FISHWAY ATLANTIC AMER. BLUEBACK GIZZARD STRIPED SEA SEA-RUN AMER. (RIVER) SALMON SHAD ALEWIFE HERRING SHAD BASS LAMPREY TROUT EEL

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1 CONNECTICUT WEEKLY DIADROMOUS FISH REPORT Report Date: July 14, 2005 This is a report generated by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection/ Inland Fisheries Division- Diadromous Program. For more information, contact Steve Gephard, 860/ For more information about fish runs on the Connecticut River call the USFWS Hotline at 413/ or visit the USFWS website at For more information about Atlantic salmon, visit the Connecticut River Salmon Association at CONNECTICUT RIVER LOCATIONS FISHWAY ATLANTIC AMER. BLUEBACK GIZZARD STRIPED SEA SEA-RUN AMER. (RIVER) SALMON SHAD ALEWIFE HERRING SHAD BASS LAMPREY TROUT EEL Rainbow * 3 0 (Farmington) Leesville *** 0 0 (Salmon) Moulson Pond 0 - thousands *** 0 - (Eightmile) Mary Steube , (Mill Brook) DSI 27/2 1, (Westfield- MA) Holyoke 131/14 116, ,134-0 (Connecticut- MA) Turners Falls 5/5 1, , (Connecticut- MA) Vernon 4/ ,586 Bellows Falls 3/ Wilder 2/ Other 2/0 (Misc. site, watershed wide) TOTALS= 183/16 116,137 N.A , Fishways listed in gray font above are not yet opened for the season. In some cases, the fishways will be opened soon. In the case of the fishways on the Connecticut River, some fishways are not opened until significant numbers of fish pass through the fishway immediately downstream of them. If that never happens, the fishway may not be opened during the season. * The number before the slash indicates the total number of salmon seen at the fishway. The number after the slash is the number that were allowed to continue upstream of the dam. The others were captured for breeding. **Many of these species move at night. There is a video camera that records overnight passage when staff is not present. So this count is a combination of real-time counts and video counts. There is a considerable lag between the date a tape is recorded and when staff is able to count fish from the tape, so these numbers will not represent up-to-date counts until after the end of spring season. *** The number of lampreys at these facilities is a drastic undercount due to the way the fishways are monitored. Population estimates for these streams will be provided by using end-of-the-season nest surveys. +There is an electronic fish counter at this fishway. ++This total does not include the imprecise estimates at Moulson Pond Fishway. NOTE: All fish that pass through the Turners Falls, Vernon, Bellows Falls, and Wilder fishways had to first go through the Holyoke Fishlift where they were counted. Therefore those fish are not included in the totals at the bottom.

2 COMMENTS: Holyoke has picked up a few shad here and there but the number has not significantly changed. All runs are over except for a few Atlantic salmon that continue to trickle in. DSI and Holyoke picked up a few salmon during the past week. The big news in Connecticut yesterday was the capture of two salmon from a tidal location on the Salmon River downstream of the Leesville Dam. During the late season, we have monitored the water below the dam and fishway for the presence of salmon and observed one multi-sea winter fish and one grilse below the dam. Even after some rains and cooler weather they refused to ascend the fishway. We lost track of these fish. Then, last week, local people reported to us that they were seeing what appeared to be salmon hanging out at a cool spring downstream. We confirmed the presence and yesterday we captured one multi-sea winter fish and one grilse with a large bag seine. The warm water temperature and the low temperatures maintained at the Richard Cronin National Salmon Station dictated that we slowly acclimate the fish to lower temperatures. The first truck tank they were placed in was a few degrees cooler than the river. Then there were transferred to a second truck tank that was halfway between the temperature of the first and Cronin. They were transported to Cronin late in the day yesterday. See photos below. Fisheries Technicians Dave Ellis (bare back to camera) and Bruce Williams (bent over, grey T shirt) lead a crew of seasonal employees in bagging the seine net that captured two adult Atlantic salmon and three large northern pike. Bruce Williams transfers the larger fish from one truck tank to another to continue the temperature acclimation prior to driving the fish to the Richard Cronin National Salmon Station, where it was re-united with some close personal friends, captured earlier in the season.

3 After years of observing salmon at the Salmon River, I believe that after fish have been in freshwater for a while and have experienced warm, low flow conditions, they lose their drive to move upstream. In effect, they switch from springmigratory mode into summer-holding mode. Even if conditions return that are conducive to migration (e.g. temperatures less than 25 C and ample flow), they are likely not to resume migration. These fish would typically resume migration in the fall when their hormones motivate them to seek out spawning habitat. Such fish are the ones that we capture at the fishways in the fall in some years. (Perhaps this mechanism is similar to the de-smoltification experienced by young salmon emigrating to the sea.) For fish in the Salmon River, the habitat below the dam is tidal and gets very warm. It is not a great place for a salmon to over-summer, unlike upstream holding pools that are fed with cool, welloxygenated water. We get very few salmon at the Leesville fishway during the fall operation, perhaps because these over-summering fish die. Therefore, we determined that it was a safer bet to attempt to net these fish downstream of Leesville than to wait until fall and assume they will show up at Leesville. The capture process went well without a lot of apparent stress and the prognosis for these fish to contribute to the spawning operation this fall is good. Jay McMenemy has been monitoring the whereabouts of the salmon that have been passed beyond the Holyoke Dam and I have tried to summarize this information in a map, presented below in the Comments section of the OTHER LOCATIONS report. After reviewing an of Jay s, I seem to have one extra fish, so there is a mistake somewhere. Jay is currently away but I present this map to give you an idea of the dispersal of these fish. Twelve salmon were tagged with radio tags and deliberately released. Two untagged salmon were observed migrating through upstream fishways and were unaccounted for at Holyoke so these fish are assumed to be accidental releases at Holyoke. Since they are untagged, all we can do is document which upstream fishways they passed through but we cannot track them in between fishways. You ll see these fish referenced at the top of the map. The map is mis-titled because I have also included two salmon that were released upstream of the DSI dam on the Westfield River. There are two areas of the watershed circled and there are salmon somewhere in these areas. The Holyoke Dam is indicated with a black bar. The top two salmon are somewhere between the Wilder and Ryegate dams on the Connecticut River and the Woodsville dam on the Ammonoosuc River. The Wilder Dam is 217 miles from Long Island Sound, so these fish have likely traveled over 225 miles upstream. There have been many questions about the jump in numbers of salmon this year. The CRASC Technical Committee and other biologists will be looking at data and trying to determine if there are any obvious reasons why this year s run (183) is so much better than last year s run (69). Some explanations could include stocking numbers, weather conditions, parr survival, superior smolt migration conditions, etc. However, when numbers of fish are as low as what we experience, mere serendipity can result in large percentage changes. If the river was turbid during the one week peak of the 2003 smolt migration, that might have allowed a large percentage of the smolts to escape detection by striped bass. There have been many questions about the drop in shad numbers this year. The numbers of shad have dropped since the recovery of the striped bass stocks but the numbers have bounced around a bit since This year is the lowest run size in recent years. However, it is possible that it may bounce up again next year. I think we need to wait and see what next year s run looks like before assuming the run is following the blueback herring run down the tubes. The number of blueback herring speaks for itself: it is really bad, but not quite as bad as last year. This year s sea lamprey run is lower than recent years but still within the range of a long-term average, plus last year s run was the second highest on record, so no alarm is warranted for this species. (The Connecticut sea lamprey nest survey has been postponed twice due to high streamflows. Most of the Salmon River is being surveyed today and the other sites will be done in the next week or so.) The gizzard shad count (123) is the lowest since 1988, down from 38,000 in This seems to reduce possible angst about drastic ecological changes due to a new species in the watershed and may also refute the contention that striped bass don t eat gizzard shad. Also note that Holyoke passed one shortnose sturgeon this season, which I believe is the first sturgeon in the last few years. I believe that most fishways will be closed for the season by tomorrow. This will be my last report this year. See you next season.

4 OTHER LOCATIONS WITHIN CONNECTICUT FISHWAY AMER. BLUEBACK GIZZARD STRIPED SEA SEA-RUN AMER. (RIVER) SHAD ALEWIFE HERRING SHAD BASS LAMPREY TROUT EEL Greeneville* 1, Taftville* Occum* Versailles Pond (Little R., Sprague) Kinneytown* (Naugatuck R., Seymour) Whitfords Brook 2 nothing this week (Whitfords Br., Groton) Trading Cove Brook thousands- nothing this week (Trading Cove Br., Montville) Latimers Brook (Latimers Br., E.Lyme) nothing this week Gorton Pond nothing this week (Pattagansett R., E.Lyme) Brides Brook** 68,166 (Brides Brook, E.Lyme) Chalker Millpond none seen (Chalker Millpond Br., O.Saybrook) Pond Lily Dam 0 (West R., New Haven) Clarks Pond quiet this week (Indian R., Milford) Bunnells Pond nothing more reported this week (Peqonnock R., Bridgeport) Wood Dam 0 1 (Saugatuck R., Westport) Lees Pond Dam 0 (Saugatuck R., Westport) Mianus River Pond** 2,209 2,135 2 X (Mianus R., Greenwich) *Fish passage is video-recorded and counts are made off of tapes several days later so these data are always lagged a little behind. This report covers passage up to the following dates for these fishways: Greeneville= 7/11/05. Taftville= 7/6. Occum= 7/6. Kinneytown= 7/10/05. **These locations have an electronic fish counter and are used as index sites for river herring runs. The counter is checked daily Monday-Friday. Monday counts typically include all weekend passage. These counts are usually up-to-date but some may lag behind a day or two, occasionally. Counts in parentheses indicate numbers seen in a run that is now over and no further fish were counted during the past week. Typically used for alewife runs later in June.

5 COMMENTS: All fishways have been closed for the season. The only activity has been the passage of about 10 shad at Greeneville and one sea-run trout at Kinneytown. All smaller fishways have closed long ago or at least monitoring has ceased. Eel passes continue to operate. The Mill River Eel Pass collected over 3,000 eels during one weekly check. To summarize the season, I would say that ALL species were down in ALL streams. There really isn t a bright spot anywhere. Alewife runs seemed strongly in the east than the west and blueback herring runs were pretty much non-existent with the exception of the Pequonnock River in Bridgeport. We reported river herring passage at most fishways but the numbers were pretty low, from a seasonal perspective, although there were a few big days. Natural recolonization of the Naugatuck and Shetucket rivers by sea lamprey continued, with small numbers of fish passing through the fishways. We are very happy with the performance of the new fish counters at Mianus Pond and Brides Brook. We hope to work with other partners to increase the numbers of electronic fish counters, statewide, in future years. This summer promises to be a busy one for fish passage. In the coming weeks, we expect to remove the Pizzini Dam (Eightmile River) and build fishways at Branford Supply Ponds Dam (Queach Brook), Ingham Hill Pond (Fishing Brook), Cannondale Dam (Norwalk River), Hanover Pond (Quinnipiac River), and maybe Jordan Millpond Dam (Jordan Brook). We will also be installing a new fish trap in the Latimer Brook Fishway, several new eel passes, and conducting emergency repairs to the Rainbow Dam Fishway as well as getting started on engineering for several new fishways for the future. Hopefully, we ll have new fishway counts to include in this report next season. See you then. Connecticut River salmon map: