The Tricks & Trades of Stocking Maine's Fish

The frost covering my car invoked such fury and distraught that I swung back toward my door, thinking the spot in my bed would still be warm and inviting, much more welcoming than this rotten bitter morning.  My legs felt heavy, my head felt dreary, and the only thing I felt like doing was sleeping.  My fingers stung as I grasped the frigid door handle to climb into my igloo of a car. The car choked in disapproval as I turned the key and blasted the heat. After a few minutes, the warmth of the car melted the frost, and my foot fell comfortable on the gas pedal. With a few extra swigs of coffee, I pushed on the gas, and headed off on my hour drive. 

Frost and fog rose from the driveway as I pulled into the Embden Fish Culture Station at 7:15 A.M. I stumbled from my car, still aching for a warm bed and good stretch. My heavy feet headed toward what looked like a house, my mind hoping that it was some kind of office. Abruptly, the door of the building busted open as four men sauntered into the cold. “Hey Molly, nice to see ya!” Gene waved. Gene, short with brownish gray hair and an interesting array of facial hair, waved me towards himself and his other three twins. All the men wore the same brown Inland Fish & Wildlife uniform, making them look incredibly similar to a crowd of UPS workers. “This is Kevin, my assistant,” Gene uttered as he pointed to a younger man. Kevin had very short, dirty blonde hair. He lacked the intriguing facial hair display that the other three men encompassed, giving him a much younger vibe.  Kevin smiled, greeting me with the usual handshake and “Hi, how are ya?” Gene then turned to a man who towered over him. “This is Steve.” Kevin grinned as Steve shoved out his hand, grabbed mine, and waggled it up and down with such a force that it jostled my entire body. Steve had short blondish red hair and a very goofy persona. His facial hair exhibit consisted of a short, scruffy, grizzled beard, giving him the vibe of a big lumberjack. Immediately, Steve started cracking dorky jokes, and soon I was laughing at his jokester personality. Gene introduced me to the fourth man as Steve continued with his puns, though I completely forgot the man’s name. He was short and skinny, with long brownish gray hair and a gnarly beard that easily spanned into the girth of his hair. In the cold weather, all I could think of was his hair and beard freezing into a giant icicle, turning him into the “Snow Miser”, my favorite Christmas villain. After the introductions, I followed the ball of brown through the parking lot. The men split up: Steve and Snow Miser headed in towards the fish pens, and Gene, Kevin, and I headed towards the trucks.

The mass of the truck stood out to me as I thought of how long I would have to stretch my legs to climb into it. The front of the truck was ordinary, aside from its raised height, yet the bed area was equipped with six large tanks. Gene explained that each tank was furnished with a dissolved oxygen machine to protect the fish. Since thousands of fish could fit into just one tank, the dissolved oxygen machine ensured that there would be enough oxygen for all the fish, leaving biologists minds at ease when considering a tank of belly-up fish.  To fill tanks with fish, each tank opened from the top so workers could easily dump a bucket of flopping fish into the tank. After dumping fish in, the top compartments could be easily closed by a few nifty screws and latches. When it was time for release, there was a hole the size of a volleyball on the bottom of the tanks. Gene made it clear that these holes must be closed until fish release, or we would be spreading fish road pizzas all the way from Embden to Rangeley. To prevent half of Maine from turning into dead fish highway, each hole was covered with a gate, only to be pulled up when fish were ready for release.

As I stood, the bottom of the tank was eye-level, as was a large wooden board. This board, as Gene explained, was to walk on as the tanks were filled with both fish and water. It looked like a plank walk of death, I thought, as I looked at the shaky, narrow wooden board. The vision of me teetering off the edge of the plank, flopping into an icy cold pond, and emerging like a wet poodle stuck out as I ran my fingers over the narrow board.  I was skeptical of the board, but assumed that no deaths from wood had occurred yet, so decided to leave the thought alone. After opening the top of the tanks, Gene grabbed a huge hose. “Get up on that wooden board”. I stretched my legs and pants as I crawled up the edge of the truck, soon to be standing on a board not much wider than my boot. I clutched the edge of the tank as my legs shook underneath me. I was not afraid of heights, yet this board scared me. As I cowered on the board, Gene shoved a large hose into my hand. “Fill each tank ¾ full with water,” Gene told me as he cranked the handle of the hose. Water shot from the hose into the first tank as I steadied my legs. If the hose took control, I would fly off the wood, hose still in hand like the fire hose ordeal in “The Little Rascals”. After gaining control of the wild hose, the tank filled quite quickly. I was under the impression that the hose would be turned off so I could set it up in the next tank, but soon found that the water was not stopping. “Start filling the next tank,” Gene called, nowhere near the valve to shut the hose off. Here we go, I thought. I swung the hose into the next tank as I gracefully splashed water all over my face, coughing and gurgling water that had gone down my throat, up my nose, and in my ears.  After five more face washes, ear cleanings, and plank shuffles, all six tanks were filled and ready for fish.

The fish at the Embden Culture Station are raised in giant kiddy pools, though they lack the florescent shadings and pool toys.  They are kept in a giant horse stable, protected from the weather, yet still open to bugs and small mice. At least 15 pools are found in this stable, if not many more. Most impressively, each pen is filled with thousands of fish. Can you imagine cramming between 1,000 and 3,000 fish into your family kiddy pool and keeping them all healthy and happy? Apparently, these biologists have figured out a solution to that cunning question, and it’s a good thing they have. At some points during the summer, the Embden Hatchery hosts over 300,000 fish ranging in size from four inches to sixteen inches. Some days, over 800 pounds of food are used to keep all fish at the hatchery well-fed. Kevin made it a point to express the pounds in kilograms first, explaining how no one these days knows what kilograms mean, though science is readily expressed in them. I obviously didn’t admit that I could only picture things in pounds, so I smiled and nodded chanting the occasional “yeah, I know right? People these days…”  So after growing and fattening these fish up with their 800 pounds (this would convert to 363.6 kilograms, to satisfy Kevin’s measurement gauge), the four biologists journey throughout the state of Maine to stock their prized pool pets. At the end of their stocking season, they accomplish the title of stocking 1/3 of all of Maine’s stocked fish, ranging all the way from Rangeley to Fort Kent.  

The dampness of my pants stung my legs as I walked into the stable; my dread soon to be overcome by joy. My eyes lit up as I watched thousands of fish swim around in their pools, mostly large salmon and brook trout. Snow Miser was standing in one of the large pens, fish flopping against his legs. He had crowded all the fish into an area the size of a piece of luggage so he could easily net them up and into a bucket. Steve stood above the pen, bucket in hand, ready to stock the truck and, of course, crack a few more jokes. After Gene backed the stocking truck in, he told me to climb back up on the wooden board. “What!? You’re gunna make her do it?” Steve yelled at Gene, soon calling him lazy and inconsiderate. As Steve continued to antagonize Gene, I clumsily crawled back onto the slippery plank (that I had just spilled water all over) and opened the latches of the first tank. I pondered exactly how I would get the fish in the tank without belly flopping onto Steve for a moment, only to be interrupted by the jokester swinging a bucket filled with flopping brook trout into my hands.  My grip on the bucket was tight, but the fish teetered it with such determination that I spilled a new layer of water all over myself. After a few grumbles, I lifted the bucket of fish into the tank to ease my struggling. “What the hell makes you wanna volunteer for this?” Steve shouted up to me as he swung another bucket towards my knees, laughing as the water showered all over my body.  “Better than class,” I spewed as I struggled with the next bucket. The next six tanks went along in a similar fashion; Steve continued to goof around and try to make me lose my balance and spill more water on myself. On top of all of his sweet gestures, he also spent a few moments trying to convince me to donate him my doe permit.

After my I had effectively personified myself as a fish with my soaking clothes, we were ready to head off to our destination. The engine roared as Gene started the truck up. I waved goodbye to the men, Steve adding in the comment to “stay dry” as I went on with my day. As the bumps in the road became pronounced, I wondered how the heck the fish could be alive in the tanks. The truck shook and rattled with every small crack in the road, sending the image of thousands of fish in a giant blender swirling through my head. I knew over 1,000 fish were in some of the tanks,  so some had to be smashing against the metal walls, turning their beautiful slender bodies into busted up blood balls. I knew both brook trout and salmon were pretty durable, but this just seemed like a feat even they could not take on.  As I sat thinking of the salmon smoothie occurring in the tanks behind me, Gene reminded me to watch small meters near my feet. These meters were set up to make sure dissolved oxygen levels were at the desired amount.  If all the meters were not in the dead center, we were to pull the truck over immediately before all the fish went belly-up.

After fish fatality procedures were explained, Gene got more into the gut of his job description. The four men at the station stock fish throughout almost all the months that there is not snow. So, May thru early November, these men are driving around stocking fish all across the state.  Today was their last day of stocking for the season, the weather reaching below freezing points in the Rangeley Lakes region. As we neared Richardson Lake, our first destination, mist and fog started consuming our truck, and snow began to fall on the ground. It was a clear day in Embden, but only one hour west, the snow was falling and ice was forming. The first thing that crossed my mind when I saw snow was the planks. The wooden boards had turned to narrow ice rinks from the excess water that my body did not catch.  The frost on the tanks filled me with dread because my delicate hands would soon be encompassed by their frigid cold. Suddenly, Gene took a sharp turn onto a dirt road. Soon, a beautiful lake was spanning in front of me.

According to the state of Maine, Richardson Lake is located in Oxford County in the Rangeley Lakes Region. It is a large freshwater lake, spanning 7751 acres, with 286176 feet of shoreline. This amounts to over one hundred football fields. This massive amount of shoreline allows for many camps used for children, anglers, and even gold panners.  Aside from the shoreline camps, there are also some sandy beaches for visitors to enjoy in the summer months, though I can’t imagine the lake being very warm. Since the water in so cold, Richardson Lake is a host to pristine brook trout, lake trout, and landlocked salmon. Thousands are stocked per year by the Embden brown crew to ensure a great fishery. Fishing season opens at ice out in May, or sometimes June if winter lingers, and ends in October. No ice fishing is allowed, so all fish stocked in November do not see a lure until spring.

The truck rattled and shook with every loose rock we hit. If the fish weren’t dead yet they definitely were now. The sun was shining as fog rose from the clear waters of Richardson Lake. I stared at the lake, wondering how cold I would be if I fell in, knowing that it was an absolute possibility. Gene backed the truck down to the boat ramp, a concrete slab built into the sand to make access to the lake easy for boaters. As soon as the truck was about a foot from the water, Gene cut the engine, and we were ready to stock.

The layer of ice glistened in the sun as Gene and I both stared at it. The image that played in my head was not the ideal situation that Gene or I wanted to experience. It included us climbing up the truck steps and standing on the board, soon to have our feet taken out from underneath us. It could go either way: We could swing out horizontally and slide on our backs, just like going down a big waterslide, only to fall on a concrete slab covered in frigid water. If the back slide wasn’t optimal, we could slip forward, heading for a full on penguin belly slide for the water. Maybe if fish were stocked before we fell, we could catch one in our mouth to add some icing to the idiot cake.  I laughed as I imagined this, though I didn’t want to see either of us break our backs that day. Instead, we gathered up bunches of sand and lathered them all over the frozen boards to prevent injury, and most importantly, humiliation.

After covering my shoes in sand, Gene led me to the back of the truck to pull out giant tubes that looked like elephant noses. I grabbed the nose tube and jostled it towards the tank. The tube was extremely flexible, providing a perfect chute to expel fish from. Just like an elephant blowing water from its trunk, fish would propel from the hose and out into the water. Gene swiftly attached the large tube hose to the first hole at the bottom of the first tank as I struggled back up the steps and onto the sandy plank. We started with tank one, filled with landlocked salmon. I fought with the screws that latched the opening chamber down snugly to the walls of the tank, my fingers shaking with cold. If I would have licked the tank, my tongue would have been stuck there for days, maybe even months, until some random fire department decided to come along and rip me from my spot. Though entirely tempting, I stuck with the screws, which finally budged. As I gripped the cover, I mentally prepared myself to see a fish smoothie. The tank would be filled with blood, bellies, and missing eye balls from the jostling road trip. Cringing at the thought of the potential massacre beneath, I pulled open the top of the tank to find that not one of the fish was belly-up, missing an eyeball, or bleeding from any random areas. While standing in shock, Gene handed me a net, telling me to use it to shoo in the extra fish. With the elephant nose attached to the hole and Gene aiming it to the water ahead, the gate could finally be released. The durable fish had made it without becoming road pizzas or exotic drink mixtures. With a quick pull, the water level began to drop as water shot out the tank and through the hose. I batted the net at the salmon like a bear under a bee hive, though vaguely succeeding to shoo enough into the tube. Salmon began tossing around the tank as the water level dropped down to one inch as I continued to bat at the remaining fifteen salmon left in the tank. I tried to urge the fish down the tube without whapping them in the face with the metal edges of the net, but they would not cooperate. As soon as they neared the large hole, they used their extremely strong muscles to propel themselves up and away from the hole.

All salmon have powerful muscular bodies, each equipped with an extremely strong tail. As they move their bodies, their tail wiggles and flaps, allowing them to propel swiftly from danger, or in this case, away from my veering net. It was do or die: I needed to somehow shove these salmon down the tube or they would die. I lunged over the edge of the tank, shoving my net and face down to the salmon. If my feet slipped on the plank, I would find myself sitting on a dozen salmon, like a chicken roosting on her eggs, and stuck to the freezing tank. After some swinging and batting, the last salmon shot down the tube and into the pure water of Richardson Lake. Five tanks and 384 kilograms later (or 844.8 pounds if you don’t understand kilogram conversions), our truck was emptied and all of the fish swam into the clear waters. As we watched the fish explore their new habitat, we heard the familiar grumbling and choking of another truck engine.

Gene swiftly moved his truck out of the way as Kevin began to back down to the boat launch. He had 192 kilograms of brook trout all between ten and fifteen inches that also needed to be stocked into the lake. Kevin, unlike Gene, backed down into the water. When the truck was submerged in three feet of water, Kevin walked onto his ice rink, completely lacking in sand, as he opened the first tank and released the gate. Brook trout launched out of the hole as he scooped the excess trout with his net. I expected to see fish beaming off the ice rink boards, but they all shot perfectly into the water. He continued this with two other tanks until the right side of his truck was emptied. With a quick wave to Gene, I hopped in the truck with Kevin to embark on our next journey.

As we drove further, the road began to become even more narrow and damaged. The truck jostled and shook as we entered Rangeley’s scenic byway. The road was windy as we drove up the mountain, overlooking the beautiful lakes and mountains in the region. As we swung around the curving roads, Kevin driving a little fast, we started seeing moose in the thick forest and muck. I found it hard to believe that biologists had the desire to bring their old rickety trucks on these unforgiving roads. I asked Kevin why anyone would want to drive on these roads to stock fish, and he explained that in areas similar to the one we were going to, there was also some airplane stocking taking place.

Stocking by airplane is an interesting process, to say the least. In areas like the Rangeley Lakes region, biologists used to hike fish up to backcountry ponds in satchels and baskets.

When too many fish died and too many biologists got lazy, they decided that airplane stocking would be the best option. Airplane stocking has evolved quite a bit since it was first invented. Fish used to be packed in individual bags. Picture buying a goldfish from a pet store in its little plastic bag. Now, plop that fish onto a plane flying over some of the most remote lakes in Maine. When the pilot reaches his desired elevation, drop your bagged fish from the plane and into the lake. Can you see problems with this process? For a while, it was common practice. Fish were bagged and dropped in their individual bags into the water in hopes that the bags would break with the impact of hitting the water. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The fish would fall from the plane in their bags, and the bags would not break. So, fish would live in their own personal bubbles, floating around the lake as their bags desired. Finally, with lack of oxygen and space, the fish would die. When the fish died, bags would sink to the bottom of the lake. Out west, scuba crews checked the effectiveness of this “bagged method” only to find thousands of bags of fish skeletons lying on the lake floor. Now, biologists just dump fish in the water without bags. Though some fish die from the impact, many survive the fall.

Seeing fish launched from a plane sounded pretty awesome to me, but our destination was in no way remote enough to require such a process. Beaver Pond, also known as Little Beaver Pond, embodies a mere 50 acres. It holds mainly brook trout, and some shiners. It has great water quality, making it a sufficient habitat for both trout and nutritious aquatic plants. I was shocked when I saw that the pond was smaller than the span of a football field. With more than six boats on the pond, it would be too crowded for an enjoyable, relaxing day of fishing.  Why we were stocking 2,000 brook trout in this puddle of a pond was completely beyond me.

 With the last gurgle of the engine, Kevin stopped the truck as a cow and her calf looked up at us with mouths filled with plants. They stumbled from the water and across the road, irritated that we had ruined their brunch buffet. As I struggled out of the truck, I realized something weird. Not only were the planks frozen, but the pond was frozen.  We could have just launched the fish onto the ice, hoping that the force of the water would break the ice and the fish could swim into the pond, but we didn’t feel like risking spraying thousands of fish over the ice. After a minute of looking for a huge stick, we thought of the next best option. We grabbed the wacky tubing from the truck and began slamming it against the ice, tubes swaying with the drunken intensity of a 21 year old. The tubing easily broke away the ice, though it left us with little room for error. If I held the hose the wrong way, fish would be launched out onto the ice and left to freeze up into sculptures for the winter. Bracing myself for the lurch of the hose, something to my right caught my eye. “Holy crap, that’s a huge moose!” I yelled. The bull moose poked towards us, cocking his head at our large tube-like pipes. We stared at each other for a few minutes, both to find that there were much more interesting things going on in the area. I positioned the hose slightly above the water, hopefully still low enough to drop fish into the pond, yet high enough to not give them a mouth full of mud. “You ready?” Kevin yelled from his position on the plank. I thought of the hose I filled the tanks with in the morning, knowing that this one would be twice as strong. With a quick pull, the hose lurched and fish launched from the mouth. The trout flew into the water, bubbling up in the mud. Some swam back on shore, deciding that the lack of oxygen and water would be better than eating mud. Others propelled themselves up on the ice, setting themselves up to become fish popsicles. I scrambled along the shore, picking fish from the grass and plopping them back into the mucky water. In the end, 10 were left flopping on the ice, and there was no way Kevin or I were about to walk in the water to save them. I was awfully concerned about these fish, hoping maybe the moose would come charging back through the water to break all the ice. To ease my concerns, Kevin explained to me that out of 2,000 fish (192 kilograms), a 10% casualty rate was accepted, though not desired. Since we had less than 10% of fish popsicles, our stocking was successful.

The four men at the Embden Culture Station keep Maine’s waters filled and stocked with beautiful fish all year round. Aside from providing full entertainment with their very different personalities, they are highly educated and intelligent men who are always looking for a helping hand. For volunteer information, please visit Maine Inland Fish & Wildlife online to receive contact information.