June's Family Fishing Day trying to get more Brookies on the lines

For the past two years, Angevine Park has provided an ideal setting for Bethel's Family Fishing Festival in early June, Wende Gray told town selectmen last week.

But there's been a small problem – the fish aren't biting.

“It's a great location in which to have it in terms of the public,” Gray said, “but there's questions whether it's a great location to have it in terms of the fish.

“We haven't caught any,” she told the selectmen, “which, you know, is pretty frustrating for kids.

“The first year was a very warm summer, and they [the fish] all went belly up during the swimming class.”

Last year the catch was little better.

For each of those years approximately 75 brook trout had been stocked three to five days before the event.

Gray, of the Upper Andro Anglers Alliance, said she had discussed the situation with Francis Brautigam, the new Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife fish biologist for this region, and his suggestion included putting the fish in far enough ahead of festival that they had time to acclimate.

“They're coming right out of the Casco hatchery and they're pretty fat and happy, because they've been fed pretty well, even though they take them off their feed two or three days before they put them in the truck,” Gray said. “But even so, they're a little dingy – they don't know where they're at or what they're doing.”

She said Brautigam suggested stocking the pond two weeks before event, rather than the three to five days.

“Then have a volunteer go out every evening, or in the morning when they generally eat, and just throw a bucket of worms in there, so they get used to eating worms. Maybe then they would think: 'Oh, this is what I'm 'spoused to eat.'”

That's the plan for this year, Gray said, but the biologist also suggested holding the festival earlier in the day -- from 7 a.m. to noon, rather than the from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., as it has been; and to even consider holding it earlier in the year.

The festival is currently held on the first Saturday after Memorial Day, Gray said, in order to coincide with IF&W's Free Fishing Day.

It does not coincide with any other scheduled activities in the Bethel area.

Selectman Don Bennett said the proposal for an earlier date made sense.

“It certainly would be better if we had some cool water to put them in,” Bennett said. “I think they'd be more active.”

He compared putting trout into the pond at the end of May to locking your dog in the car.

For brook trout particularly, he said, “there's just a few degrees that can separate life and death for them.”

But at least a few of the hardier stocked trout appeared to have endured the heat, Town Manager Jim Doar said later.

Brook trout were visible in the shallows last fall, he said, which may suggest a population has established itself in the swimming pond.

Despite the low catch to this point, Gray said, there is no serious consideration of changing the festival location.

When all factors (including such things as parking, restrooms and accessibility) are considered, she said, Angevine Park is the obvious choice.