Moosehead Region Fishing Report: September 23, 2008
The Fisheries Staff in Greenville has been busy once again this summer making our way to a few of the many unsurveyed ponds we have in the Moosehead Region. Our objective was to try and survey five waters that are zoned as Remote Ponds. Everyone seems to have heard of remote ponds and many think that these ponds are ponds located out in the middle of nowhere. Well, this is partly true. Many are in fact located in areas that are very challenging to get to as our experience this summer proved. However, many of the remote ponds in the Moosehead area have road systems that run very close to the pond. This is where the Maine Land Use Regulatory Commission (LURC) comes in. The early to mid-1970′s was a time when much of the Maine North Woods was being opened up by many new road networks, brought about by the large-scale wood salvage operations resulting from the spruce budworm infestation of Maine’s spruce-fir forests. LURC and MDIFW fisheries biologists worked together to identify ponds in the north woods that were deemed worthy of additional protection. By protecting or zoning a pond as remote, this resulted in limiting vehicle access to within a half-mile of the pond. Such limitations resulted in the installation of gates, the removal of culverts or bridges, or placing large boulders across a road to prevent the passage of cars or trucks.
In the Moosehead Region 123 ponds were zoned as remote. Many of these ponds had not been scientifically surveyed, that is, our knowledge of their trout fisheries was based on the reports of anglers. Due to time and resource constraints it was not possible to conduct scientific surveys to corroborate the presence of trout fisheries in these waters in the short period of time they were being designated for zoning. It was determined that it would be best to protect these resources while we could. The ponds would be surveyed as time and resources allowed.
In 2005 the Legislature proposed and IFW supported the designation of the Brook Trout as one of Maine’s Heritage Fish. MDIFW identified 305 Heritage waters (often called “A” list waters), i.e. ponds supporting principal fisheries for brook trout but having no record of stocking. Legislation was enacted to provide special protection for these unique waters. Later MDIFW identified nearly 300 additional waters that support self-sustaining populations of brook trout that had been stocked but not within the past 25 years (called “B” list waters). The Fisheries Division recognized the value of this latter resource by developing through policy an appropriate level of protection for “B” list waters. Based on this research it was determined that the Moosehead Region has 144 trout waters that fall into the “A” category and 99 that are on the “B” list. Many of these ponds are zoned remote and some have never been surveyed by a biologist.
As a science-based resource agency we are actively involved in revising/updating our data to provide the public with the most accurate picture we can and to provide the basis for sound fisheries management. And so, over the past two summers we have surveyed 24 ponds in Region E, of which 17 were on the A or B lists. We will continue to monitor these waters in an effort to better manage this important resource.