Little Pond Brook

Yikes, we haven't even met yet and they are promoting it? Ugh. I meet with their conservation committee on Thursday evening. It is a small native brook trout stream (no other species as of last electro fishing work) that flows directly into the mighty 'Po where there are no nonnative browns to outcompete them. It is spring driven and is seeing some erosion which has caused diminished stream habitat. Funding will be tough as the NRCS seems to have gotten out of the stream restoration funding business.....stay tuned, but this one could easily take years.
 
Pete-is this the little brook I mentioned in last years discussion that come from near the sand pits?
 
Pete said:
As read it, they weren't promoting the project, they were announcing the meeting.
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Makes sense. That meeting is this evening. But with the NRCS seemingly out of the river restoration funding business, we may struggle to fund any efforts there.
 
Greg: It runs along Long Hill Road, and under Ramapo Valley Road, then runs through Great Oak Park into the Ramapo. (depending on where you live, you may know Long Hill Road, as Franklin Lakes Road, or Sicomac Avenue). Yes, one of it's sources is in (or near) a sandpit.

Rusty: Except for the park, most of it is on Private Property, getting permission for access could be a nightmare. ... Politics keep changing, what's not funded now, could change later. It's about resourcefulness and timing.
 
Hi Pete-yes. that's the one. I lived in FL from 68-80, but my parents until last year, and that is the creek. I once(back in the 80's) was a house somebody was renting that had a pond near and from the source that was as full of small brook trout as any place I have ever seen. I had no idea at the time there was anyting like that in the part of Oakland.

My fishing in those days was all in Franklin Lake as my family was a member of the Indian Trail Club. The fishing was, and probably still is, phenomenal for LM bass,big perch(ice fishing), large but less abundant pickerel, and various other panfish and catfish. There was a great population of herring in there for forage.

I started fly fishing on Esopus Creek during my teenage years in the later 70's when me and friends would go up there camping. I had never fished the Ramapo river!
 
Pete said:
Greg: It runs along Long Hill Road, and under Ramapo Valley Road, then runs through Great Oak Park into the Ramapo. (depending on where you live, you may know Long Hill Road, as Franklin Lakes Road, or Sicomac Avenue). Yes, one of it's sources is in (or near) a sandpit.

Rusty: Except for the park, most of it is on Private Property, getting permission for access could be a nightmare. ... Politics keep changing, what's not funded now, could change later. It's about resourcefulness and timing.
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Yes, and we have met with one of the larger landowners. The other is a family trust, and of course the town in the park which is also getting on board. This is not in any way a "fishing project", it is purely restoring native brook trout habitat and leaving them alone above 202 (private) and to get this stream added to the Brook Trout Conservation Area which it is currently not. Then whatever work we do in the park on town land, it would be purely C&R, barbless, no bait and TU and NFC can put up signs about the regs as can the Division. This is a unique population, and it has suffered some over the years which we know from Division electro fishing results. We can change that, remove invasive plants in the riparian zone, reduce bank erosion into the stream, enhance macro invertebrate habitat and spawning riffles, create deeper pools in places, and create and enhance undercut bank habitat while adding wood to the stream as well.

The three funding sources we are looking at will be unimpacted by the current political climate. In my world of river restoration, projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (aka Green New Deal) are in deep trouble and I see the current Congress defunding those are they were spread out over a decade. Lots of dam removals and culverts and other projects won't get done right away as those funds are likely to be pulled back, but it was way too much, way too soon for our tiny little "industry" to handle. And permit reviews have gone from the standard 3 months to 10-12 and longer.
 
Hi Pete, that is good news for that brook. It is very small and keeping those brook trout protected is great. Are there any other tributaries besides Bear Swamp brook that have brook trout?
 
Greg: My info may be outdated, but there's Stag (aka Clove) Brook, Havemeyer Brook, an unnamed brook associated with Lakes Tamarack & Todd, possibly some parts of Fox brook, and likely a few more that haven't been inventoried. Even streams that have been warmed by top release dams, might have some in the headwaters.

See also: https://dep.nj.gov/wp-content/uploads/njfw/appendix_I.pdf
(Rusty may have access to newer data, the above still shows browns in Little Pond Brook)
 
Pete-is there a name for the brook that flows out of Franklin Lake and down High Mt. Rd then down along 208/287> Do you remember the gas station that was on the southbound lane before 287 was built? I remember when my brother worked there in the late 70's stopping in one evening in the summer and walking down to it and seeing some Light Cahills coming off.

Dennis-we are crushing it with this post.
 
greg s said:
Pete-is there a name for the brook that flows out of Franklin Lake and down High Mt. Rd then down along 208/287> Do you remember the gas station that was on the southbound lane before 287 was built? I remember when my brother worked there in the late 70's stopping in one evening in the summer and walking down to it and seeing some Light Cahills coming off.

Dennis-we are crushing it with this post.
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Are you talking about Allerman Brook that feeds Crystal Lake before going over that dam into the mighty 'Po?
 
Greg: Most of the world, and the map makers, call it "Pond Brook" (without the "Little"). Oakland has to be different, so they honored a former prominent family by calling the portion downstream from 208/287 Allerman Brook .

Yes, I remember the filling station. Back in the old days, when Pond Brook got a small preseason stocking, I occasionally avoided the opening day crowds on the Ramapo by fishing the section from behind the gas station, to the well house.... By the time the season opened, local kids had already caught most of the stockies, so it wasn't very productive.
 
Thanks Pete, I never even knew it was stocked with trout. Since it comes over the top of the dam leaving Franklin Lake I figured it gets too warm, plus it has several open slower spots on the way downstream.
 
Greg: As I recall, I was in my 20s. Unless you're well over 60, it was probably way before your time.

It was a warm water brook back then. Besides the Franklin Lake, just about every tributary had a top release dam.... The rumor was that they stocked it as a decoy, and didn't patrol it, to keep the pre-season fishers (mostly kids) away from the Ramapo.
 
Are their still grants available for this stuff.They haven't been cut by Trumps slash and burn conservation policies yet?
 
lightenup said:
Are their still grants available for this stuff.They haven't been cut by Trumps slash and burn conservation policies yet?
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The bipartisan Farm Bill funds (EQIP program) remains unchanged. However, the multi hundred billion dollar boondoggle that was the Inflation Reduction Act (aka Green New Deal) is getting defunded by Congress (Trump doesn't control spending, only Congress can do that). But those dollars were going mostly to big dam removals and culvert replacements, not restorations like this would be. For a project like this, there are other sources such as Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture, National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, TU's Embrace A Stream grant, and others.
 
Pete said:
Greg: Most of the world, and the map makers, call it "Pond Brook" (without the "Little"). Oakland has to be different, so they honored a former prominent family by calling the portion downstream from 208/287 Allerman Brook .

Yes, I remember the filling station. Back in the old days, when Pond Brook got a small preseason stocking, I occasionally avoided the opening day crowds on the Ramapo by fishing the section from behind the gas station, to the well house.... By the time the season opened, local kids had already caught most of the stockies, so it wasn't very productive.
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It is also the stream that takes all the water that falls onto I-287 and dumps it really, really quickly into a stream that in no way can handle the volume given that houses are built right to the stream banks in places. Instead of an intact floodplain, we have gabion basket walls forcing it into Crystal Lake and filling that manmade lake with sediment.
 
Pete, I'm 66, we moved to FL in 1968 when i was 9. I have been gone since 1981 with a few months back in 86, then to south Jersey(Moorestown) where I have lived since. My folks lived there until their passing recently. It was still pretty cool in the 70's, we would camp on High Mountain and in the surrounding woods, hunt up there for grouse and woodcock. Do you remember Ed Lemmerman, the farmer from Wyckoff that had a stand over there, off of Russel? He grew his sweet corn next to Nabisco down 208. He had English Setters and used to hunt woodcock in the area, I ran into him a couple of times. No place to do that anymore up there.
 
Greg; I remember Lemmerman's farm, but Abma's was so much closer that we seldom went there. One of my High School classmates was named Lemmerman, possibly his daughter.
I can remember hunters walking through our back yard, but most of my classmates got their first deer on Campgaw Mountain.
I got POed once when a duck hunter's spent shot landed in the water right where I was fishing (the duck survived).
I got my first trout in a Ho-Ho-Kus brook tributary where it runs under Woodside Ave, in hindsight I suspect it was a stockie that escaped from a rich guys posted pond.
 
greg s said:
Well, I hope the brook that is the subject gets what it needs, it's a real gem in the suburbs.
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That's the goal. I was over there again on Monday, this time on town park property. There's a lengthy culvert (over 100 yards long) that needs to be daylighted. And we have the Division biologist coming out this summer to do more electro fishing in support of a future restoration project.
 
Rusty: The last time I looked, there was a fake waterfall just upstream from the town property. To me it looks impassable by YOY trout. Do you know if the landowner was approached about allowing it to be removed?
 
Pete said:
Rusty: The last time I looked, there was a fake waterfall just upstream from the town property. To me it looks impassable by YOY trout. Do you know if the landowner was approached about allowing it to be removed?
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It has been removed. At least if it is one of these two you are talking about? They are about 50 yards apart.dam removed on Little Pond Brook.jpgculvert top going into Park.jpg
 
So far, we are getting solid support from the Division who plan to bring in additional resources to help us better understand what's going on with all the long, underground culverts. We will electro fish more of this stream and others adjacent as well as to learn more about those pesky culverts ahead of any future project or projects. It seems the tale of two streams here with the upstream side above route 202 in need of minor restoration and habitat enhancements whereas the lower section may need significant "daylighting" of multiple culverts and the rebuilding of banks and stream bed. Time will tell, but this is a cool project regardless given that the brookies aren't and won't be overrun by brown trout.
 
A quick update since I know some of you are following this. We will have strong support from Division fisheries biologists in learning all we need to still learn about this native brook trout stream. HOBO data collectors are now installed to take temps through summer and DO and general water chemistry is being taken along with a mapping of the stream and its several branches/tributaries, the culverts and small dams that impact it, as well as electro fishing each branch to determine where brookies are and where they aren't (and why). TU is working with Native Fish Coalition (NFC) on this in partnership with the Division of F&W and others. This one will take many years to be fully restored, if ever, but there are things like cleanups, invasive plant removal and native tree and shrub plantings that can be done this year.
 
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