CT River herring reports

[zimmy]

Thought some might find this data interesting... Counts for 2005 and 2006 on the Connecticut river (from US FWS)

Total Fish Passage Counts
Includes dams up to and including the Holyoke Dam.
Species Count

(2000)
Alewife: 5
Blueback Herring: 10,588

(2005)
Alewife: 1
Blueback Herring: 534

(2006)
Alewife: 1
Blueback Herring: 21

Real nice... huh

[JohnR]

Ouch - any other survey information from CT?

[Jenn]

http://www.fws.gov/r5crc/Fish/oldcts.html


Historic counts. Notice the "explosion" of numbers in the early '80's and then sharp decline come the early 90s. VERY interesting......

[JLH]

Very Interesting Indeed! I’m surprised how low the numbers were in the early to mid 70’s.

[Sweetwater]

Well, the following news (posted last Friday) is not going to help the herring situation in the CT River since the Westfield is a major tributary to the CT River.

********
April 20, 2007 21:32PM

WESTFIELD - Struggling with a ruptured downtown sewer main off Meadow Street, city officials were forced to divert millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Westfield River during the past two days.

The break in the 21-inch main has made downstream boating and fishing unsafe and forced sewage into the basements of eight or nine homes in the Meadow Street area, along with the former St. Casimir Church, which is now part of the School Department, officials said.

"It's a disaster," said David K. Williams, whose basement at 151 Meadow St. flooded with 3½ feet of sewage Thursday and had to be pumped out by the Fire Department. "There is still human feces just laying there."

[Jenn]

Westfield was a mess on that monday and that article came out friday. I am sceptical about the two days though. I think it went on longer than that. River smelled like poo that whole week......

[pmueller]

It would be interesting to see what the other New England states attribute the fall of herring counts.
So far, CT seems to be blaming bass, I don't by it. I think there is one source that has not come up in conversation anywhere. Think about the precipitous drop in herring numbers just in the past few years. Now think about the exponential increase in seals. Thats just on the Cape. Can you imagine how it is up in Maine? To me it makes more sense.

[zimmy]

The wethersfield cove on the CT river gets all the overflow from the Hartford MDC combined sewage. Several million gallons per year. Overflow goes into a stream that dumps into the cove. Millions of gallons a year of raw sewage dump into the cove. The cove and the stream both were spawning areas for hering. My father inlaw grew up on the cove and also owns the house he grew up in. When he was a kid the herring would line the shore of the cove by the thousands. I haven't seen a single one along the yard since maybe 2001 or 2. After a nice rain the scent of raw sewage wafts throughout the yard. Anything you can imagine being in the sewers makes a nice little tidal line along the yard when the tide drops out. Father inlaw also says when he was a kid there were always some kinda big fish attacking the herring and chasing em up on the yard. He doesn't fish so he doesn't know what they were for sure

[jimmy z]

There haven't been those big blitzes in the river in years. I don't live too far from the river. I usually fish up north a few towns, but it doesn't look too promising this year so far. I didn't see too many river herring last year.

[JLH]

Saw a lot more herring last year than in 2005 - may have just been the areas I'm fishing. Had some nights where they were getting snagged on the trebbles of my plugs... No idea yet about this year - just wish the water would come down!!

[Rappin Mikey]

It dropped pretty good last night. Won't be long now. If the amount of herring in the Thames is anyway an indicator of the run in the CT, we should have a pretty good year.

[massmike]

fished the Westfield and the Chicopee this A.M. ----No shad yet---unusual to get skunked in both places. Ct. River had three or four boats that I saw probably looking for stripers and/or shad. Water levels should stabilize in a few days---hopefully the fishing will too.

[zimmy]

I heard from a reliable source this weekend that there were a few areas loaded with herring last year that don't reflect the numbers indicated. However, I was at my inlaws yesterday and there was nothing...

[EricM]

Bad news there, looking forward to the 2007 count when it gets posted to see the trend.

[Kierran]

The only positive light I can shed on this issue is that Connecticut's Clean Water Fund is supposedly receiving $110 million in FY 07-08 and FY 08-09. Connecticut has agreed to stop raw sewage from entering waterways during rainstorms by seperating combined sewer outflows by 2020 and to reduce excess nitrogen from flowing into Long Island Sound by 2014.