In the clear, shallow water, the wiggling fish are easy to pick out. These are not just any small fry, though. These are the first brook trout in at least a decade to hatch in the right fork of the Jabez Branch.
State biologists and conservationists traipsing along the snow-covered stream banks Friday could not contain their excitement. They found an estimated 60 fish -- a week or 2 old -- in this nearly 1,900-foot-long section of the meandering creek near Gambrills in Anne Arundel County.
The discovery came after hope had been nearly lost of seeing a population rebound here.
For more than a decade, the Jabez was the last natural brook trout stream in Maryland's coastal plain, the southernmost wild trout creek in the state and probably the one at the lowest elevation. Environmentalists used to point to it as proof that the mostly suburban area had water so cold and pure that even trout -- the gilled equivalent of canaries in a coal mine -- could live there.
But by 1990, acidic drainage, water runoff from hot pavement and construction of Interstate 97 had killed all trout in the stream.
Years of restoration and preservation brought back the deeper left fork. Relocated wild brook trout have been spawning there for five years. But the right fork remained barren.
Until this year.
"Look, there's one. Can you catch that one? Wait, I see another one," said an excited Robert Bachman, director of fisheries for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. He directed another biologist to net the skinny fry -- less than an inch long -- for a closer look.
Lina Vlavianos, the creek's neighbor and environmental champion, pronounced them gorgeous as she held up a plastic bag filled with water and two fry.
"This is all great news. We never really had a reason to come here and look for trout fry. We saw so few adult trout here," said Charles R. Gougeon, regional fish biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources.
In December, though, DNR biolo- gists thought they saw two groups of trout eggs in the right fork. During the first week of this month, after his usual inspection of the left fork, Gougeon wandered over to the other narrow tributary and saw fry.
Gougeon suspects that droughts in 1997 and last year may have prompted the trout in the shallow right fork to head toward the left fork. A beaver dam that had blocked fish from the left fork created life-sustaining pools during the drought. Then, when compelled to spawn last fall, the only upstream water the fish could find was up the right fork, Gougeon said.
