Efforts underway to preserve brook trout

Trout are a sure sign of spring.

Brook trout, native to Frederick County, are rare these days, but wildlife experts hope to maintain and perhaps increase their numbers in local streams.

Two weeks before trout season opens March 27, a group of watershed professionals from Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia gathered Saturday to examine how to preserve what is left of the trout's local habitat. The Chesapeake Bay Coldwater Summit took place at the National Conservation Training Center, part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Biologists, conservationists, foresters, engineers and other environmental professionals shared their ideas about how to help the fish survive and even thrive in some places.

Shannon Moore, project manager for the Watershed Management Section of Frederick County's Division of Public Works, spoke about the county's efforts to restore "brookies," as the trout are affectionately called.

"We've mapped out where all the brook and brown trout are," she said.

Nat Gillespie, director of the Eastern Lands Protection Program of Trout Unlimited, is coordinating an effort to map all the brook trout populations in the Northeast. Brook trout need to live in flowing streams with a water temperature below 70 degrees.

When trees cooled the waterways, brook trout inhabited almost all the county's streams and creeks. Most of those that remain are in the streams and creeks of the mountainous northwestern part of the county, in the area of Catoctin Mountain National Park and Cunningham Falls State Park.

Urbanization and increases in paved surfaces are the biggest threats to brook trout in this area. Once common across northern Maryland, the fish are now plentiful only in the Savage River watershed in eastern Garrett County.

Frederick County's green infrastructure plan, which looks to preserve large tracts of open space as the county develops, will help preserve what is left of brook trout habitat, Moore said.

Brook trout are a true sport fish prized by fly fishermen because of the skill required to catch them, Moore said. Brook trout are brownish-yellow with salmon and blue spots. The trout are an "umbrella" species, which means if they are found in a stream, it's a healthy stream that can support other sensitive aquatic species.

The remaining brook trout face another threat from the woolly adelgid, insects that eat the hemlock trees shading many streams in Catoctin Mountain National Park and Cunningham Falls State Park.

To help restore brook trout habitat, unused dams are being removed in some areas. In the upper reaches of Antietam Creek in Washington County, Raven Rock Dam was removed in 2008. Doug Hutzell of Environmental Services in Hagerstown spoke about the dam removal at Saturday's meeting. Hutzell was in charge of the removal of the historic dam.

Brook trout, like salmon, swim upstream to spawn, and old, unused dams make it nearly impossible for the fish to get upstream.

Hutzell also supervised the removal of a stream blockage on Little Catoctin Creek at Doub's Meadow Park in Myersville . That creek no longer supports brook trout, and is stocked with rainbow and brown trout instead.

Hutzell said he fly-fishes for brookies where Raven Rock Dam once stood.

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