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Description:The Brook Trout is a beautifully-colored fish, iridescent blue to green with yellow spots and sometimes orange to red spots with blue halos across its side. The back may darken to an olive green with dark, wavy, worm-like lines which are lacking in other salmonids. While their undersides lighten to a silvery white, their lower fins are orange with white margins. They have teeth located only in the front of their mouths. Average size of the fish is ten to twelve inches long and one to four pounds, but largest on record was over 14 pounds.
The Brook Trout eats a wide variety of insects and small animals. A juvenile will eat insect larva, plankton, and small crustaceans while a larger adult may eat small fish and crayfish.
Life History:In the late fall the female will scoop out a shallow hole in the gravel of the streambed or lake bottom around the shoreline. The male and female together then extrude eggs and milt into the hole, the female then covering the fertilized eggs (100 to 5000, depending on her size) to incubate them during the winter. In two or three months the surviving eggs hatch. The young go through a couple of stages before they reach adulthood. During the fry and fingerling stages they eat plankton and as they grow into adulthood they will begin to eat insects and larger prey. The Brook Trout commonly lives its entire life in the same streams and lakes in which it was born or sometimes it may travel out to sea, returning to freshwater to spawn. Maximum life expectancy is about five years old.
Habitat:Although the Brook Trout is more commonly found at high elevations in the cold water of mountain streams, rivers, lakes and ponds, it populates many watersheds in New England at nearly all elevations. It requires high oxygen content in the water and does not do well in water that gets above 68 degrees in the summer. The Brook Trout is distinguished as being the only trout native to New England waters: brown trout originated from Europe, and rainbow trout came from the northwest United States.
Status:State Freshwater Fish of New Hampshire and New York. Late spring and early fall are considered the best times for trout fishing as insects are more numerous at this time and the fish are especially hungry. Although Brook Trout do reproduce naturally in the wild, in order to meet the demands of the anglers in the area the Gulf of Maine watershed is stocked on a regular basis by hatchery-raised trout. Cold, clean water is essential to the survival of the species, and native populations of the Brook Trout are being threatened by habitat degradation from timber harvesting and run-off throughout New England. Strong populations have been used as an indicator species to determine the positive health of stream ecosystems.
"The Waters are Nature's storehouse in which she locks up her wonders."
~Isaac Walton
First Class
The nation's first federal conservation agency was the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, formed in 1871. It has been through many transformations and continues to exist to this day as the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service. Protecting and conserving the nation's fish populations through good management and credible study has been a major focus for the agency since its conception.
Categories of fish
Although there are thousands of species of fish worldwide, fish can be grouped into two broad categories: freshwater fish, and marine, or saltwater, fish. Freshwater fish have a mechanism which helps them concentrate salts within their bodies, while saltwater fish rely on a separate mechanism that allows them to excrete excess salt while in their hypertonic environment. This ability to balance the amount of water and dissolved solutes in the body is known as
osmoregulation
. Most fish are
stenohaline
species and can only live in one salinity environment or the other. Fish that are able to move between freshwater and saltwater have both mechanisms and are known as
euryhaline
species.
Euryhaline species can be further separated into two categories. The first category,
Anadromous
fish, refers to fish born in freshwater that travel out to sea to grow in saltwater, then returning to freshwater (generally the place of their birth) to spawn. Examples in the Northeast include striped bass, smelt, sturgeon, shad, and salmon. Although all Pacific salmon die shortly after spawning, Atlantic salmon may survive the perilous journey and spawn again in the following years.
Catadromous
fish behave in the opposite manner. They are born in saltwater, travel to freshwater ecosystems to live, and then return to the saltwater to spawn. Examples of catadromous fish in the Northeast include eels.
Fish may use many different types of habitats over the course of their lives. Different conditions are needed for environments to be successful for spawning, feeding, nursery, shelter, and migration purposes. Fish may move from one environment to another depending on life history stages, seasonal or geographic distribution, abundance, or interactions with other species in the area.
Determining age
In temperate waters fish can live to be 10 to 20 years old; some species like sturgeons may even live 50 years or more. Determining the age of fish can be a tricky business. There are two main methods. One is by looking at the rings formed on the fish scales. Seasonal changes in the environment can influence the formation of rings on the scales, much like the rings formed in tree trunks. In the warmer summer months the rings grow faster with more space separating the rings, in winter growth is slower and there is less space between the rings. A pair of rings, one light for summer and one dark for winter, indicates one year of growth. The second method of determining age is similar; in the same manner, scientists may count the rings growing on the small inner ear bones (otoliths). Because other factors may influence the appearance of rings on the scales, studying the otoliths is generally regarded to be a more accurate indicator of age.
Underwater animals
There are many different types of animals that live in the water but not all of them are fish. Here are a few examples:
Cetaceans
are mammals. These include whales, dolphins, and porpoises.
Crustaceans
are invertebrates. They include many different groups and species such as arthropods, shrimp, lobsters, crabs, and crawfish.
Elasmobranchs
are a subclass of the Chondrichthyes class. They are fish, made out of cartilaginous tissue; these include sharks, rays, and skates.
Actinopterygii
are ray-finned fishes. Nearly 95% of the species of fish in the world are in the Actinopterygii class.
Sport Fishing
The Northeast region is home to hundreds of species of fish, many of whom are excellent sport fish captivating the imaginations of anglers for decades. Several species are stocked annually for the fishing community. Fishing regulations vary from state to state, and species to species, and it is important to know the local rules for your area. No one should fishing without being aware of the rules!
Please be aware that not all fish are safe to consume at all times! Some species of fish may have a high concentration of mercury or other contaminants that make consumption dangerous, especially to pregnant women and small children. Consult your local experts to confirm the status of the fish in your area.
Description:There are a couple of varieties of carp in the region: the Common Carp has regular-sized, spaced scales over its entire body; the Mirror Carp has large shiny scales along its lateral line and sometimes along the dorsal ridge; and the Leather Carp may have only very few scales, if any at all. These differences in appearance are merely superficial, as all varieties exhibit the same behaviors and traits. In general, the Common Carp is elongated with a slightly raised back. It is copper to bronze to olive-gold in color, darker along the dorsal ridge then fading into pale yellow to white tones along the ventral side. It has a single dorsal fin and a forked tail. The Common Carp is incredibly strong and smart, and can grow to be very big, although wild carp are slimmer and less stocky than their domesticated counterparts. In some parts of the world, they can grow to upwards of 47 inches long and weigh as much as 88 lbs, but in the Northeast region they may only reach 25 to 40 lbs in the wild. It is not unusual to catch wild specimens ranging from 10 to 15 lbs or more in the region.
The Common Carp is a schooling fish and prefers to live in groups of at least five members, especially while still small. It has nostrils located near the eyes, and barbels that hang down like whiskers near the mouth, used to continually sample its surroundings. Carp is easily spooked and emits a danger pheromone to alert the other fish in the school.
The Common Carp is an omnivorous and opportunistic forager. It eats a variety of underwater plants, insects, and small crustaceans, sometimes even the eggs of other fish species. Very young carp eat zooplankton before moving on to larger prey. They eat by sucking up a mouthful of bottom sediment, then expelling the refuse while keeping the food particles in their mouths. This method of feeding can be quite damaging as it rips up vegetation found on the river or stream bed, increases turbidity of the water, and deteriorates living conditions for other species, threatening waterbird and native fish populations in the area.
Life History:Spawning typically occurs in the spring as a response to rising temperatures and increased rainfall; ideal temperatures for spawning range from 63 to 78 degrees.
In shallow weedy areas, carp come together to mate. The process is loud and raucous; a few females converge with multiple males and thrash about, increasing turbidity rates in the surrounding area. The Common Carp exhibits a high level of fecundity and may lay as many as 300,000 eggs in a single spawning; the bigger the fish the more eggs she will lay. Because she can spawn multiple times a season, a 15-pound female can easily lay more than two million eggs in a year. But because young carp and juveniles are a common prey species for many other fish, birds, and mammals, their population numbers may remain relatively constant. Eggs are scattered over underwater vegetation and abandoned, without any parental care at all, then hatch at some point four to ten days later. Young may reach weights of up to a pound within the first growing season, and may reach three pounds by the third year of life. Males mature during the second to fourth year of life, females during the third to fifth year. As catch and release is commonly practiced by carp anglers, fish can grow to be quite old, 30 or 40 years. One record states a carp reached 65 years in age.
Habitat:The Common Carp is a hardy fish and tolerant of many conditions that other fish species would find less than ideal. It is extremely tolerant of low oxygen waters and high turbidity rates, and can even live in brackish waters. Still, it prefers well-vegetated, soft-bottomed areas with slow moving, or still, warm waters. In the spring and summer months carp can be found in shallower waters but as the temperature drops they move to deeper waters.
The Common Carp is found in every continent in the world, except for Antarctica, and every state in the United States, except for Alaska. It is found in every state in the Northeast Information Node.
Status:Worldwide, carp is the most common species fished in the wild. It is hardy and easy to domesticate and therefore has been used in aquatic agriculture as a common food source for hundreds of years. Brought to New York in 1831, the Common Carp soon spread throughout America in the 1800's as a potential food source. Although currently found in all states of the United States except for Alaska, not all stockings have been able to establish a self-sustaining population. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however: due to their adaptability and tolerance to less than ideal habitats, several species of carp have the potential to become invasive and are listed with multiple federal and state agencies as invasive species in some regions, including New Hampshire.
Koi (nishikigoi) is actually the Common Carp. A domestic variety bred for its color and cold tolerance, Koi originated in the 1820's in Japan and is now a common ornamental fish typically found in outdoor ponds and water features.
