State record brook trout raises questions
BY DENNIS APRILL, Outdoors Columnist
It’s unusual that one small body of water in the Adirondacks would produce two state fishing records within a year’s time; and it is even more unusual when one of those records would be broken — actually smashed — at another Adirondack pond a year later.
That is exactly what happened, first at Boy Scout Clear Pond off Route 30 just north of Meachum Lake, where a 3.6 pound kokanee salmon was caught this summer. Last summer a 5 pound, 12 ounce brook trout, then a state record, was landed by a local angler.
That record lasted only one year. Another fisherman caught a 7-pound brookie this summer in Thirteenth Lake in northern Warren County, easily dwarfing the Boy Scout Clear trout.
Both these kokanee and brook trout records deserve closer examination. This week I will discuss the brook trout situation, next week the kokanee.
In the 1990’s, New York State, because of problems with authentication, removed all the old brook trout records from the official books, considering them more historical or heritage records. Gone were the big Catskill brookies and Long Island salters, brook trout that migrate to salt water.
A 5-pound brook trout caught in the 90’s was installed as the official state record, and that lasted only a short time when, after a succession of 5- pound plus brookies were caught, the last was the 5-pound, 12-ounce Boy Scout Clear fish.
Then came the 7-pounder from Thirteenth Lake, a lake described by Bob Zajac in the book "Good Fishing in the Adirondacks," as, "a narrow ribbon of water 2 miles in length, resting between Hour Pond Mountain and Balm of Gilead Mountain....
The brook trout of Thirteenth Lake range from 10-18 plus inches, and a 14-inch fish would be considered a very good one."
So, the question is: How did a trout that size (7 pounds) grow so large in a pond that undergoes moderate fishing pressure?
Rich Preall, Region 5 Fisheries Biologist in Ray Brook, thinks he has the answer. "The Warren County Hatchery has raised brook trout for stocking for a long time, and some of their older Little Tupper strain brood stocks’ egg production had dropped off. The hatchery decided to set these old, very large fish free in Thirteenth Lake, with the understanding none would be over 5 pounds so as not to jeopardize the state record."
Though the technician charged with stocking the 50 or so brood stock fish swears there were no brook trout over 5 pounds, Preall isn’t so sure.
"It seems quite a coincidence, doesn’t it, that all of a sudden that lake would produce a fish of that size? If there was a mistake, I am sure it wasn’t intentional."
To be an official state record, a potentially large fish must be certified by a state biologist, which did happen with that trout. It is now the pending record holder, but was it truly a wild trout?
This is just one of the problems that occur with brook trout state records. Another is mistaking, either accidentally of intentionally, a splake for a brook trout.
Splake were first hybridized in 1880 at the Caledonia (NY) Fish Hatchery. These fish are a combination of speckled trout (another name for brook trout) and lake trout. They inhabit water depths halfway between deep water-loving lakers and shallow-water brook trout; they grow fast, and can get quite big, with 7-8 pounders not uncommon. The state record splake — 12 pounds, 15 ounces — comes from Little Green Pond in Franklin County.
Splake can reproduce in the wild, and this offspring often start showing characteristics of one of their genetic parents, usually the brook trout, and at two generations removed they can be almost impossible to distinguish from a true brook trout.
Preall says, "The only way to tell is to examine their pyloric caeca, worm-like projections in the front part of their intestines just beyond the stomach, something the average angler isn’t going to do.
Splake have 65-85 of these, lake trout 93-208 and brook trout 23-55, but I have examined fish that fall between these numbers, like 60. When in doubt, and if the fish comes from waters where splake had been stocked, I call it a splake."
Preall says the state has now gone to a policy of not considering any brook trout record that comes from a body of water that once held splake, so that would have affected the previous record from Boy Scout Clear, a pond where splake were stocked.
Even then, it is extremely difficult to prove a large trout was truly a wild fish caught in a non-controlled situation, so the debate over who caught the largest brook trout, a much sought after native New York species, will continue and probably never be resolved to everyone’s liking.