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.