Wild & Native
Brook trout hiding in plain sight on Martha's Vineyard.
On Martha’s Vineyard, Noepe to the indigenous Wampanoag people—“land amid the waters”—wild brook trout maintain “a tenuous grasp on life in cool, secluded pockets of water.”
When you think of fishing on Martha’s Vineyard—not vacationing presidents or ostentatious vacation homes1—you think of striped bass (Morone saxatilis) and bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix). Scup (Stenotomus chrysops), fluke (Paralichthys dentatus), black sea bass (Centropristis striata), tog (Tautoga onitis), hickory shad (Alosa mediocris), bonito (Sarda sarda), albies (Euthynnus alletteratus), and the endearing “trash fish:” sea robin (Prionotus evolans).
But wild, native brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis)? Maybe in Maine, New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Vermont’s Green—but Martha’s Vineyard? Trout are stocked at a few spots but stockers aren’t wild. A rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) isn’t native to the eastern United States.
Fly Fisherman magazine explains they’re
native to the United States and part of the Canadian West Coast, as far inland as eastern Idaho and Northwest Montana and as far south as northwest Baja California, Mexico. In Asia, rainbows are native to Amur River drainage and north into Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.2
Brown trout (Salmo trutta) aren’t native to North America at all. They were brought to the United States in the 1860s. The Forest Service notes how Izaak Walton “mused” about them in The Compleat Angler—a seminal fishing text I wrote about years ago for Bespoke Post. In 1864 brown trout eggs were unsuccessfully incubated in New York. Their introduction was attempted again.
In February 1883 the ship Wera arrived in New York City from Germany, carrying 80,000 brown trout eggs. The eggs were sent to hatcheries in Northville, Michigan, and Caledonia, New York. In the spring of 1884 the U.S. Fish Commission released fry hatched from these eggs into the Baldwin River.
Once you learn brook trout are in Martha’s Vineyard’s streams you learn stream names, like Fulling Mill Brook, Mill Brook, Paint Mill Brook, Tiasquam.3
A 2011 article mentions a trout survey which found “brook trout in a stream where they had not been.” It showed they’re “still surviving out on Martha’s Vineyard.”
There’s a hierarchy of trout.
At the top, wild and native. In eastern states: wild brook trout.
Then stream-bred fish that weren’t somewhere originally but weren’t themselves stocked. Their ancestors were. As the name suggests, they were born and raised in a stream, not a hatchery.
Lowest, hatchery trout. Pellet-heads, pellet-pigs, stockers, stockies—many nicknames, understandably derisive. Fisheries biologist Lee Simard told MeatEater:
The biggest problem with fish stocking is its potential to impact existing wild fish populations…Stocked fish compete with wild fish for limited food resources, they may displace wild fish from the best habitat or from a section of stream entirely, or they may even prey on the wild fish.
Stocked fish have “shredded fins and tails.” The adipose fin, between the dorsal and caudal, is clipped. It doesn’t grow back. No adipose? Stocked fish.
Stocking leads to fishing opportunity. “Put-and-take” fisheries stock “for the express purpose of sport fish harvest,” but that’s not always the goal. Three Rivers Stocking Association, which stocks rivers I’ve fished, wants to “get people outdoors and enjoying our local rivers.”
The Swift River in Western Massachusetts has stockers but also wild brook trout. If you fly fish New England, you know the Swift. It is known for its Y-Pool, bubbler, Bondsville dam, and hatchery pipe.
A section of the river is catch & release/fly fishing only. Fishing pressure makes the fish quite educated and hard to catch. They’ve seen flies. With the “gin-clear” water you can see fish assess and refuse yours.
I commend Martha’s Vineyard’s brook trout. They go largely unbothered by anglers. Small-stream angling for brookies is a tough sell with saltwater fish in any direction.
Wild brook trout populations are relatively rare in eastern Massachusetts. Habitat loss and dams. In the northeast these fish “have lost more than half of their historic habitat to development,” as well as dams which stop water from flowing and cause it to heat up. Trout don’t like warm, unmoving water. Derrick Jensen wrote:
Every morning when I wake up I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam.
Dams make rivers and streams impassable for anadromous fish, which return from sea to spawn in freshwater. When brook trout venture to saltwater we get sea-run brook trout, “salters.” Salters aren’t anadromous, rather diadromous. They “live and spawn in freshwater” but go to saltwater “for food and thermal refuge.” Salters exist in Massachusetts, but more in Maine. Jerome V.C. Smith—physician, ichthyologist, mayor of Boston from 1854 to 1855—described sea-run brook trout in his 1833 work, Natural History of the Fishes of Massachusetts:
When taken from the salt water early in the spring, they are in high perfection…The general appearance of the skin is of a silvery brightness; the back being of a greenish and mackerel complexion; the spots of a vermillion color, mixed with others of a faint yellow, and sometimes slightly tinged with purple, extend the whole length of each side of the lateral line; the fins are light in color, firm in texture, and together with the tail are rather shorter and more rounded than in the common trout; the head and the mouth are very small, and the latter never black inside like the common or fresh water trout.
Smith never saw brook trout so abundant “as in Duke’s county, upon Martha’s Vineyard.” Its waters were “alive with fish.” Salters have been caught on Martha’s Vineyard, but a better-known population is at Red Brook on Cape Cod. Bob Mallard writes in Squaretail: The Definitive Guide to Brook Trout and Where to Find Them:
Red Brook is a small brook trout paradise in the last place you’d expect to find it, busy and heavily developed Cape Cod. It is the blueprint for sea-run brook trout restoration and conservation, and proof that we are capable of undoing some of the damage we have done when we put our minds to it.
Think of the Red Brooks we could have but don’t. Mill Brook, for example. West Tisbury’s Mill Pond exists because Mill Brook was dammed. The pond’s temperature can reach “a fish-stifling ninety degrees or more.” Regardless, hatchery fish are stocked each spring.
We’re a far cry from the rivers “alive with fish”—wild, native—Jerome V.C. Smith saw. Without the dam, that article says Mill Brook might be “restored to its ancient free-flowing course to Tisbury Great Pond.” With the Duke’s County Smith saw as the goal, maybe it would be “filled with cold-water-loving wild sea-run brook trout.”
I’ve fished for brook trout on Martha’s Vineyard a couple times. The first time, I rested my off-shoulder against a small tree and did what loosely qualified as a roll cast. A fish rose to my elk hair caddis—not a tactfully chosen fly, I just randomly chose it from my box. Fishing a seven and a half foot fiberglass four-weight—the lightest rod I had—I was over-gunned. For small streams, I got a six foot, two/three-weight fiberglass blank, cut it to five, fitted it with a reel seat and a snub-nose full wells cork grip, wrapped the snake guides, and got a cheap reel with old double-tapered line from a fly shop discount bin. Small-stream rods aren’t exactly casting tools. The one I built made its maiden voyage at Red Brook.
A reason to fish is to bring something near. Fish are nice to look at, but looking at a fish doesn’t always require catching one. If water is clear, admire a brook trout’s white-edged fins and vermiculation without stabbing it and pulling it by the face out of the water it depends on to live.
If a fish is where it belongs—wild, native—that’s worthy of appreciation alone.
New homes on Martha’s Vineyard,
explains, might have “pools and thousands of square feet (sometimes tens of thousands) of indoor space.” Being an upscale getaway isn’t the place’s whole story. More and more it’s becoming that, but there’s much more. Natural beauty, sandplain grassland, farms, birding, world-class fishing.
A “cultural shift” was noted in 2021 when one town’s “rate of pool building” hit a record high. Despite pools there’s a culture of conservation and agriculture. Again,
provides an important voice:
A talented photographer and good friend, Blake is a fiercely knowledgable and obsessed bowhunter—also a taxidermist. An article covering his “artful approach” highlights his philosophy: “the hunt doesn’t end after you’ve taken deer.” He’s starting a Substack. Whitetails, hunting, thought he puts into tracking and targeting deer. He builds relationships with them as he gets to know their habits. Deer awaken his ebullient erudition.
Kamchatka is known for Steelhead, anadromous rainbows (Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus).
Tiasquam is technically a river. Being “only six feet wide, it could easily pass for a brook or a stream.”
Awesome post, James. Even with its pretentiousness, I love MV. Last year I discovered shark fishing there. I also started getting curious about brook trout on the island so I was happy to read your post.
Interesting essay James and a subject I know very little about. I am fascinated by flyfishing and the focus on trout especially. In the area I regularly hike, I do see several people flyfishing in a small side channel of the Ottawa River. Observing from the shore on my hikes, the people flyfishing look like they're almost meditating. I suppose in some way they are. Thanks for sharing.