Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture

“A gut-shot landscape is no place for wild brook trout.”

—Tom Palmer, “In Praise of Wild Trout” 1998

The title of this month’s column is certainly a mouthful. What is the organization? The Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture (EBTJV) is a cooperative effort to develop and implement a conservation strategy for brook trout survival in the eastern United States. Every conservation department from Georgia to Maine is involved, as well as six conservation organizations, six federal agencies, plus the college of Natural Resources of Virginia Tech and the Department of Biology at James Madison University.

The brook trout, Latin name Salvelinus fontinalis, is the only trout native to the eastern United States. Brook trout can survive in only the coldest and cleanest water. They serve as indicators of the health of the watershed they inhabit. A decline in brook trout populations can serve as an early warning that the health of an entire system is at risk. Before the first settlers arrived, brook trout swam in nearly every stream in the eastern United States. Lumbering, agriculture, pollution, sedimentation, dams and industrialization have greatly reduced the habitat where brook trout can survive. The EBTJV was formed to halt the decline of brook trout and to restore fishable populations. Its members are committed to restoring brook trout and the clean, cold watersheds on which they depend. Hopefully, they will be successful.

Now that you are aware of what the EBJTV is, let’s go back in time for a moment to the year 1942. We are at a spot where the Peekskill Hollow Brook comes tumbling down from its headwaters up beyond California Hill. A young lad of 12 years of age is approaching the brook. His parents own a small weekend bungalow on the ridge opposite California Hill. He recently became the proud owner of a four-foot bamboo bait-casting rod and reel, passed on to him by his father. The tip of the rod has been splintered by some long-ago forgotten accident. It had been carefully repaired by his father, tightly wound with white thread, then reinforced with glue. In the boy’s eyes, it is the finest fishing rod in the world. He has been told there were trout in the brook. It is his dream to catch one. His tackle, however, is ill suited for trout fishing. The stiff, stubby rod carries an old Shakespeare, Acme 1904, level wind bait casting reel, loaded with 25-pound test black silk line. Attached to the line is a shelled, #2 “Cincinnati” bass hook. Pegged to the line, two feet above the hook, is a red cork bobber the size of a golf ball. After a bit of a tussle, he succeeds in impaling a night crawler the size of a baby python onto the hook. The young fellow casts the bait into the brook.

Before we continue this flashback, those of you who do not believe in the tooth fairy need to be aware that the Red Gods of Fishing sometimes play the most inexplicable pranks.

Had you been watching closely, you would have seen that the bobber had suddenly been pulled completely under and moving off downstream. The boy strikes and shortly a fish is flopping about on the bank. Despite the crudeness of both his tackle and technique, the boy’s dream has come true. Surely, this must be a trout. It looks nothing like the largemouth bass and white perch his father had brought home. To the young fellow’s eyes and touch, this fish is so smooth it appears to have no scales. (A trout does indeed have scales, as any fisheries biologist will tell you; they are simply much smaller than most other fresh-water fish). The fish’s coloration is unreal, dark olive shades to light olive, on the flanks there are blue dots with red centers, the fins are reddish orange edged with white, a fish too beautiful to be believed. Back to the present.

My first-ever trout, a brook trout from the Peekskill Hollow Brook, was caught many years ago. Decades later when I am fortunate enough to catch one, I am still amazed by their beauty. Writing this column has given me a New Year’s resolution. Some day in 2007 on our way home from doctor appointments in Westchester County, we will head north on the Taconic Parkway, exiting at the Peekskill Hollow Road. Then we will follow the brook upstream to where it crosses under the road for the first time after coming down off of California Hill. Roughly 200 yards further on we will make a left turn, park the car and get out the fly rods. It’s time to take an unofficial survey to see if wild brook trout still exist in the Peekskill Hollow Brook.

Though I do not expect to be around to see the fruition of the efforts of the EBJTV, I hope they succeed beyond their greatest dreams. Every young fisher deserves a chance to have their first fish be a beautiful wild brook trout.