Connecticut”™s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection recently banned the taking of alewives and blueback herring from most waters in Connecticut.
This is the 13th consecutive year those fish have been protected.
The fish are not typically eaten by humans but are critical to other commercial and noncommercial water species. In 2013, the state”™s commercial boats hauled in $14 million in finfish, lobster, scallops, crabs and squid, DEEP reported. Ospreys, bald eagles, harbor seals, porpoises, egrets, kingfishers and river otters also eat them.
Historically, millions of river herring returned to Connecticut”™s rivers and streams each year. More than 630,000 blueback herring passed over the Holyoke Dam in Massachusetts on the Connecticut River in 1985, DEEP reported. By 2006, only 21 passed over.
The action was initially taken in April 2002 and has been extended each successive year because there has been no improvement in population size during the past year, DEEP reported. The current action by DEEP Commissioner Robert Klee extends the prohibition through March 31, 2016.
“Despite the conservation efforts taken by this agency and others over the past decade, the runs of river herring in Connecticut are still diminished,” said DEEP Deputy Commissioner Susan Whalen. “The best available data from this past year indicates that the closure of these fisheries must therefore remain in place.”
“Anglers on the Connecticut River last spring will agree that there were more blueback herring than we”™ve seen in many years,” said William Hyatt, chief of DEEP”™s Bureau of Natural Resources. “But the numbers were well shy of what we had prior to the decline that began in the mid-1980s. Furthermore, the number of alewives along the shoreline actually decreased in 2014. We need to ensure that any recovery is real and sustainable before we lift harvest restrictions.”
Nonmigratory alewife populations are established in several lakes and ponds in Connecticut. The DEEP prohibition does not include landlocked alewives from Amos Lake, Ball Pond, Beach Pond, Candlewood Lake, Crystal Lake, Highland Lake, Mount Tom Pond, Lake Quassapaug, Lake Quonnipaug, Squantz Pond, Uncas Pond and Lake Waramaug. Alewives in these lakes may still be taken by angling and scoop net as established in state statute and regulation.
DEEP continues to transplant adult herring from streams with healthy runs into streams where runs have been eliminated or greatly depleted, removing obsolete dams and building fishways ”“ like the one recently completed on Rogers Lake in Old Lyme ”“ that allow fish to migrate past remaining dams.
