We won’t know for a couple of years but we sure tried.

From a Monday through Thursday, a crew of DNR staff and SWTU volunteers captured and tagged brown trout in a long stretch of Melancthon Creek and then released them far downstream into the Pine River. Justin Haglund, the DNR fish biologist for Richland and Iowa Counties, hopes the removal of the brown trout will help the wild, native brook trout of the creek re-build their numbers.

Several SWTU members volunteered on the crew each day, including several Board Members, and Mike Kuhr, formerly the State TU President. Justin and Lloyd Meng, his chief technician, led the DNR crew, most of whom were fish techs from the Southern District of the DNR.

The week started cold, blustery and miserable but improved over the last day and a half. The routine was electroshocking the browns, transporting them to the processing area, tagging them and releasing them in the Pine River. Three 2-3 person teams were in the stream and another 4-5 were processing the trout. Besides pit-tagging 1,000 browns greater than 6 inches, all the trouts’ adipose fins were clipped. The tagged fish will be detected by sensors if they return to the creek and the fin clips will enable the DNR to determine how well the transported fish are surviving and growing in the Pine.

Some of the work was obviously hard – wading in the streams and shocking fish. Some was tougher than we imagined – as in bending over a table and clipping squirming trout for 5 hours. The DNR is wholly professional in handling fish and accurately recording data: we learned from the best.

Overall, we tagged 1,000 Brown Trout over 6 inches and removed another 2,112 under 6 inches for a grand total of 3,112 that were moved to the Pine River. (I know where I’ll fish in Richland County next year.) The browns ranged in size from about 2.3 inches to a bit over 14.

All worked hard and well, but two standouts emerged on the two days I worked there. On Wednesday, a shocking crew worked part of the stream that ran through a sedge meadow, always a miserable trek to traverse. The UTV could not cross the meadow so our own Bob Brewer carried several buckets of trout through the meadow to the processing area, a slog of several hundred yards. So what? you might think. The buckets were 5 gallons and when full of water and trout weighed between 40 and 50 pounds. Uf da.

On Thursday, Justin was thinking that a deep bridge hole held enough larger trout to fill out the quota of pit tags. Much of the bottom was deep silt. Lloyd took the deeper side of the pool. At one point he was sinking, up to the top of his waders, feeling some cold water and unnerving electricity. Even as he was disappearing his right arm kept netting fish and not losing a one! He extricated himself and we had dozens and maybe a hundred trout out of the hole, most bigger than elsewhere on the creek.

All of us SWTU volunteers are:

• Grateful for this opportunity. We helped the DNR complete some challenging work and perhaps have given the Melancthon brookies a second chance.
• Grateful for the DNR crew. They are professional, energetic, enthusiastic, hard working and a ton of fun. They were also exceedingly kind and patient with us, some of whom (as in me) made some bonehead mistakes. We learned. I think I could pass an undergraduate course in fin clipping. We also learned more of what fish biologists and techs have to do in the field. For one, they have to know how to handle a plethora of gear: trucks, UTVs, trailers, tanks, pumps, generators, etc. Not easy being a good biologist or tech.
• Grateful for a landowner. On Wednesday an older gentleman watched us for a while in the afternoon. The next day we had to work on a part of the stream on private property and thought we’d have to shuttle back and forth between that site and the DNR processing area. He was the landowner of that area and invited Justin to set up on the stream bank on his land. This saved us beaucoup time and trouble.

  He and his family have lived on the creek since 1943. His Mom and Aunt loved the creek and fished it every day of the season with cane poles and worms. When the DNR changed the stream to Catch and Release, neither ever fished it again. The family was not happy and became incensed when the then Fish Biologist (this was decades ago) refused to share the data which he claimed supported the regulation change. That dispute, according to the landowner, went to the DNR Board. The family then discovered that, in their judgment, the data did not support the biologist’s position. The landowner is a real gentleman, kind, honest and intelligent (he taught middle school for 36 years). What really hurt was when he said: “The fly fishers supported the change. They were selfish. They wanted all the fish for themselves.” Even if that’s not completely true, I can see why he’d think that. That with that history and feelings, he would so welcome a DNR crew and a bunch of SWTU volunteers speaks to his generous spirit. BTW, he enjoyed the work so much he recorded data for us for three hours.

Let’s conclude with some obvious fishing advice: Don’t fish Melancthon next year; do fish the Pine. As Justin told me: “If you can’t catch trout there, don’t blame me.”

Take care,
Topf Wells