“It really was an excellent summer for trout and trout fishermen,” said Frank Flack, the DEC’s Region 6 fisheries manager. “And I expect to see better than usual carryover of stocked fish as a result.”

High water did curtail some of the stream survey work that Flack and his co-workers had planned during the year. Before the weatherman called a halt, Region 6 electroshocking crews managed to assay the Independence River in Lewis County and part of the South Branch of the Grass River in St. Lawrence County.

The Independence, once one of the region’s better streams, was removed from the state stocking list in the 1970s because high levels of acidity limited trout survival.

“Unfortunately, it looks like it’s still too acid, except for a couple of tributaries,” Flack said.

Before rising water forced them to pack up, DEC workers found a fairly impressive population of wild brook trout in the South Branch of the Grass.

Chief among the regulatory changes that northern New York trout fishers must be aware of this season are some new catch-and-release areas.

These include sections of the West Branch St. Regis River in eastern St. Lawrence County, the West Branch Ausable River in Essex County, the Saranac River in Clinton County and the Batten Kill in Washington County. The boundaries of these “no-kill” trout zones are spelled out on pages 53-61 of the state’s Freshwater Fishing Regulations 2004-06 guide.

Unique circumstances were behind the rules change on the West Branch St. Regis. Flack explained that the affected area includes a hydroelectric power plant bypass channel below the Allen Reservoir dam. The channel used to run dry much of the time, but now has flows sufficient to support trout, thanks to an agreement forged during the dam’s federal re-licensing process.

“The new catch-and-release area is about a two-mile stretch, overall,” Flack said. “It will be stocked with brown trout, and there’s access at Allen Falls and downstream at the old Route 11B bridge.”

Among dozens of fine trout waters in the state’s northern counties, Flack is especially high on Crystal Creek, a Lewis County stream with wild browns and brookies, Oriskany Creek in Oneida County, West Canada Creek in Oneida and Herkimer counties and the East Branch St. Regis in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties.

Other regional treasures include the aforementioned West Branch of the Ausable and Batten Kill, as well as the Bouquet River in Essex County and the Salmon River in Franklin County.

SOUTHEASTERN NEW YORK

On Sept. 17 and 18, 2004, the depth of the Delaware River at Baryville increased 20 feet in a 24-hour period. Raging torrents fed by flood waters on the Beaver Kill, Willowemoc Creek and the east and west branches of the Delaware, were the result of Hurricane Ivan and put an exclamation point on one of the Catskill region’s wettest summers ever.

Many homes and businesses in the river valleys were flooded, but DEC Region 4 fisheries biologist Norm McBride does not think trout populations were unduly harmed.

“The flood of 1996 was worse,” he said. “That one wiped out a whole year-class of fish.”

“It (Ivan) wasn’t a direct fish-killer,” agreed Wayne Elliot, DEC Region 3 fisheries manager. “But the rain was heavy enough that some of the tributaries got churned up pretty badly, so it may be that some spawning habitat was lost.”

Both McBride and Elliott have been spearheading some groundbreaking management initiatives for the last couple of years. McBride has been up to his elbows in a study of the Beaver Kill-Willowemoc watershed, and should be wrapping up the final report this year, along with co-participants from Trout Unlimited and Cornell University. The report will evaluate the ecological health of the “Beamoc” system and recommend measures to improve its productivity. Elliot, meanwhile, has played a critical role, along with officials of New York City, Trout Unlimited and the states of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey in designing a new, experimental flow regime for the Neversink River and the Delaware and its branches.

The test flows will govern water levels on the rivers through 2006. In the interim, consultants on the project are to design computer models to evaluate the impact of various flow schemes on river fisheries and the New York City water supply. For its part, the DEC is collecting scientific data, including fish population figures and water temperatures, at a dozen monitoring stations, including four each on the east and west branches of the Delaware, one on the main stem of the Delaware and three on the Neversink.