I forgot to write a quick blog before I left but I just got back from a 9 day stint on Isle Royale. I kept a journal while I was out there so I’m going to try to shove my 9 day trip into 2 postings (plus pictures of course).
First off you are probably wondering why I was out on Isle Royale in the first place. Well I got sent out there with two guys from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to collect some eggs, sperm, and blood samples from a Lake Superior dwelling population of brook trout. These brook trout get a lot bigger then your average stream brook trout and they are gorgeous!
Day 1, Wednesday October 15th. After a 5 hour boat ride aboard the park service’s Ranger III we finally arrived at Windigo (on the southwest part of the island). Our first job was to check on an antenna they set up this spring that records individual brook trout as they pass by the antenna. On our way to the stream we saw a cow moose with her calf, very cute. After we got done with work I tried a little fishing off the gas dock. I heard rumors that some park employees caught a few brookies there a couple of nights ago. Well unfortunately I did not have such good luck, I blame the intense wind. I did however catch a steelhead, so the fishing trip was not a complete loss.
Day 2, Thursday. Woke up around 6am and loaded our crap back on the boat and headed to Mott Island. Mott Island is a small island off the northeast shore of Isle Royale and is the Park’s headquarters. From there we loaded our stuff onto our electrofishing boat and another park service boat that dropped us off at Rock Harbor. This would be our home for the next week. We stayed in a roomy cabin with no heat (no wood burning stove, what the hell?!?!), no electricity, and no running water. Living without electricity and water is one thing, but without heat when temperatures averaged about 45 degrees is just annoying (not to mention physically draining). After we unpacked the boat, we set off to set some fyke nets (hmmm how do I explain a fyke net? You tie one end of the net to shore, the other end of the net is a fish trap, so fish that are cruising the shoreline run into the net and follow it out to the trap, where they swim in and are held until we check the nets. I’ll post some pictures later).
Day 3, Friday October 17th. Today we pulled the fyke nets!!!! Our 6 nets pulled we had over 20 big beautiful adult brook trout! This was our first day sampling and we already had more brookies in one day then they’ve ever caught during this trip, AWESOME!!! We brought the fish back to the dock to take lengths, weights, check for pre-existing tags and tag the fish if they don’t have them. Our biggest brook trout today was over 500mm long and over 1515grams (that’s over 3lbs, that’s a big brook trout!). The fish then went into holding pens to stay until we could take eggs on Wednesday.
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