Greetings & Fish ID Help

[bscanman]

This is my first post on this board, glad to finally find a local flyfishing forum. I'm looking forward to some good discussions regarding our sport.

I could use a little help from the board. Following are pics of three fish I picked up on a small stream in the Berkshires yesterday. These three were among many that rose to a #16 Adams cast upstream into a variety of pocket water, pools, and short runs. The first two are easy, a pretty brookie and a salmon parr. The third just isn't that obvious to me, and of course, its picture is the least clear. It has no vermiculations like a brookie, its coloration looks like the salmon, but the anal fin has a white edge and the tail is squared like a brookie. Any ideas???

Brian

[Uplander]

Wow! Salmon in a Berkshire stream? I've never heard of, or seen such a thing! I assume it's a stocked fish, but I thought they only stocked salmon in the CT River, and a few ponds. An escapee perhaps?

[bscanman]

Yes, the salmon that I bump into on streams are stocked by DIFW as part of the restoration effort (anther topic entirely!). They stock about 2 million of them a year as fry (about 1/2") in many of the feeder brooks of the Westfield, Deerfield and Connecticut Rivers. They supposedly spend two years growing then head out to sea. If they come back as adults to spawn they get captured at the fishways on the Westfield or Connecticut Rivers, then get shipped off to the hatchery to get squeezed for their eggs. The guy in the picture looks like he should have been gone by now, but with the cold spring maybe he's just taking his time heading downstream. They also stock salmon in the Quabbin and ponds solely for the purpose of catching.

Anyhow, still doesn't explain my mystery fish. I'm thinking brown trout, but I didn't know browns could reproduce naturally in the Berkshires. If it is a wild brown, that would be quite cool.

[Uplander]

bscanman said:

They stock about 2 million of them a year as fry (about 1/2") in many of the feeder brooks of the Westfield, Deerfield and Connecticut Rivers.

Well, technically then, you didn’t catch these fish in the Berkshires….

To the best of my knowledge, none of those rivers fall within the political entity known as Berkshire County.

Which brings to mind a whole nother issue; what, exactly, constitutes “the Berkshires?” To my mind the Berkshires is more than just Berkshire County. It’s a region that encompasses bits of Southern Vermont, the Taconics of New York, and parts of Connecticut. But, perhaps the illustrious ringleaders of the Berkshire Flyfishing club should tell us what they consider “the Berkshires….”

Oh, and bscanman, there sure are browns naturally reproducing in the Berkshires! Too bad, ‘cause they force out my own personal favorite; the wild, native brook trout….

[bscanman]

Uplander, thanks for your observation. I checked my map and by employing my rudimentary cartography skills, these fish were caught about 3 miles outside of Berkshire County. I'll be more careful in future posts when referencing geographic locations. Does the Deerfied count as a Berkshire river? Guess that depends which bank you're standing on at Carbis Bend. How about the Westfield? The vast majority of it runs through Hampshire and Hampden Counties, but it's headwaters are definately within Berkshire.

Anyway, back to the original post-any ideas on fish #3?

[brutus]

I think it is a brown trout.I have not caught any but I have been told by a few different people that there
are streams in the berkshires that have wild browns
in them.If anything they are more tight lipped about these streams than some of the guys who fish streams for brookies.I can't blame em for wanting to keep them
a secret.

[Uplander]

bscanman said:

Uplander, thanks for your observation. I checked my map and by employing my rudimentary cartography skills, these fish were caught about 3 miles outside of Berkshire County. I'll be more careful in future posts when referencing geographic locations. Does the Deerfied count as a Berkshire river? Guess that depends which bank you're standing on at Carbis Bend. How about the Westfield? The vast majority of it runs through Hampshire and Hampden Counties, but it's headwaters are definately within Berkshire.

Anyway, back to the original post-any ideas on fish #3?

No skin off my nose. I’m quite flexible when it comes to defining “the Berkshires.”

As for fish #3, I’d say it’s a very light colored brookie…. I’ve caught ‘em coal black, with stunning rims of gold and orange, and light like the one in your picture.

I'm no expert, but while it seems to me that color can vary, tails don't lie....

[Joshua Field]

Re: the Berkshires:

I'm fond of this terribly vague definition from from "The Berkshires" by Roderick Peattie 1948 (though by his definition, I'm not a true Berkshirite!) -

"The Berkshire Hills, the Purple Hills, cannot, except for a few peaks, be called mountains. Yet at one time they seemed very tall to me, for an an early age, a youngster fresh from the flat planes of the Middle West, I went to school among them. In the autumn the heights were covered with brilliant trees. Winter was unbelievably beautiful - I remember some night escapades that took me on lonely snowshoe trips. In the spring there was the sight of the trilliums in the woods.
But it was a shock to find that I was not really in the Berkshires at all. I was in New York by a few miles, and the Berkshires by some concept of man, are limited to within the Massachusetts line. Connecticut hills are said to be inhabited by people from New York who have a distinctly urban tinge; and the hills of New York are the Dutch Hills and are so called by the true Berkshirites, who feel, when they visit Vermont, they are experiencing rural simplicity. The true Berkshirite carries on the traditions of William Cullen Bryant, Catherine Sedgwick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Fanny Kemble, and serves tea in the victorian manner. But the section has, more than this, a definite cultural expression which appeals to me, since I am a regionalist. "

Of course this does little to settle the discussion about the bounds of the Berkshires with Mass. But hey, the Berkshires are really a state of mind, right? Incidentally, this book has a fun chapter on Fly Fishing in the berkshires which some day, I'll get up the gumption to transcribe for board.

[JoeOverlock]

I have the same view of the Berkshires as Uplander does, Southern VT, Northern CT, Pioneer Valley, Eastern NY. But the map tells me different.

As for Brown Trout naturally reproducing in the Berkshire, I won't be tight lipped about it! We have naturally reproducing Browns in the Hoosic. And they get BIG! Years of PCB contamination to the river have caused the state to stop destroying our river with stocking. And we're now reaping the benefits of it. This year has been lousy for the trout though, with the spring floods and sudden heat. The Hoosic is about 3 steps away from being a perfect trout stream. We need to get the flood chutes taken care of, lower the basin dams so that trout can migrate, and have tighter pollution control.

Now as for Atlantic Salmon in the Berkshires. Historic records report settlers that sailed up the Hudson River caught Atlantic Salmon there. This contradicts recent reports by biologists that Salmon never spawned in the Hudson River Watershed. Personally I believe there is some politics involved in these reports. But it has been documented that Salmon spawned in the Hoositonic River Watershed, so there's your Berkshire Salmon, Historically speaking that is.

Now, here is the direction we're heading in, the club that is. I've been consulting Gary Loomis (of G.Loomis rods and Fist First) and he has an excellent program in place for Pacific Salmon and Steelhead that I'd like to use out here for our Atlantic Salmon. Starting this winter I'd like the club to start discussing putting this program in place out here. The only problem is we need more members so we can have more volunteers. Also we need more money. Plus it involves doing work in areas other then the map boundaries of the Berkshires. If you would like more info about Gary Loomis' Fish First and the program they use for the Salmon please visit fishfirst.org/

Oh, those where some nice pictures by the way. I don't know what that last picture was exaxtally, but I'd call it a brookie and tell everyone it was 14" long. j/k

[BambooMatt]

Looks like a Brown Trout parr to me...

Brookies have lighter spots on a darker background, that fish has dark spots on a light background.

Just to further confuse everybody, I have caught two truly wild Brook/Brown hybrids (Tiger Trout) in a tiny remote stream here in the Berkshires. They were spectacular with worm-like vermiculations on the entire fish, which are usually found only on the back of the brook trout. They had an overall golden yellow/olive color and a head that looked more like a brown. Very few spots.
A Tiger trout is a sterile hybrid cross between a female brown trout and a male brook trout and can occur (rarely) when brook and brown trout spawn in very close proximity.
The state stocks some hatchery-raised specimens in the lakes every year, but their colors are no match for the real thing. I'll post a photo of the bigger one I caught (about 11 inches) as soon as I can scan it.
There definitely are wild Brown trout in many local streams including the Deerfield, the Hoosic, The Greens in Williamstown and Great Barrington, the Housatonic (all three branches and the main stem) and dozens of small streams. This I know because I've seen spawning activity and caught 3-4 inch brown trout parr on all these streams.

[bscanman]

Thanks for all the input guys. I'm glad to see there's some debate on the fish ID. Makes me feel a little less clueless .

BambooMatt,
I'd love to see the picture of the Tiger. Must have been a pretty impressive fish at 11"!

[AgMD]

First let me reserve the right to be wrong -- a positive ID on small fish is a bit iffy at best , and working from a photo is worse yet. It took a while for me to remember where I saw this -- but -- In "McClanes Standard Fishing Encyclopedia" under Salmon there is a good side by side comparason of Atlantic Salmon parr and brown trout parr. Looks like a brown trout to me. Observe the jaw/eye relationship, the shape of the outer gill cover, and the tail just doesn't look forked enough for salmon.
AgMD

[BambooMatt]

Hi,
Looking again at that picture, the white-bordered anal fin gets me to thinking that it might be a variety of Tiger trout - one that looks more like a brown. There's got to be a little brookie mixed in there, eh? I've never seen a "brookie" fin on a brown trout before.
The fish in these tiny streams all compete for the scarce optimal spawning areas and both species breed at roughly the same time - so maybe there's more cross-breeding going on that we can't readily see.

[caddisking]

I like this idea. The current Atlantic Salmon program for the Connecticut River Watershed doesn't seem to be working. If you go to this website you can get the daily fish counts for the river. Only 185 Atlantic's made it back this year, out of the millions we dump into tributaries. If this program ever takes off then let me know, Joe. I'd like to help.
www.fws.gov/r5crc/fish/daily.html

joeoverlock said:

Now, here is the direction we're heading in, the club that is. I've been consulting Gary Loomis (of G.Loomis rods and Fist First) and he has an excellent program in place for Pacific Salmon and Steelhead that I'd like to use out here for our Atlantic Salmon. Starting this winter I'd like the club to start discussing putting this program in place out here. The only problem is we need more members so we can have more volunteers. Also we need more money. Plus it involves doing work in areas other then the map boundaries of the Berkshires. If you would like more info about Gary Loomis' Fish First and the program they use for the Salmon please visit fishfirst.org/

Oh, those where some nice pictures by the way. I don't know what that last picture was exaxtally, but I'd call it a brookie and tell everyone it was 14" long. j/k

[Creekfisher]

I'm from Maryland. I occasionally post on flyfisherman.com. I was checking out the site. I thought I would comment on the 3rd photo. It clearly looks like a wild brown trout. In Maryland, a small state where trout fishing is limited to the half of the state from Baltimore County westward through the mountains, we have over 80 streams with wild brown trout. I catch hundreds each year in MD and PA. They do displace the brook trout in many steams. They are a bit more tolerant to pollution and can survive temperatures up to 80 degrees. Brook trout perish above 72 degrees. They also grow bigger and live longer. I have never fished the Berkshires. I am surprised to hear there are few wild brown trout. Below are a few photos of MD wild brown trout.