with special permits and the assistance of qualified fish biologists beauchaine wilderness
lodge identifies and implements spawning bed and fish habitat improvement measures
much of the effort is aimed at the further propagation of the wonderful taggart lake
native strain of brook trout biologist mark heading will be leading a team of volunteers
through the egg collection we feel very lucky to be invited to participate in this endeavor
this week we're collecting brook trout from taggart lake located at beauchain wilderness lodge
it's part of a long-term monitoring program for the brook trout population it's a wild
population of fish part of the work involves individually measuring length and weight
on the spawning fish that are coming in this time of year we microchip the fish so that we
can get unique information on individual fish as we recapture them from year to year in some
situations we've captured brook trout four or five times over the course of a ten year period
and that gives us precise information on annual growth both in terms of weight and
length that helps us understand how healthy the population is if it's not growing strong you
know there's a problem it's growing strong you know your population is very healthy
now right here i have a bit of structure and and brook trout are no different than any other fish
they like structure i got a a deadhead here or an old tree that's falling down and anytime i
fish brook trout structures what they want and i'm going to try over there right now i was told there
was some fish rising around there earlier in the week so i'm hoping they're going to still be there
we've got a procedure that's pretty hammered out with the volunteers that we have working with
us this week they've all been experienced working with fish and measuring fish and
taking eggs from the fish so we start off with going into the site
setting up our fish cages these are large pens that we use for holding the fish
we have usually six to eight anglers that are using barbless hooks and collecting brook trout
either just off shore where the fish are staging to get into the spawning areas or
we're collecting them off the spawning areas for the purpose of getting ripe fish ripe females
and ripe males once we've collected the fish for the day we go through and process them for
length weight sex and also to determine whether they've got a microchip in them
if they've been previously microchipped the adipose fin has been removed
if it's a new fish that we haven't seen before we microchip it and then remove the adipose fin
for future identification it may be next year year after sometimes five years out
once we've collected the fish gone through the measurements and then we'll continue with
taking the eggs and melts from fish that we're targeting for incubation study so we'll usually
take eggs from four to five females fertilize allow the eggs to water harden that's where the
eggs swell up and then from that point we set them up in the incubators the night that we've
fertilized so the next step that we have for us on for tonight is actually setting up the incubators
it's quite labor intensive uh for setting those units up it'll take probably uh two to three
hours to go through and set up the incubators for a group of six to seven people tomorrow
we'll take those incubators out into the lake and they're set up on strings which have an anchor
a string about 20 feet long with a float on top and then we stagger the incubators about
18 inches apart in the water column close to the outlet of the lake and the reason
why we do that is because there's always flow leaving the lake so if you put the incubation
units close to the outlet of the lake you know you're always going to have flowing conditions
and oxygen good oxygen supply to the eggs as they develop over the course of the winter
if you watch how the fish develop over the course of that time period it's not until late february
that they actually hatch from the egg and then as the lake starts warming up in april and may
they start growing very fast and by the time we come back around mother's day
those fish are ready to be released and ready to start feeding on their own
there we go
wow this is just unbelievable this one feels decent yeah
boy they're certainly hammering it they uh they're going for the kill and i've
always said that about brook trout they uh they're killers they're as every bit of a killer as a pike
just hold the net out slide the fish over and lift up that's all you got to do
very nice brook trout
this is a microchip it's about the size of a grain of rice now we're using it for putting a unique
code inside the fish's cheek and this allows us to track
the animals growth in terms of weight as well as length over time basically it just reflects
back a serial number and then this is what we use for uh scanning so basically uh wave the scanner
over the microchip and it gives you a serial number back each fish has its own serial number
we've been doing this since uh 2005 and got a few hundred brook trout marked here in uh taggart lake
fish on
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