Following a devastating spill on April 3, 2003 which left thousands of wild brown trout dead and completely wiped out the native, more sensitive to pollution brook trout, the Nutmeg Chapter of Trout Unlimited delineated, and is currently implementing, a strategy of conserving, protecting and restoring the coldwater fishery of the Mill River. This includes restoring the native brook trout (as seen below,) advocating for the protection of the watershed's lands, educating decision-makers and improving the stream's water quality.

DEP biologists Michael Humphreys and Michelle Kraczkowski check the tanks' water characteristics to make sure that they are similar to the stream's.	Mr. Humphreys releases the first brook trout! The fish are released in small schools to improve their survival rates.

DEP biologists and TU volunteers perform the arduous task of carrying bucketfuls of brookies to various sections of the upper Mill River.	These pictures render no justice to the creature's jewel-like beauty. The brookies came from a small stream in northwestern Connecticut that had never been stocked, which means that genetically these are the same fish that have been in our state for thousands of years!

A female and a male brook trout. Notice the differences, such as the size of the mouth. Our brookies rarely grow much bigger than those pictured above. Very few will live more than one or two years; most will die after the rigors of their first spawn, which is in the fall.	A TU volunteer releases the last school of brook trout. Brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) aren't truly trout - they are charr. However, they are salmonids, just like Atlantic Salmon, Rainbow Trout and the many Pacific Salmon. Let's protect their habitat!

DEP, with help from Nutmeg volunteers, transferred 162 wild brook trout to the WTMA in Easton on October 1. According to DEP’s wild trout biologist Mike Humphreys:

“The brook trout transfer project went well last Friday. We collected 162 wild brookies from a small trib to the Naugatuck River on State Forest land in Thomaston. This small stream has a few barrier waterfalls and has no record of ever being stocked. This population may even have an uncontaminated native gene pool. We collected the target 50 breeding pairs of fish that appeared to be ripening for spawning this fall. Also 62 yearling and young-of-year fish that appeared immature. We left plenty of fish of all sizes in the section of the donor stream that was electrofished. Five or six volunteers from the Nutmeg Chapter met us at the Mill WTMA, and helped us spread the fish above the lower bridge. Sampling next summer should be interesting.”

TU's Mike Piquette saw trout redds (areas in the stream where trout scoop out gravel to lay their eggs) in this section of the river in late October and early November, including a brookie actively working a spawning site. We’re hoping that the brook trout will become established while wild brown trout numbers are down due to the April, 2003 fishkill. DEP found some wild brook trout in the Mill this summer. These fish were probably survivors of the September, 2002 transfer project, and their offspring.