Moosehead, Maine’s largest lake, is still a fabled cold water sport fishery. Landlocked salmon, lake trout and record-book eastern brook trout attract recreational anglers from around the globe.
For those of us who value the legacy and look to the future, the presence of an invasive species, smallmouth bass, in the lake is a disappointment and a source of concern.
The theory is that the lake’s smallmouth population came to be in Moosehead Lake through the irresponsible act of some reckless bucket stockers.
Suzanne AuClair, a seasoned outdoorswoman who writes a monthly outdoor column about the Moosehead area in the Northwoods Sporting Journal, recently wrote this: “The smallmouth bass were illegally introduced here at Moosehead Lake in the mid-1970s. Most locals consider them a scourge. They are now thriving throughout the Moose River/Moosehead Lake waterway. It is unknown when and how they will (affect) the native wild brook trout fisheries.”
AuClair poses an important question that can best be answered by fisheries biologists and, perhaps more significantly, by Mother Nature. One thing we can be sure of is that the presence of smallmouth bass in this fabled fishery will do nothing to advance the cold water sport fishery.
What to do?
As AuClair reported after a visit to the famous Atlantic salmon river, the Margaree in Nova Scotia, the Canadians are wrestling with a smallmouth bass problem as well in that river in Cape Breton.
Unlike us, the Margaree fishery managers have taken the bull by the horns.
The Candadians have instituted a mandatory catch-and-kill fishing regulation that carries stiff fines, AuClair wrote. The fine for a first violation of releasing bass back into the river is $100,000. A second offense carries a $500,000 penalty and maybe some jail time, she said.
As AuClair observed, here in Maine there is divided sentiment among anglers about how best to deal with the Moosehead smallmouth issue.
Bass anglers are just as passionate about their favorite angling experience as trout and salmon advocates are about their own.
Moosehead has already experimented with a catch-and-remove policy on lake trout in an effort to reduce laker numbers and impose balance on the predator-prey populations. From all reports, the policy bore fruit.
Biologists deem the lake trout experiment a success, but a recent trend toward catch-and-release fishing could threaten the balance in the lake again.
Perhaps there is a compromise fisheries management policy that could nurture common ground between the bass community and the salmon/brookie acolytes. One would think that even the bass anglers would not want to see smallmouth populations endanger the Moosehead cold water sport fishery.
There can be a difference, or a middle ground, between a mandatory catch-and-kill policy on all smallmouth and a regulation that encourages a thinning of smallmouth numbers. It worked on the big lake with over populations of lake trout, so why not bass?
Fish biology and fisheries management is at best an imperfect science. In time, the Margaree hardline experiment and catch-and-kill regulation will be evaluated for its effectiveness in getting an unwanted species out of the famous salmon watershed.
There may be lessons that can be applied here at home in managing unwanted species in Moosehead Lake.
V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide and host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network.
