Coaster Brook Trout

Another Isle Royale population, stream spawners, persists in the Big and Little Siskiwit rivers, and a brood stock has been developed from these fish as well. Isle Royale coasters are doing well for the same reason Nipigon River coasters are doing well—they’re not getting eaten by humans. When Swainson went to Isle Royale National Park in 1993 he told the managers what he was doing on the Nipigon. Next spring the daily coaster limit for the park was one fish over 18 inches.

In Canada and the US there's enormous excitement about coasters. Anglers are enthusiastic; environmentalists are enthusiastic; Indians are enthusiastic; feds are enthusiastic - and state managers, with the exception of Michigan's, would rather think about something else. Or at least that's the impression one gets when one reads their reports and listens to their excuses. Minnesota managers tell me there's not much potential for coasters because their streams are way shorter than Wisconsin's, lack Wisconsin-type groundwater, and have barrier falls near their mouths. Wisconsin managers tell me there's not much potential for coasters because the habitat has gone to hell and because brook trout don't feel pressure to use the lake the way they do in Minnesota. Wisconsin streams, they explain, are long, charged with groundwater and don't have Minnesota-type barriers.

Research is important, provided it doesn't become an end in itself. "I'm really of the opinion that if these guys had been around 40 years ago, we wouldn't have lake trout in Superior now," says Perich. "They would have never started; they would have just kept studying. In Minnesota they're just paying lip service and responding to pressure, not doing what needs to be done. We've got 60 or 70 streams along the coast, and there aren't even any signs up telling the public that coasters are special fish and that you can kill only one over 20 inches."

At least Minnesota has imposed half-decent harvest regulations. But as soon as a 15-inch coaster, which may not have spawned even once, sticks its snout into Wisconsin it can legally be snatched out and bashed on the head. You can keep bashing until you've killed three, then start over the next morning. At the same time, against the recommendations of the Lake Superior Committee, Wisconsin annually unleashes 120,000 "splake" in Chequamegon Bay. Splake are Frankenstein fish created in hatcheries by crossing female lakers with male brookies, doubtless with the assistance of cackling hunchbacks. They're popular with managers because they don't reproduce efficiently in the wild and therefore create permanent job opportunities. And they're popular with the public because managers can create an appetite for any item just by supplying it in large quantity. Not only are splake an affront to anyone with what George Bird Grinnell used to call "a refined taste in natural objects," they are a major impediment to coaster restoration. First, and most important, they look like brook trout. Anglers can't be expected to distinguish brook trout from splake, and they won't. (Recently a confirmed Minnesota state record brook trout turned out to be a splake after someone decided to thaw it out and perform an autopsy.) Second, splake inhabit nearshore waters and compete with coasters. Third, splake eat brook trout; in fact, they're being used with great success in Colorado as a control agent in lakes overrun with stunted brookies. And fourth, despite the assurances of their creators, splake are not always sterile and therefore may pollute the coaster gene pool.

Wisconsin fisheries manager Dennis Pratt has it right when he observes that land-use practices have degraded the state's northern brook trout streams so that, in their lower reaches, they're full of silt. And he has it right when he observes that now, without the deadfalls and big, thick coniferous woods to slow it down, spring runoff tends to blow out wing deflectors and other instream habitat improvements. He and his colleagues may even have it right when they argue that, because of habitat degradation, Wisconsin brook trout no longer experience the density that used to push them out into the big water. "Most managers probably believe coasters are a unique genetic strain," he told me. "The other theory, the one we tend to believe in Wisconsin, is that a brook trout is a brook trout."

Swainson isn't buying it. "The habitat has to be fixed anyway," he remarks.

Ed Michael, of TU's National Resource Board, says this: "I don't think the bad-habitat argument is valid. If we have to do some stream restoration, we have to do some stream restoration. You don't sit back and say: ÔWell, the habitat's gone. Therefore we're going to farm fish.'"

Michigan stocks splake in Lake Superior, too—some 80,000 a year. And its coaster limit is even more outrageous than Wisconsin's—three a day over 10 inches. But when I interviewed Michigan managers it was clear they wanted to do better. "Now that the fish we've stocked are getting bigger we need to offer them more protection by clamping down on bag and size limits," declared acting Lake Superior Basin coordinator Steve Scott. He wasn't even scandalized when I suggested that his agency stop contaminating Lake Superior with splake. "There may be an opportunity to replace them with planted coasters," he said. Great idea.

Recalling their failure with grayling, Michigan managers keep cautioning coaster advocates not to get too excited. I can understand that advice, but I can't agree with it. First, Michigan had to try grayling restoration, and maybe it should try it again when biologists better understand the new limiting factors. Second, Michigan grayling had been snuffed out. There was no genetic spark for mangers to rekindle; they had to work with fish from Wyoming and Canada. Native coasters still survive; and when would-be fish restorers have a stock to work with and at least some of the original habitat, they succeed more often than they fail. Contrast, for example, the success of greenback cutthroat restoration in Rocky Mountain National Park, where a few fish persisted in good habitat, with the failure of Atlantic salmon restoration in central and southern New England, where no fish returned to dirty, dam-choked habitat.

Coasters have proven themselves to be survivors. I think they're hanging on in dozens of streams in Minnesota. They are holding their own against the Nipigon's huge run of chinook salmon, which spawn at the same time they do. Along the Ontario shore they are prospering in some of Superior's best steelhead streams. Coaster restoration is already working, and it's going to work a lot better. If that excites you, good. Go help.