Christmas trees fine for fish

After the halls have been undecked, some Maryland Christmas trees end up at the bottom of the state's lakes and waterways as habitat for fish.

Area biologists point out that Maryland is the only state without natural lakes. Because the lakes are manmade, the area beneath them is quite barren, leaving fish exposed to cold weather and predators.

"It looks like a desert down there," said Alan Klotz, the Department of Natural Resources western regional fisheries manager, in describing the Savage River Reservoir in Garrett County.

To make the lakes more hospitable, many Christmas trees - in numbers reaching the hundreds - are generally anchored in cement or cinderblock, bundled in clusters and tossed overboard around the lake.

The bundled trees can also be placed on an iced-over lake and left to settle to the bottom with a thaw.

While the trees degrade rather rapidly and need to be replaced, this does not pose a problem since each holiday season brings a new crop.

"It's making use of a material that is readily available and at no cost," said Ed Enamite, DNR's central aryland region fish biologist, adding that the creation of these underwater brush piles is "more important in bodies of water that function as bathtubs," or artificially created lakes lacking tributaries.

Constructing these habitat piles serves multiple purposes, the primary one being housing and shelter for the smaller, or bait, fish that attract panfish such as bluegill, crappie, yellow perch and largemouth bass.

Bass, in particular, are structure-oriented creatures.

"If you put a bass in the pool with no markings in the pool and throw in a quarter and come in a little while, the bass will be sitting by the quarter," said Scott Sewell, conservation director for the Maryland Bass Federation.

Sewell admits to having sunk around 60 trees over the last seven years.

Christmas tree habitats provide a surface for various types of algae and microscopic plant life eaten by the smaller fish.

In turn, the shelter that is provided to the smaller fish helps keep both their numbers and the large predator population in balance.

"It provides benefits down the food chain as well," said DNR Southern Regional Fisheries Manager Don Cosden.

Local fishermen also benefit from this practice in that a number of fish typically concentrate around these structures.

"Every time we do a survey at these Christmas tree reefs, we always find fish over them," said DNR Eastern Regional Fisheries Manager Rick Schaefer.

Sewell, himself a fisherman, said that he and fellow anglers often secretly drop trees before fishing competitions in the hopes of landing a large fish.

While he's never caught "the big one" this way, Sewell said, "I knew people who've won tournaments for brush piles they've created."

01/02/06
By JACQUELINE RUTTIMANN
Capital News Service