Where To Fish (And Where To Throw 'Em Back)

Trout fishing season in Connecticut opens today, the start of months of carefree hurling of lines into streams and rivers trying to catch thousands of stocked trout.

But this time of year also is a sober reminder that most of the other fish that live out their entire lives in fresh water or Long Island Sound, like carp, bass,  striped bass, and bluefish, aren’t safe to eat more more often than a few times a month—or, for pregnant or nursing women, or children under 6, ever.

Resident fish have accumulated chemicals from the industrial past like PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), mercury from cars and smokestacks (such as the state’s trash incinerators) and other contaminants from highway runoff.

Despite that, people should fish—for so many reasons.

We should fish for fun and food. Hatchery trout are certainly more safe to eat than many wild species.

We should fish to become conservationists who value the laws forbidding—for example—dumping chemicals into storm drains.

Finally, we should fish to learn: that mercury accumulates over time, for example. But in stocked trout, the accumulations are almost certainly very small. So fishermen should feel free to catch and eat trout, following daily catch limits of five fish per day in most places, two in tidal areas.

Licenses cost from $10 to $32 for the season. See the DEP’s fishing page: http://www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp?a=2696&q=322718

Here’s a sampling of some of the eastern Connecticut rivers and ponds stocked with hatchery-grown fish:

• Hammonasset River in Clinton, Madison, and Killingworth: 7,000-plus fish including brook trout and rainbow trout.
• Fence Creek, Madison: Alewife (also known as river herring). Note that alewife making their way upriver to spawn are off limits because of a mysterious decline in recent years. State fisheries staffers are trying to restore these populations. The ban is in effect at least until March 2012. Landlocked alewife in ponds and lakes are fair game.)
• Neck River, Madison and Guilford: brown trout.
• Indian River, Clinton: Brown trout.
• Hyde Mill Pond, Ledyard, Stonington: brown trout.
• Lantern Hill Pond, Ledyard and North Stonington: brown and rainbow trout.
• Long Pond, Ledyard and North Stonington: stocked with roughly 4,600 brown and rainbow trout.
• Saw Mill Pond, Ledyard: brown and rainbow trout.
• Indiantown Brook, Preston, Ledyard: stocked with roughly 2,700 brook, brown, and rainbow trout.
• Whitfords Brook, Ledyard and Stonington: brown trout.
• Hunts Brook, Waterford: brook, brown, and rainbow trout.
• Stony Brook, Montville: rainbow trout.
• Oxoboxo Brook, Montville: brook and brown trout

Lakes and ponds with more dangerous chemicals than other waterways include:            

• Dodge Pond, East Lyme, and Wyassup Lake in North Stonington. The state stocks brown and rainbow trout here, but because of mercury, the state health department warns that “most types of fish from these waterbodies should not be eaten by anyone.”
• Long Island Sound: Limit or avoid large striped bass, large bluefish, and weakfish, because of PCBs.
• Mill River, Fairfield: Blue crabs have lead and are unsafe to eat.

Other waterbodies with higher levels of dangerous chemicals include: the Housatonic River above Derby Dam; Union Pond in Manchester; the Quinnipiac River upstream of Quinnipiac Gorge in Meriden; Silver Lake in Berlin and Meriden; Versailles and Papermill ponds in Sprague.

For more about the consumption warnings, see the state Department of Public Health’s page at http://www.ct.gov/dph/cwp/view.asp?a=3140&Q=387460