, but that is what I’m interested in now.
I have caught brookies in many area creeks, although fewer now, with a large beaver population in some areas. Beaver ponds on tiny streams are not good for brooks in the long term.
Some of those creeks are so tiny you wouldn’t believe they could float a minnow, and others are quite large and home to big brown trout and other predators you’d think would treat any brook trout like a midnight snack. What that says to me is that brook trout, like so much other wildlife, are very resilient and can thrive if given proper conditions.
It's always a thrill to catch a brookie, on purpose or by chance. No handsomer fish exist. We must ensure they remain with us.
Write to John Pitarresi at 60 Pearl Street, New Hartford, N.Y. 13413 or jcpitarresi41@gmail.com or call him at 315-724-5266.
NOTEBOOK
Sportsman, outdoor shows coming up
The CNY Sportsman Show, which benefits Holy Cross Academy in Oneida, will be held Saturday, March 16.
The show is at a new location – the Verona Fire Department on Volunteer Avenue, off East Main Street (CR 83) in Verona. It runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $7, with children 10 and younger admitted free of charge.
The Big East Camping and Outdoor Sports Show has returned at a new location, Accelerate Sports, 5241 Judd Road in Whitesboro. It will run March 23 and 24. As of this week there are more than 80 exhibitors lined up.
The hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.
CORRECTION
In a recent column on the end of Remington Arms’ two centuries in Ilion, I had an incorrect first name for the author of “Carl Ennis, Master Engraver.” It was written by Ennis’ daughter, Paula Ennis Burns. Paula is the is the author of several other books, including a couple aimed at children – “Abby’s Quest for Cooper” and “Winterfest.” My apologies to her for the error.
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Outdoors: How environmental issues could hamper brook trout future
