December 2016 F&G highlights:

[AndyS]

Biologist, Pat Hamilton used the West Portal stream location where a detergent spill took place earlier in the year, as an opportunity for brook trout restoration. Staff have been removing and relocating the brown trout out of that stretch and will replacing them with brook trout next spring. Sparta Glen Brook is a project completed by Trout Unlimited, with Eastern Brook Trout Venture funds for restoration efforts. The project was just finished this spring. This is the first year monitoring following in-stream habitat improvements and so the Bureau is not expecting too much change in the brook trout population yet. Annual monitoring will continue. The Bureau is working on the Millstone River as a potential dam removal on Blackwell Mills and the Weston Causeway Mills. As far as indigenous fish passage restoration, we have documented American shad at the base of each of those dams and American eel are present. The Bureau also conducted 11 surveys on the Paulins Kill River as a part of the Columbia Lake Dam removal project. At the end of the year, we will have full fisheries inventory report completed for Round Valley Reservoir. The draft report will be finished at the end of this month. There were also two angler surveys, an online wild trout angler survey and an online warm water/cool water angler survey conducted in 2016. The results of those will be presented at our fisheries forums that are coming up next month.