Book Excerpt: Solving the Mystery of When Brown Trout Were Introduced in the Battenkill

Written by: Doug Lyons

Doug Lyons is a lifetime Battenkill expert who knows the river perhaps better than anyone, and his new book Fly Fishing Guide to the Battenkill unravels many secrets of this special river. Here’s a cool excerpt about how he determined when the river’s browns were first introduced.

In his book The Battenkill, John Merwin discusses at length the history of when brown trout were introduced to the river, noting that he could find no records of brown trout stocked in the Vermont section prior to 1930. He notes too that the New York section received its European trout somewhere prior to 1910. Merwin claimed that the river did not have a well-established brown trout population prior to 1935. As a longtime Battenkill angler I always found it a little hard to understand how one of the most noted trout rivers outside the Catskills did not see its first brown trout until the 20th century given that these fish were first stocked in American waters in 1883.

Unconvinced that Merwin was correct with regard to the timing of when the now-ubiquitous brown trout first found its way into the river, I decided to do some investigating. Regarding the New York portion of the river, my answer was easily found by asking the Department of Environmental Conservation. I was advised that the first brown trout stocking in New York took place in 1889 when 5,000 fingerlings were introduced to the river. They noted that the river had been stocked with rainbows (“California trout”) as far back as 1883.

It was far more challenging to pin down the specific date that Vermont introduced brown trout to its portion of the river. A good starting point for this endeavor is discussing the legendary 31-inch, 12-pound-2-ounce brown trout that a young Roy Brown caught at the Dutchman’s Hole just over the Vermont border in New York. In The Battenkill Merwin dates this catch as occurring in 1930. He must have been using a secondary source of information. As it turns out, the big brown trout that had been teased out of the depths was not caught in 1930 but was documented as having been landed in May of 1924. An article about the catch published in the Rutland Herald on May 11 of that year describes the legendary incident. As Merwin stated, it was a worm-caught fish and a local youth named Roy Brown caught it. Lacking a landing net, he used his raincoat to land it. If only Norman Rockwell had been there to capture the moment.

The importance of the date of this catch is that clearly by the mid-1920s brown trout were well established in New York. But this tells nothing of when we can date the introduction of the brown trout in the Vermont section of river, let alone the presence of a fishery.

We can start to come closer to an approximate date from an article in the Bennington Banner dated May 5, 1923. In that article it is noted that the Manchester Rod and Gun Club had located a hatchery from which to procure approximately 35,000 brown trout (fry) at the cost of $7.00 per thousand plus transportation and cost of care. The plan was to release the trout below Manchester Depot. Interestingly, the club intended the stocking to occur below the junction of the East and West Branch tributaries to keep the upper waters the domain of the native brook trout. Given the presence of the milldam in downtown Manchester (called Factory Point at the time) and the Dufrense Dam backing up the West and East Branches respectively, this plan had some merit. The club lacked the funds to secure the trout, however, and it became necessary to have the costs underwritten by an unnamed sponsor. The club had a small rearing pond available in which to rear the fry. It is unclear if this ever got off the ground.

It should be noted that local fishing clubs had a great deal of influence in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These groups acted as the eyes and ears of the nascent Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. If they were not specifically designated agents of the state, they helped enforce regulations and took on tasks such as stocking trout rivers that had been depleted by the impacts of post–Civil War industrialization.

As Merwin mentions in his book, the previous year the same club had investigated establishing a stripping station on the Battenkill to gather eggs and milt from fall-running spawners. The September 21, 1922, article from the Manchester Journal noted that the eggs would be raised at the Bennington hatchery exclusively for the Battenkill. It does not appear that this ever occurred, but there were at least sufficient browns in the river to consider this undertaking. Since Merwin could find no documentation of brown trout stocking in Vermont prior to 1930, the fish that were targeted for stripping would have presumably been the offspring of trout stocked in New York.

In the same year, there was extensive coverage in a number of papers of a fish kill on both the Green (a major spawning tributary of the Battenkill) and main stem, particularly above the dam in Arlington (the remnants of which are very apparent even now). It was reported that many scores of brown trout and suckers lay dead. It must be remembered that at this time there were numerous mills on the ’kill as well as its tributaries. It appears that sawdust waste combined with low and warm water to starve the rivers of oxygen, which resulted in the fish kill. Interestingly, it was noted that brook trout were not impacted by the die-off to any great degree, and it is speculated that they had already found their way to colder water.

Clearly, brown trout were established in the Battenkill, at least from Arlington on downstream, by 1922. Could it be that stockings in New York were so successful and extensive that brown trout were populating the upper portion of the river on their own without the aid of Vermonters? While I suppose this is possible, it should be considered that during this period of time the presence of numerous dams on the river would have at a minimum made it a challenge for trout to make their way upriver to spawn and populate upstream sections. There are also several high-quality spawning tributaries that enter the river in New York, so any fish seeking out spawning grounds had options on the New York side of the river. These little streams still offer critical spawning grounds today: White Creek, Murray Hollow Brook, Camden Valley Creek, and Chunks Brook.

Unconvinced that New York alone was providing Vermont with a brown trout fishery via its unintended generosity, I continued to investigate. I found a smoking gun in the July 11, 1916, edition of the Brattleboro Reformer. An article titled “Big Battenkill Trout” detailed the catches of several large brown trout in the Arlington vicinity. The article goes on to state that the river was fishing well, and that brown trout had been stocked into the river in 1909. The article did not state that the fish were stocked in Vermont or New York, though anyone that understands the way of thinking of folks along the border would know that these most likely were trout stocked in Vermont. As previously mentioned, even now the impression one gets is that the Vermont Battenkill and the New York portion of the river are viewed by many anglers as separate and unrelated entities. It is an odd historical artifact.

In his book, Merwin describes an 8-pound, 6-ounce brown trout caught in the vicinity of King’s Laundry in Manchester as being landed on July 11, 1936. Unfortunately, this was incorrect. I found the same verbatim account that Merwin provided in the July 12, 1913, edition of the Bennington Evening Banner. That this large trout was caught so far upstream suggests that brown trout were well distributed in the river by that time.

Continuing to wade through the digital river of articles about trout fishing on the Battenkill, I finally came across a piece that hints not only at when the river was stocked with the European interlopers but also by whom. The May 9, 1907, morning edition of the Manchester Journal has a long front-page article discussing the merits of brown trout versus brook trout written by one Harry Chase. In the article Chase states:

Several years ago, Mr. C.F. Orvis of Manchester, Vt, an authority on fishing and an enthusiastic advocate of fish protection and propagation, with some other public-spirited citizens, introduced the brown trout in ponds that were tributaries of the Battenkill river at Manchester. Not much attention was given the matter at the time, but later these trout got into the river and their growth was wonderful. Every year since then we have heard occasionally of an angler bringing in a brown trout that weighted from two to eight pounds. I hold that one of these brown trout in the Battenkill river is worth 200 of the fontinalis [brook trout] for increasing the fame of this stream.

With that citation we can state with more than a little confidence that it was in fact C. F. Orvis who introduced the brown trout to the Battenkill. Of course, this makes a lot of sense given the business he was in and the likelihood that he had connections to acquire trout fry. The question, then, is when might this have happened?

I discovered a citation from the July 22, 1899, Burlington Clipper that certainly moves us in the right direction:

John C. Bradley of Buffalo, NY, while fishing with a fly last week in the Battenkill river at Sunderland, his native town, caught a brown trout which weighed four pounds and one ounce. He also caught another weighing one and a one-half pounds, and thirty which weighed from six ounces to half a pound each.

This indicates that multiple-year classes of trout were present in the river, so the stocking likely took place sometime prior to 1895. But what is the hard date that we can set as to when brown trout were introduced to the Battenkill?

I found the following from the Argus and Patriot out of Montpelier, Vermont, on March 27, 1889:

Twenty-five thousand trout fry furnished by the State are to be placed in the small tributaries of the Battenkill river in Manchester and fifteen thousand in Arlington, the streams to be protected for three years. C.F. Orvis of Manchester, has also received five thousand trout fry that he intends to place in the tributaries of the Battenkill.

My assumption is that the large stockings by the state were of native brook trout. That Orvis would do a stocking of an additional 5,000 brook trout doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Why would any wise businessman spend the money on stocking brookies when the state was more than willing to do so?

Finally, I stumbled upon a headline in the April 6, 1944, Bennington Evening Banner that states that it was 50 springs prior that brown trout first found their way into the river by happenstance via accidental release from pond outlets that fed into the ’kill. Based on everything I have been able to piece together, the pond in question would be Equinox Pond, an artificial waterway with a direct outlet to the Battenkill. That pond was constructed by the brothers Franklin and Charles Orvis. With this final citation we can say with reasonable confidence that the Battenkill watershed in Vermont received its first brown trout in 1889 and that by 1894 they had become an established feature of the river.

Charles Orvis would no doubt be happy to know that his initial efforts to introduce brown trout were successful and that today we continue to value the fishery and are doing more than ever to ensure that the Battenkill retains its rightful place as a producer of wild trout—be they native brook trout or the imported brown trout.

It should be noted that brown trout were not the first exotic species to be released into the Battenkill by Vermont officials. There is a reference in the February 23, 1882, Bennington Banner discussing a fund collection of $25 for the purpose of stocking “California trout” (rainbow trout). And as crazy as it may sound, the News of the Day out of Woodstock, Vermont, reported on June 16, 1875, that 50,000 salmon fry were to be put in the Battenkill.

All was not milk and honey during this period, however. Besides the reports of occasional fish kills, other examples of poor environmental stewardship include descriptions of quarry wastage being dumped into the river and road-building meth- ods that did not hold back runoff. The good news with all this is that it is clear that even early on, the citizenry were concerned about the environmental fragility of the river.