The rudd - another invasive, nuisance species worth watching
By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoors Columnist
This spring, Chris Reynolds, a teacher at Chateaugay Central School, caught a most unusual fish from Chateaugay Lake. His catch resembled a redfin shiner, a common baitfish, but this fish measured 16 inches long and weighed a pound and a half. It looked like no other fish in the lake, or the North Country for that matter.
Reynolds showed the fish to Jeff Rundell, a biology teacher at Chateaugay Central. Rundell examined it, then identified it as a rudd, a species native to Europe and Asia, but uncommon in New York, or so everyone thought.
The rudd was later given to Department of Environmental Conservation Fisheries Biologist Rich Preall. After doing even more research on rudds, Preall is now concerned these non-native transplants may spread, especially to brook trout waters where the results could be disastrous.
The rudd (scientific name Scardinius erthrophalmus) is a stocky, deep-bodied fish; in Europe it is referred to as a coarse fish, along with a similar species - the roach. The rudd has an olive-colored back, silver green sides, a silvery white belly and, most important for quick identification purposes, bright red pelvic, anal and tail fins on the lower part of its body. This species can live a long time, which is why it can grow to four pounds. Preall aged the 16-inch rudd as eight years old.
The main food source for rudd is surface insects, also a preferred trout food, and this is one reason why Preall is worried. "If the rudd get into brook trout waters they will out compete the trout, and because of their size, there will be no natural predator to stop them." One female rudd has the potential to produce more than 50,000 offspring each year.
In places where rudds have been either accidentally or illegally introduced, like New Zealand, they are considered pests and a nuisance species. The one major rudd population in New York prior to the Chateaugay Lake find was living in the Roeliff-Janson Kill south of Albany since 1937, but there have been reports of rudd in Schroon Lake and Lake Champlain as well, and they are probably in many other lakes.
How did rudds get into Chateaugay Lake? Preall figures it was through the use of live bait, imported from some other part of the country. The raising and selling of baitfish is common in the lower Midwest, and, through live bait chumming and dumping live bait into lakes and ponds, whole species have been moved from watersheds and introduced elsewhere. Rudds are not illegal to use as baitfish in New York, as they are classed with minnows.
What can be done to minimize the spread of exotic baitfish? Some states like Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana ban live bait imports, and more states are getting on that bandwagon. It used to be anglers got their minnows close to home, either from catching them in nearby streams and lakes or from bait shops that got their fish locally.
Now, the fishing lure industry is a major growth industry, with anglers, myself included, flocking to the next "dynamite color plug," wiggler worm or colorful baitfish. However, with the latter, there is always the danger of accidentally stocking a nuisance fish like the rudd that could unfavorably impact a fishery. Maybe, as some have suggested, it is time to ban the importation of all live baitfish into New York State.