I’ll be talking about invasive fish on May 30

Are you concerned about the impact that invasive fish are having on Maine’s native fish? I sure am. And I’ll be talking about this at 7 pm on May 30 at Mount Vernon’s Community Center.

The talk is sponsored by the 30 Mile Watershed Association and open to the public. I expect to lead a conversation about invasive fish. And I hope you will be able to join us.

Mainers have done a great job finding and ridding our waters of invasive plants. But we’ve done absolutely nothing to remove illegally introduced invasive fish that are now found in every Maine county.

Invasive fish have devastated Maine’s native fisheries. My favorite place to catch landlocked salmon was Long Pond in Belgrade. Today there are 9 invasive fish in Long Pond, and the abundant salmon population is long gone. In fact, DIFW is now stocking the pond with rainbow trout, a nonnative fish that they hope will be able to compete with the invasive fish there.

Among all the issues, I’ll be talking about the importance of Maine’s remaining native brook trout and Arctic charr, what we’ve done to protect them, what more we must do, and the unfortunate impacts of stocked fish in some waters.

If you are concerned about invasive fish, or just want to know more about them and what we can do to remove them from our waters, please join us.

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.