Text size:

State of the State Fish

LI's native trout holds on, despite our dwindling streams

By Joe Haberstroh | Staff Writer

October 12, 2003

Like members of well-rooted families whose descendants might bear the faintly recognizable brows of their Colonial forebears, brook trout are living vestiges of Long Island's past.

"They were here when the first Indians walked on Long Island, and they show up in habitats that, even today, are a little closer to pristine," said Norman Soule, director of the Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery & Aquarium.

Colorful and wary, brookies - as doting anglers prefer to call them - once filled the more than 200 small freshwater streams that brighten the map from the Queens border to Montauk Point. They were proclaimed the state fish in the mid-1970s, by which time the vast majority of their living space on Long Island had been devastated by development.

These days, they swim in only 15 or 16 streams here. That any brookies remain reflects spirited local efforts to save the fish before they disappear.

Other trout abound here: the rainbows and browns. Only in the modern era, however, have Long Island fishermen been able to catch rainbow and brown trout. The state stocks them in Long Island lakes and streams by the thousands, along with brookies. But unlike brook trout, neither rainbows nor brown trout are native to Long Island. Rainbows landed here from the western United States, and brown trout originated in Europe.

"A fish that is native and wild is going to be different from a hatchery-raised fish that was brought down here in a truck two weeks before the beginning of fishing season," said Jeff Plackis, president of the Long Island chapter of the conservation group Trout Unlimited. "Native brookies' hatchery counterparts are not going to be wary and can be easily fooled."

Regulators agree with the admiring public. Last year, the state Department of Environmental Conservation banned the taking of brook trout in Nassau and Suffolk counties. The "no-kill" regulation means that anglers are allowed only to catch and release brook trout during the April 1-Sept. 30 season.

"Some of these local streams, you can step across them, but if you look closely, there's brook trout there," said Greg Kozlowski, a fisheries biologist with the DEC. "This is our only native trout species. It's the state fish. We would really like to see the resource continue."

There's more to the brook trout story, though, than its status as a native fish. After all, the freshwater minnow known as the golden shiner is native to Long Island, and no one stays up all night tying flies to capture a golden shiner. Like striped bass, brookies are one of those species of fish that bear an undeniable mystique.

"When we do catch them, it's like holding a piece of very fragile glass," said Steve Metzler, president of the Art Flick Chapter, in Suffolk County, of Trout Unlimited, a conservation group.

The brook trout's mystique begins with its striking and varied appearance. If the rainbow trout is a reliable masterpiece, its dreamy prism stamped on fish after fish, the red-tailed brookie is an abstract work - speckled with funky splotches and wavy rings of several sizes and colors.

Here's how Long Island scientist and political figure Samuel Latham Mitchill described the brook trout in his landmark 1814 book "The Fishes of New York":

"Mouth wide. Teeth sharp. Tongue distinct. Skin without scales. Back a mottled pale and brown. Sides dark brown with yellow and red spots; the yellow larger than the red. The latter appearing like scarlet dots. ... Sides of the abdomen orange red. Lowest part of the belly whiteish. ... Tail rather concave, but not amounting to a fork, and of a reddish purple, with blackish spots above and below."

The fish also owes its status to its well- documented natural history. It was found in streams that were remote, cold and small. To discover where brook trout thrived, anglers often traipsed to the stony slopes of the Adirondacks or to the marshy flats of as-yet undeveloped Long Island.

Eventually science confirmed what anglers learned, that brook trout are most active in the most enjoyable outdoor hours, in the early morning and late afternoon. In key ways, brook trout are hardier than other trout: They can survive in waters from 32 to 72 degrees, and they can live in brackish waters that are too salty for rainbows. Over time, the experience of catching a brookie - in places ranging from mountain rivulets to surging tidal rivers - became inseparable from the delicious experience of wilderness itself.

Brook trout even have their own iconic image, allegedly drawn from an incident that took place one Sunday morning in 1823 on the Carmans River near the hamlet of Brookhaven. In the print, produced by Nat Currier (of Currier & Ives fame), American statesman Daniel Webster, who was also a leading sportsman of his day, lands an extraordinary, 14 1/2-pound brook trout.

For many years, Webster owned the unofficial record for the largest brook trout caught in New York State. Scholars and anglers have long disputed the Webster story. Currier produced his print, after all, almost 30 years after the great man hooked the big fish. However, a local blacksmith did make a cherrywood weather vane based on Webster's fish, and that remains in the possession of the Bellport Historical Society.

Although the Carmans remains the premier place to catch brook trout on Long Island, the timeless fascination with the fish has not prevented the destruction of most of the places in which brookies once thrived. In Colonial times, mill ponds and cranberry bogs blocked the path to spawning areas. Then the water was spoiled by pollution from duck farms and modern industry. As suburbia advanced, brook trout lost places to live as roads were paved and as developers filled in smaller streams for homes and businesses.

Development hurts freshwater fish because warmer water collects on hard surfaces such as asphalt, then is pumped into streams when storms occur. The spikes in water temperature can kill even the rugged brook trout. Sewer installations also lower groundwater levels, which raises the water temperatures.

Here and there, however, work goes on to help the state fish. In the Carmans River, Kozlowski said, the state dropped large logs into the stream to act as "wing dams." The dams narrow and speed up the water flow, and the water scours out the area around the trees, creating the deeper, cooler pools favored by brookies.

In Nassau, a potentially huge project is envisioned for sluggish Massapequa Creek. New fish ladders could help brook trout swim north from Massapequa Lake to the stream, and chilly pools could be created by pumping water into the stream and by dredging polluted sediments.

Greatly reduced from its historical range on Long Island, the brookie somehow survives. Norman Soule calls it a "miracle."

Soule says he knows the location of a small, local stream that apparently has what is known as a heritage strain of brook trout that has never been mixed with hatchery-raised fish. It may be that brook trout have been there forever.

He believes it best, however, to keep the stream's location a secret.

It's a typical brook trout stream. Quiet and shady. It's so small, said Soule, that you can cross it in one step.