COLUMN: Bill Nemitz

Angler's trophy fish a tricked-out trout

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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	photo Ken Snowdon displays a 5 1/2-pound, transmitter- equipped trout he caught last winter on Moosehead Lake.
	Staff photo by John Patriquin Biologist Tim Obrey shows an electronic tracking device that was taken from a large brook trout caught by Greenville resident Ken Snowdon last January. Such devices allow biologists to track life-cycle patterns of fish.
	Staff photo by John Patriquin Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologists Tim Obrey, Steve Seeback and Jeff Bagley "electrofish" for parr (1-year-olds) and this year's hatchling salmon Wednesday on Davis Stream where it enters Wilson Stream in Willimantic.
	ON THE MAINE ROAD Columnist Bill Nemitz will be on the road until Labor Day weekend, reporting on people and places of interest in western and northern Maine. COMING UP BILL NEMITZ'S two-week On the Maine Road series runs through this weekend: ON SUNDAY, he reports on a dispute that typifies the confrontations that are growing more common as development pressures mount in northern and western Maine. To top of story

— GREENVILLE — Sometime in the next week or two, Ken Snowdon will head down to a taxidermist shop in Harmony and collect the newly mounted brook trout he pulled out of ice-covered Moosehead Lake last January.

It's a beauty. Five-and-a-half pounds. Twenty-three inches long. A head the size of your fist. An orange-red belly as radiant as a northern Maine sunset.

And one more thing: Snowdon's lunker has a 10-inch antenna.

"The day before I caught it, an IF&W (Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife) guy came by and told us what they were doing," Snowdon said. "So when I hauled it up through the ice, I knew what I had."

They're called, at least in these parts, Robo-Trout. Since last fall, they've been gliding along beneath the surface of Moosehead Lake and its network of tributary streams and rivers with small radio transmitters implanted in their guts and thin wires extending from their bellies.

Welcome to the high-tech world of fisheries management, where they track trout through the water by putting them on the air.

"This is it," said IF&W biologist Tim Obrey, holding up the electronics salvaged from Snowdon's brookie. "Fishing isn't just dropping a line in the water anymore."

It's called a "telemetry study." Beginning last fall and running through the end of this year, it's helping Obrey and his team of biologists figure out how best to maintain the right mix of fish throughout the vast Moosehead Lake watershed.

They begin by catching the fish in live traps and selecting the most mature specimens. Then out comes the anesthetic, followed by the scalpel.

"We do the surgery right out in the field," Obrey said. "We implant the transmitter and wire, give 'em three or four stitches and they're ready to go."

For the next 12 months, the biologists can track the fish via receivers carried by hand, planted in fixed locations or taken aloft in airplanes. Each time a receiver picks up a signal - each of the 75 fish now being tracked has its own frequency - the contact is logged on a computer.

Snowdon's brook trout got around. By the time it took his bait beneath 3 feet of ice on Jan. 28, its signal had been tracked from Cowan Cove past Kineo Mountain over to the Moose River, then south past Big Dry Point into the middle of Moosehead Lake and finally to Doughnut Cove. There, Snowdon and his fishing buddies, Fred Hersom and Mike Webber, peered through the ice hole at the biggest brook trout they'd ever encountered.

"You got a wall hanger!" gushed Webber. "You got a wall hanger!"

And then some. Snowdon saw the antenna protruding from the fish's stomach and gulped. He'd caught a Robo-Trout. And he no sooner had it out of the water when along came IF&W biologist Jeff Bagley, who'd heard a huge brookie had just been been caught and had a hunch.

"Does it have an antenna"" Bagley asked.

"Sure does," replied Snowdon. "Does that mean I can't keep it""

"No, you can keep it," Bagley said. However, he added, he would like the transmitter and antenna back - seeing as they cost almost $200.

"I told him he could have (the equipment) back for fifty bucks," Snowdon recalled with a chuckle. "But he didn't think that was very funny, so I just gave it to him."

Robo-Trout, surgically stripped of his signal, easily won Snowdon first place in the Indian Hill Fishing Derby that day. (The prize was a snazzy new pair of snowshoes.) After the applause died down, Snowdon went home, hoisted Robo-Trout into the freezer and called taxidermist Jayne Leslie Dyke down in Harmony.

Dyke, who calls her shop Enchanted With Nature, is used to special requests. Like the guy who wanted his deer looking just like it did coming out of the woods, or the people who plead for that special look in a moose's eyes.

Snowdon wanted a fish antenna.

"I've never done a radio fish," Dyke said this week. "Sometimes I think we take this reality thing a little too far."

Still, she's doing it. She's also using black thread, per Snowdon's request, to call attention to the transmitter incision. Yet to be determined is whether the antenna will be glued to the mounting plaque or just left to hang loose in mid-air.

"I think just having it hang there would look a little strange," Dyke said. "But we'll see."

Snowdon is living for the day he can finally hang the fish on his living room wall and have guests walk by, take a closer look, and ask "What's that""

"It will be a conversation starter, that's for sure," he said.

Meanwhile, Obrey and his colleagues will keep trolling through the radio waves. Once they're done with the Moosehead Lake project and another involving two stationary receivers implanted along the banks of the Moose River (think E-ZPass), they'll set up shop this fall in Chamberlain Lake on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

"So far, counting Ken's, only three Robo-Trout have been caught," Obrey said.

Stay tuned.

Columnist Bill Nemitz can be reached at 791-6323 or at: