New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Fishing and watching and working with real flying fishermen.
Friday 06/16/2006
Tuesday morning at 4:00am I headed over to Oswego NY for a much anticipated fishing trip to Lake Ontario with Jean Brochu and his brother George. We met my son Adam there at 11:00am and were on the lake a little after 1:00 pm. And trolled and trolled 6 hours with nary a decent bit on the Hat Trick with Captain Jim Staves. Darn what luck. Two days of high west winds had piled very warm waters, into the 60's, in the bay sending the trout and salmon down deep way out. We fished again Wednesday morning from 5 to 11 and luckily George and Adam each landed a nice brown. I stayed skunked. Twelve hours plus of driving and twelve hours of fishing led to a couple of long and very enjoyable days. The boat was filled with laughter and sarcasm for two days with a memory filled trip despite the uncooperative fish.
I spent all of today with some really good fishermen. About 1,400 terns. Many flew over our heads with a fish dangling from their bills. A crew of Fish and Game staff hooked up with staff living the summer on White Island at the Isle of Shoals for a day of banding terns and collecting Avian Flu testing samples.
We captured forty terns in cage traps one at a time. The sampling included rare Arctic terns and Roseate terns as well as mostly common terns. Most of the terns were nesting on Seavey Island that lays connected to White Island, except for at high tide. In fact the tide caught us a bit and we had to wade back to White Island around 1:30 this afternoon.
Over a decade ago I worked with Audubon staff to trick terns into re-nesting on this island after an absence of over 50 years. That first year we fooled 6 pairs of terns into nesting on the island. I had not been back in 6 years or so. What a difference. Dan Hayward who has run the operation on the island for most of the last 6 years or more says he counted 734 common tern nests just the day before. The sky was filled with terns! What a sight. We did manage to collect 40 Avian Flu samples. Dan informed us that the Arctic terns actually winter along the West African coast. It is easy to see how migrating birds may easily spread this disease around the world. It's doubtful that any of these will test positive. But we are learning how to catch and sample a variety of birds this summer in preparation for when it does hit North America. It was a grand day on the Isle of Shoals today.
