Togue Survey
West Carry Pond
August 2016
(The following is a melding of
several emails from David Howatt. If you
would like copies, contact (pondstream@yahoo.com)
Norm Kalloch
A fisheries
team headed by Fisheries biologist David Howatt put out two, 400 feet gillnets
into the deeper water at West Carry Pond on August 17. They were targeting small, young togue with
small mesh nets set deep (70’-90’). The nets
were pulled on August 18th and the fish inventoried. Despite going into deeper water and setting
no net with greater than 2-inch mesh only large togue were caught. IF&W is doing similar surveys of young
trout in all of their regional waters where they exist and will compare surveys
in future years.
Inventory: 31 togue killed and released 6 togue within a
size range of 15.5” to 30.5.” The
largest kept (29.25”) weighed 91/2 pounds.
Some of the fish under 18” were immature, so getting ballpark ages via
scale reading may be possible.
Also, 8
brookies were caught with 5 being lively enough to be released. They ranged from 12.5” to 18”. The 3 that were killed all had notable “bound
parasite”, which is a life stage of a type of tape worm. Mr. Howatt stated that this can be detrimental
to spawning success and likely contributes to a relatively low population of
brook trout in West Carry.
David also wrote, tapeworms are common in a lot of brook trout population. This particular species involves life stages in crustaceans(usually copepods) so the percentage of fish without it is probably quite low. The 3 fish sample (non target) does not tell us much, but there's not much that can be done to combat it. It is often a sign of over population, which is probably not the case with West Carry.
Other fish
caught were 50 white suckers, 7 long nose suckers, and 6 smelts. Smelts and sculpins showed up in the togue
stomachs. 10 golden shiners, 2 very small pickerel, a few crayfish were sampled
in 2 minnow traps. No new species were
documented.
This winter,
after compiling and analyzing the data, a brief report will be written and a
copy sent to the CPA. We will post it to our blog.
If you have
questions about the survey contact David
Howatt at the IF&W office in Strong. (David.Howatt@maine.gov)
