One of the reasons the flows have been cut is that CT DEEP today is collecting larger fish for the Farmington Survivor Strain program.
The goal is to take the big holdovers, which have proven to be adaptive, back to the hatchery to collect their DNA (more here). They then are returned to the river.
The program has been around about 20 years and has been successful. I’ve read that half of the browns at the Farmington are now wild. It helps that a big chunk of the river is C&R all the time. Imagine if this happened at the Swift!
Here are two videos that show what it is like catching and sorting browns. There are some incredibly pretty and large fish in the second video.
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Great videos , Ct. does an amazing job with the Farmington and I wish Mass would do this with the Deerfield and make the Swift catch and release year round and really concentrate on the brook trout fishery it has.
Agreed!
How are the elastomer tags applied?
Hey Laurence, great question. I honestly don’t know. A bit ago, I searched online. The only info I saw was that CT DEEP claims they insert the elastomers in a humane but labor-intensive way.
Elstomers are a semi solid plastic that is injected into the trout. If you google jard enough you can find the company that makes the elastomers.