It’s finally warm enough for Western North Carolina biologists to start looking for Appalachia’s only native trout: the Southern Appalachian brook trout.
There’s only one way to know how trout are doing, and that’s to strap on your waders and get out there. So that’s what N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s coldwater research coordinator and primary trout catcher Jacob Rash and his brook trout crew have done nearly every day for several weeks. They’re studying how brook trout were impacted by extreme runoff and other habitat changes from Helene.
“Appalachia has that long connection to trout,” Rash said as the crew hiked its gear about a mile into the Pisgah National Forest near the town of Candler on a clear day last month.
“It doesn't take long to find somebody that tells you a story about a grandparent or great-grandparent fishing for ‘specks’.” That’s a nickname referring to the fish’s unique green and white speckled pattern. They’re also commonly called “brookies.”
As an environmentally sensitive fish with specific habitat needs, Southern Appalachian brook trout can tell us whether streams are healthy and how climate change is affecting habitat.
Team member Maggie Coffey, a wildlife conservation technician, said trout act like a kind of climate bellwether. They’re sensitive to heat, and Southern Appalachia is the end of their natural range, which starts in Nova Scotia.
They’re vulnerable here, according to the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service. Southern Appalachian brook trout are genetically distinct, and Western North Carolina is the southern end of their range. They’re not considered endangered, but are in active decline throughout their range.
Across the trout’s range, numbers have dropped by about 80% from the turn of the twentieth century. That’s mainly due to habitat loss and competition from non-native fish.
“Drier dries and wetter wets” - drought and heavy rainfall associated with climate change - are hard on the fish.
“They generally like colder waters, so anytime you have canopy loss, which we're seeing a lot (after) Helene, that'll warm up the creeks and streams, which could cause some problems for their survivability and their adaptability,” Coffey said. “And if rainbow trout are getting up in there, rainbow are a little bit better advantaged to find food and kind of outcompete the brook trout.”
Near their entry point in the Pisgah National Forest, Rash pointed out an area with downed trees and where debris had been deposited in what were once undisturbed pools and riffles.
“It's a good example of the force of the water that was moving down the mountain,” Rash said. The water could have washed trout away from their natural habitat - which is hard on them, he said, because they’re “homebodies” who like to stick to the same pool most of their lives.
The team individually surveys streams as the topography – and damage – varies.
Coffey and her teammate Haley Smith survey the local trout population by shocking the stream - with an electric backpack. Metal attachments in the water carry an electric current that stuns the trout, keeping them alive but allowing them to float to the surface.
“As you can see it's a state-of-the-art setup here,” she said, working her way through a waist-deep pool, which is trout’s favorite habitat because of the abundance of salamanders, bugs, and other prey. The team found a couple of larger rainbow trout in the first fifteen minutes, but no native brook trout just yet.
Over the course of the day, the team zig-zagged up the stream, hauling their backpacks across slick rocks, sometimes getting waist deep. When they found a brook trout, they hollered in excitement, holding it up for others to see before quickly putting it in a bucket full of water. While Smith weighed and measured the trout, Coffey took quick samples of the water’s temperature, pH, and other important parameters to get a snapshot of the stream’s health.
Rash’s team has taken 11,500 brook trout samples over the past 40 years in Western North Carolina. The annual work will run through the fall.
They’ll also do some restorations - moving brook trout to their habitat so they can repopulate some areas. They missed some of that work last fall after Helene, so it’s a little bit of catch-up. They have “hundreds and hundreds” of sites to get to this year, Rash said. They won’t get the full picture of how Helene affected populations till the fall, but he’s feeling hopeful.
At the end of the day, the team let the fish go free in the stream, and they quickly darted away, waking up from their stupor. Rash says that even seeing one brook trout in an hour’s trip is a good sign.
“I never stop being amazed at what these fish can do,” Rash said. “It's just cool to see them persist and knowing they've been here for so long and they still find a way to make it.”
