Tagged Pequest Hatchery Fish

[pmelle]

I was fishing the brodhead creek gorge on Friday night and was catching a larger than usual number of rainbows in the 10-14" range. The one I reeled in had a tag in its jaw that I removed before releasing. It is 1 of a 1000 rainbows that the pequest hatchery in Oxford NJ releases every year for fun. I can send that tag back for a certificate, pretty neat! What I thought was really interesting that this fish, assuming it was dumped into the pequest river close to the hatchery, this rainbow moved roughly about 20 miles from the pequest, to the Delaware and up the Brodhead creek. I think a large school of rainbows had moved together, hence all the fish I caught at that spot.ever caught a tagged fish before? I'd be interested to see where this fish had been stocked into, I'm assuming a lot here I know.

 

[wbranch]

Pretty amazing to have swum down the Pequest, across the mighty Delaware, without being eaten, and then up the Brodhead. No wonder rainbows have a reputation for wandering. Neat story.

 

[RyanR]

Neat catch indeed. FYI, all of NJ's state-stocked trout are raised at the Division's Pequest State Trout Hatchery. So that trout, even though raised at Pequest Hatchery might not have been stocked in the Pequest River itself although it could have been. I'd almost bet the fish was originally stocked in the lower Big Flatbrook or perhaps Paulinskill River. The mouth of Big Flatbrook is only a couple miles upriver of the Brodhead's mouth.

 

[pmelle]

After mailing in my info, I got a nice email from the New Jersey division of Fish and Wildlife today. They said that unfortunately there is no way of exactly telling what the point of entry was for the trout and that it most likely came from either the Paulins Kill River, Columbia Lake, Pequest River or even the Musconetcong River. A cool catch indeed though. Hopefully it will help them have a better idea how the fish move.