Tilting the scales for our salmon and trout

Metro East Anglers offer their fine-finned friends helping hand in fostering a healthy population

A whopper of a tale is unfolding along the Rouge River, where anglers are helping the fish get busy.

A non-profit conservation group of recreational fishermen has spent years dedicating time to fostering healthy fish populations in Toronto and across the GTA. Their mission? To help the Rouge River run red with the scarlet hues of chinook salmon and rainbow trout.

“The river has degraded to the point that the fish using that watershed to spawn are not very successful,” said Bruce Burt, the Metro East Anglers’ vice-president of finance.

“Soil erosion into the watershed, warm storm water runoff, salt runoff from roads, industrial spills have made it so the eggs and subsequent fry have a poor environment to grow in.”

While none of its members are biolo- gists by trade, they all maintain a special place in their hearts for smooth-scaled salmonids, a family of fish that includes trout and salmon.

The group operates the Ringwood Fish Culture Station hatchery in partnership with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. The facility just north of Stouffville provides what can only be described as the rich fish life: clean tanks, oxygenated water and good feed (crushed herring).

Volunteers hatch eggs obtained from the wild in the spring. The babies are then raised and later transplanted into Lake Ontario’s feeder streams by the thousands. Veteran angler Chris Currie was helping load 45,000 juvenile salmon into a holding basket at Bluffer’s Park Marina recently.

With just “a little bit of science . . . rather than just pure luck,” the fingerlings survive the most critical stage of their lives, said group president Glenn Anderson. “I doubt there would be many rainbows in the Rouge if not for our efforts at the hatchery and the ladder,” added Burt, who explained how the scarlet-hued species don’t just go with the flow, they fight the flow.

Passing through the Rouge’s mouth in spring, the fish swim against the current to ancestral mating grounds closer to the river’s headwaters. The watery trail is a journey as turbulent as it is taxing.

Yet the trip is made a bit easier, thanks to efforts of a few human fish friends at the Milne Dam fishway. The fish-only freeway works like a ladder, with “step pools” that make it easier for the fish to get over the dam.

Despite the group’s successes, Anderson wishes more Torontonians knew about the quality fishing scene they have access to their own backyard. He points to a picture of his son holding a trophy-sized chinook with the CN Tower clearly identifiable on the horizon to prove his point.

“If there were mountains in the background of Lake Ontario instead of the Toronto skyline, you’d think you were in B.C.,” he said.

MARCUS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR Ringwood Fish Culture Station volunteers keep tanks clean, tag fingerlings and transplant them to streams across the city.

MARCUS OLENIUK PHOTOS/TORONTO STAR The salmon are placed in pens once they enter the fish equivalent of maturity. At this stage, they develop the ability to “imprint” on the waters they are about to leave. Environmental cues combined with this homing mechanism help fish recall the area,...

Metro East Angler Association president Glenn Anderson works with Ringwood Hatchery’s birthing trays. “It may look dirty, but it is germ-free,” he said. The trays are like incubators constantly flushed with water.

Veteran angler Chris Currie loads young chinook salmon in a holding basket at Bluffer’s Park Marina, one of four “seed” sites in the GTA. Here, the fish will hang out in the harbour for just over a month.

A plump rainbow trout’s weight, length and abnormalities are recorded. This vital data helps track fish navigation patterns.