Ep 179: Beavers, Trout, and Beaver Pond Fishing, with Ben Goldfarb
Ben Goldfarb is an environmental journalist and author. He wrote the book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. He is also an avid angler with plenty of experience fishing beaver ponds. In this episode, we talk about beavers, how they affect their environment, how they benefit trout and other fish, misconceptions, and fishing beaver ponds.
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 179 with Ben Goldfarb on beavers, trout, and beaver pond fishing. Well, I start every episode by getting a background on my guests and how they got into the outdoors and into fishing specifically. And I know we'll get into beavers too, but first I just want to hear how you got your start in the outdoors and in fly fishing.
Ben
Sure. Well, I've always inexplicably loved fish. There's this great term by the biologist E.O. Wilson, biophilia, referring to the innate attraction that humans have to wildlife and biodiversity. And I think there's a subset of people who have ichthyophilia for no reason they can really articulate. But nobody in my family fished or had any real affinity for fish. And yet, as soon as I can remember, all I wanted to do was fish. So I grew up catching panfish and perch and bass under a bobber. And then I took up fly fishing after college. My first job out of college, I worked a season for the National Park Service in Yellowstone. And I knew I was going to this iconic fly fishing destination. So right before college graduation, I made a buddy teach me how to cast on the soccer field and got some gear and went out there. And so my first fly fishing experience is, you know, we're on the fire hole and the Madison and Yellowstone Lake doesn't get much better than that. So it's really been all downhill for me since that summer. But now I live in Colorado and I love our rivers too. And yeah, it's just such a fabulous way to connect with nature, obviously, and access these incredible organisms, fish that we all love.
Katie
Yeah, I think there's something to what you said about some people having like an ichthyophilia of some kind. And for me, like I remember that as a kid being like way more interested in fish than anything else. And I think part of it for me was that you can't just see them. I mean, you can sometimes. You can look in the water and see them. But they're kind of like this hidden thing that you have to go extract yourself to like find out what's in there. Whereas like any other animal, like you just see them walking around. You see them flying in the air. You see them in the woods. And fish are one of those things that like the whole world doesn't have access to them. Only people who go kind of get themselves get to interact with fish and see them. I don't know if that's something you've ever thought about, like why you were so drawn to fish over other things. Is that something that you've put much thought into?
Ben
Yeah, I think that you articulated it well. I think there's a mystery there. I'm sure that every listener to this show has had the experience of driving by a pond or a lake or a stream and thinking, what the heck is in there? And as you say, you know, they're not like birds who come visit our feeders in our backyards. Fish we have to go find. And I think there's something incredibly exciting and thrilling about that. And I also think that just the amazing diversity of fish is part of it, too. You know, yeah, of course, we all love, you know, brown trout and rainbow trout. But there are 35,000 species of fish out there. You know, there are more fish than there are, you know, mammals and birds combined, I think, by probably about twice as many. And so there's that diversity too, just that extraordinary range of forms, everything from a tangerine darter to a whale shark. I think there's something incredibly beautiful about that.
Katie
Now, I know we're going to get into beavers today, both beavers themselves and hopefully some beaver pond fishing. Is your interest in beavers related to fishing beaver ponds? Is that how you kind of got introduced to the idea of beavers? Or are these two kind of separate aspects of your life?
Ben
Yeah, I think they're certainly related. They're both connected to that love of and attraction to water. And certainly a lot of my early beaver experiences were in the context of fishing. And I remember fishing the Beaver Kill River in the Catskills in New York. And the kill there, that's a Dutch word for stream, basically. It's not referring to killing beavers. Although actually, of course, lots of beavers did get killed in the beaver kill. But anyway, I was out there fishing and had a beaver swim by my legs, practically brushing my shins as it went by, just this incredibly magical moment. I remember hearing beavers tail slapping in Adirondack Lakes while I was fishing up there as a kid. So certainly, if you spend a lot of time around water in North America, you're going to encounter some beavers.
Katie
It's crazy how loud that tail slap can be. For anyone who's never heard it, it almost sounds like someone took a boulder and just chucked it in the water next to you. There's a moment of like, what was that?
Ben
It's pretty heart stopping for sure. If you don't see the beaver and the tail slap comes out of nowhere, I'm sure there have been a few heart attacks caused by an unexpected tail slap.
Katie
So how did you go from having this beaver encounter, kind of being intrigued by beavers to being like the, I don't want to call you the beaver guy, because I'm sure there's some person out there with a PhD who's studied them for 50 years. Beaver guys out there. But the beaver book guy, let's say. How did you get to that point?
Ben
Sure. So I'm an environmental journalist and I write about nature, wildlife, conservation. And at this point, I guess this was 2014 now, so more than a decade ago, I was living in Seattle at that point, working for the magazine High Country News, looking for stuff to cover. Journalists are always seeking out stories. And somebody sent me this flyer for a beaver workshop that was happening right outside the city. And I didn't know what a beaver workshop was, but I knew that I loved beavers and felt this connection to them. And I thought it could be a fun article. So I went to this workshop and it was just one scientist after another getting up to say their piece about how important beavers are, beaver ponds and wetlands, for every ecological value you could think of. They create salmon habitat and they fight wildfires and they sequester carbon and filter out pollution and restore degraded streams and do a million other fabulous things. And I got totally radicalized at this little conference, you know, and I realized that beavers weren't just these cute, fun, interesting rodents who I bumped into fishing once in a while. They were the primary architects of our continent, and one of the, not a panacea necessarily, but one of the tools in our ecological restoration toolbox, that restoring this creature could really be key to restoring ecosystems around this continent. And so I wrote a couple of articles about beavers in the wake of that conference, and those articles eventually became a book.
Katie
And go ahead and plug the book. I know it's been out for a while and we'll talk about your new one, but for anyone who hasn't heard your book, go ahead and give it a little spiel.
Ben
Thanks, Katie. Thanks for prompting me to do that. So the book is called Eager, The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter came out in 2018. And it's basically about this notion of beavers as ecological restorationists, these creatures who were historically mind-blowingly ubiquitous in North America, right? There were several hundred million beavers at the time of European colonization. There's no question that the American West in particular was much greener, bluer, wetter, lusher than it is today because of all of those beaver ponds and wetlands. When we destroyed beavers, you know, over the course of several centuries for their pelts, We basically caused the deterioration of ecosystems around North America, stream erosion, wetland drying, you know, certainly a catastrophic loss of habitat for salmonids among many other creatures. And so now we're in this, you know, kind of new era where we're starting to recognize what we lost when we destroyed beavers. And we're trying to bring them back, you know, through all kinds of different means. That starts with coexistence, just not killing them every time they plug up a culvert or flood a farm or what have you. There's lots of active beaver reintroduction out there. People moving beavers around the landscape to bring populations back. And there's lots of beaver dam analog construction, building these kind of artificial beaver mimicry structures that then the beavers can kind of come in and take over. And those, you know, those BDAs, as they're called, are one of the hottest stream restoration techniques in the American West right now. And they're often done, you know, to benefit fish, at least in part. So the book's about all of that. The historical importance of this animal, the collapse caused by the fur trade, And I think most important, the modern restoration movement to bring these critters back and celebrate them rather than systematically annihilating them as we've done for the last several centuries.
Katie
I definitely want to get into, I guess, some of the misconceptions about beavers, some of the benefits to what fishermen would care about, you know, beaver ponds and ecosystems and things. First, I'd love to get just kind of a status on like, you mentioned that back in the day, there were hundreds of millions of beavers, then there was kind of a collapse. And now we're on the rebound. Like, what is the state of beavers today, if you had to give it some kind of like quantification compared to what it was like back before the collapse?
Ben
Right. And that's a, you know, that's a really interesting question, because I think it does get to, you know, these ideas of shifting baseline syndrome and what our historical benchmarks are. So these days, you know, we don't really know how many beavers there are. in North America. We're not, you know, historically haven't really systematically surveyed them. But, you know, best guess, there's something like 10 to 15 million beavers on this continent. So they're not an endangered species, right? They're not going to go extinct anytime soon. They're in every single state in the lower 48. And so, you know, from that perspective, they're doing okay, right? I mean, they're really one of the great wildlife conservation success stories in human history. Here's an animal that was functionally extinct in most of the United States at the dawn of the 20th century. And now there are millions of them, right? So from that perspective, they're this wonderful conservation triumph. But then you kind of cast your gaze backward to the 1500s and think, okay, how many beavers were on this continent? And you realize that, yes, you know, our populations are going in the right direction, but there's still a tiny fraction of that historic abundance. You know, here in Colorado, again, we don't really know, but, you know, I've heard people estimate that we've, you know, we're at something like 10 to 20% of our historic beaver populations. I think that's a, you know, a reasonable estimate. So, you know, we have all of these great conservation laws and policies like the Endangered Species Act that are really good at preventing animals from going extinct altogether. But, you know, we don't really have many policies that get us to true abundance, right? And that's what we need in the case of the beaver. Yes, we're never going to get back to 100% of our pre-colonial beaver population, but, you know, maybe we can get halfway there instead of 10% of the way there. We need a lot more of these animals if we're going to restore our hundreds of thousands of degraded stream miles, you know, here in North America.
Katie
That kind of answers my next question, which was, obviously, it's not realistic to get back to historic numbers. Like we have, humans have now invaded the entirety of North America for the most part. So and beavers and humans conflict a lot, like, for good or for bad. There are a lot of people who don't want beavers to be doing what beavers do on their land and things like that. Is there, do you know if there's kind of a realistic goal of like what would be kind of the best state we could get it to where it's like beavers would be doing as much good as they can while also not just being in conflict with people and destroying things and kind of creating havoc wherever they go. Does that exist or is that just kind of we just kind of see how things progress and we have no idea?
Ben
Yeah, it's, you know, that model for coexistence certainly exists. And look, you're right. I mean, obviously I'm a shameless beaver apologist, but even I recognize that, you know, these can be challenging animals, right? You know, they do all kinds of stuff that, you know, that we don't like. They build dams and culverts and flood roads. They, you know, cut down our ornamental and fruit trees and, you know, and so on. And, you know, I'd argue that, you know, that we're kind of the nuisance species more than they are, right? We're the ones who developed the floodplain. They were here first. But, you know, I certainly wouldn't want to be, you know, a landowner sort of confronting some of these challenges, right? I recognize that, you know, they're tough. The problem is that historically, the way that we've almost invariably dealt with those beaver conflicts is by killing the beavers, right? And, you know, that's, that's, I think that's a, there are several things wrong with that knee-jerk, lethal approach to beaver management. I mean, first is that we know that these animals are incredibly valuable ecological actors. You know, there have been economic studies, you know, basically valuing the presence of beavers in a single watershed at tens of millions of dollars in, you know, wetland restoration and pollution filtration and waterfowl habitat and so on, right? So, you know, to kill a beaver for plugging a crappy little road culvert, you know, just doesn't really make a whole lot of sense economically. And it also doesn't make a whole lot of sense, you know, from just a matter of solving the problem, right? Because look, if that culvert is there, you know, you can kill the beavers every single spring, but more beavers are just going to find their way in, right? All you're doing is putting a vacancy sign for the next family of beavers because, you know, from a beaver's perspective, a roadbed is like the greatest dam in the world and the culvert is the leak in that dam, you know, beavers plug leaks. That's what they do. So, you know, if you can put in, let's say, you know, a culvert protecting fence, you know, you can solve the problem without killing the beavers and solve it in perpetuity. Get off that endless treadmill of trapping and recolonization and trapping and recolonization. You know, there are lots of non-lethal beaver coexistence techniques out there. You know, there are what are called flow devices, which are basically these pipe and fence systems that essentially drop the level of a beaver pond. So, you know, it's not flooding the road or your backyard anymore, but the pond is still there. It's just a few inches lower because you've partially drained it through this pipe. I'd encourage any listeners interested in beaver coexistence, check out the Beaver Institute, which is a great nonprofit dedicated to beaver coexistence and restoration. and they've got all kinds of resources about how to, you know, install these beaver conflict prevention devices. So ultimately, you know, that's that for me, that's the, that's the vision. And that's the, you know, kind of the, one of the great things about beavers is that they're really good at restoring themselves, right? They're, you know, they, they, they reproduce prolifically, the kits disperse pretty widely. They obviously create their own habitat so that they can thrive. So, you know, if we just stay out of their way and stop killing them as frequently as we do, you know, they can do a pretty good job of recolonizing the landscape. We just have to learn to live with them and solve those problems non-lethally rather than killing every beaver who plugs a culvert.
Katie
Yeah, you mentioned beavers doing what beavers do, and I'd love a quick overview of what do beavers do. You know, So if there's a stream going to, like a mountain meadow stream, I'm sure most of my listeners can picture that, and a beaver moves into the neighborhood, what is that beaver going to do? And what is it going to cause the downstream effects of that, literally or figuratively?
Ben
Sure, yeah. So what do beavers do? Of course, beavers build dams, right? That's what everybody knows about beavers. I think it's worth thinking for a second about why they do that, right? A beaver out on land, as one biologist put it to me, is basically a fat, slow, smelly package of meat. And they get eaten by wolves and cougars and bears and so on. So by building that dam and widening and deepening the stream, they're basically engineering their own habitat. Instead of having to walk 100 yards over land to that good-looking cottonwood tree, they can swim up to it instead and cut it down and minimize their time out of the water. So they're building these dams to just create these impoundments in which they themselves can be safe. I think that the beauty of beavers is that they're really great landlords, right? And that all kinds of critters also benefit from those ponds and wetlands that they build. You go to a beaver pond and just can't believe how much life you see, right? From moose to otters to songbirds to waterfowl to amphibians. And then, of course, you know, we haven't even really talked about trout yet. But, you know, from a trout's perspective, especially, you know, a young rearing juvenile trout, you know, a beaver pond is the greatest habitat in the world, right? If you're a, you know, a juvenile trout, you know, you don't want to be in the free flowing, fast moving main stem stream, you're just going to get blown down by the, you know, the force of the water, right? What you want to be in is, you know, is some slow water refuge habitat, you know, a side channel, a pool, a meander, an eddy, you know, with a little bit of cover so you're not getting picked off by kingfishers, right? And, you know, beavers create exactly that slow water refuge habitat. And there have been lots of studies, you know, showing that beavers dramatically increase juvenile salmon, especially, you know, rearing and productivity. And, you know, they're there. I mean, it's funny. Obviously, there are lots of anglers out there who have, you know, a negative perception of beavers. But, you know, I think that this this notion that beavers are good for fish is increasingly a common one. I mean, I think when I started writing about beavers more than a decade ago, you know, it was like hard to get, you know, like a trout unlimited chapter to say something good about them. And, you know, and now TU is full of pro beaver propaganda. It's, you know, it's fantastic.
Katie
Yeah, let's talk about some, well, let's first talk about some of the misconceptions, because then we can kind of move into the, you know, the positive things. What are some, what are some reasons that people might think that beavers are destroying, particularly trout habitat, maybe, maybe habitat in general, but we can move away from kind of the human beaver conflict, because like, I think people can understand why other folks don't want culverts blocked. But like, from a trout fisherman's perspective, what was the misconception about beavers and the fact that they are, quote unquote, destroying trout habitat?
Ben
Yeah, I'll give you three big ones and then I'll debunk each.
Katie
Okay, perfect, perfect.
Ben
So the first, you know, is that beavers are blocking fish movement, right? They're putting all of these linear barriers into streams. And, you know, if you care about fish, you want to take dams out of rivers, right? Not put more dams into rivers. So that's one. Second is that beavers are just silting everything up, right? They're capturing all of this sediment. It's, you know, it's settling out into the bottom of the pond. And, you know, what do trout need? They need clean gravel, right, in which to spawn and, you know, and find mayflies and caddisflies and stuff. And then the third is that beavers are warming up the water, right? They're spreading the water out. And, you know, that pond is being hit by the sun and all of that water is turning into, you know, bass ponds rather than trout ponds. So those are kind of the three big misconceptions. I don't know. Do you hear any others? I'll just ask you before I take down those three.
Katie
Honestly, I don't feel like I've heard – I don't think I've heard anyone in person actually express any of this stuff. Maybe it's that I just don't talk to a lot of people about beaver ponds, or maybe it's that I think the general – like, there's a general shift going on where I mostly hear positive things about beavers at this point. Oh, good. But I would guess the main one that would come to mind for me is that you're taking a cool, clear stream and you're turning it into warm, silty ponds. which just doesn't strike most people as prime trout habitat. But that's the main one that comes to mind for me is that they're warming the water up.
Ben
Yeah, for sure. So first, Katie, I'm really glad that you're hanging with a pro beaver crowd. That's great. And I'm glad that you perceive that shift. Yeah. So I think you're right that those warm, silty ponds, that's a critique that you hear a lot. And, you know, I think that actually flies in the face of, you know, most of the evidence that we have about, you know, how fish interact with these ponds. So, I mean, first of all, just to get to the, you know, the very basic issue of whether beavers block fish movement. You know, obviously, look, fish and beavers have been on the landscape together for millions of years. And, you know, these fish have figured out lots of ways of getting over, through and around beaver created obstacles. There have been studies showing individual steelhead getting past more than 200 beaver dams on their way to spawn. I've seen fish wriggling through the woody structure of beaver dams. You know, lots of fish are moving during periods of high flow when there's water going over the top of dams or around dams. So, you know, I wouldn't say that no fish has ever been blocked by a beaver dam seasonally. Right. Sure, it happens. But, you know, broadly, you know, beaver dams are not really, you know, blocking fish movement at a watershed scale. And I mean, it's funny, there's some interesting one cool bit of research that I'll just mention done years ago by Joe Wheaton at Utah State University. He's a great beaver scientist, basically looked at differential beaver dam passage rates among, you know, non-native brown trout and native cutthroat trout. in Utah and basically found that those, you know, those native cuts, which co-evolved with beavers in a mountain landscape were actually better at getting past beaver dams than brown trout were. So, you know, if you care about native fish restoration, right, that's kind of cool, you know, that beavers are acting as this almost filter, you know, allowing the native species to dominate those headwaters. As for the silty pond issue, you know, I think so that the silt and the temperature. Those are, you know, kind of two distinct issues, right? So the silt, first of all, yes, do beaver ponds capture silt? Sure. Is a stream with beavers in it nothing but beaver ponds? No. You know, and what you see very frequently is, you know, you'll see a dam with a pond. That pond is capturing, filtering out all of that sediment. And then right below the dam, you know, you've got this beautiful, clean, clear gravel tailwater. I've seen, you know, I've seen cutthroat spawning right below beaver dams because they've filtered out all of that sediment. So what beavers are really doing is they're creating heterogeneity in the system, right? There are ponds, there are these riffles, you know, you've got all of the different habitat features, which they're providing for. And, you know, certainly clean, clear gravels are, you know, part of that, that, that complexity. I don't know. Do you see, do you see that sort of thing when you're out there fishing beaver ponds?
Katie
Absolutely. I feel like the streams between beaver ponds are some of the cleanest, like crispest looking stretches I see. But what's also funny is it's not like the beaver ponds, these silty beaver ponds don't also have a ton of trout. Totally. Yeah. You know, like they're also full. So I mean, I feel like anyone who walked up to a beaver pond and looked in it would, would get rid of this notion that trout and beavers are not able to coexist because I'm like, well, then why are there so many trout here?
Ben
I've talked to like a thousand anglers who are like, yeah, I caught the, you know, the biggest brookie of my life in a beaver pond. Uh, you know, they're, they're such productive environments. And, you know, I think that also just to kind of touch upon the temperature too, because I think that's, you know, that's part of the misconception as well as that, you know, beavers are warming up the water. Um, I mean, really the, you know, the exact opposite is happening, right. Um, because then this is based done some awesome research, you know, out of central Oregon, you know, this famous beaver study site called Bridge Creek. But, you know, basically what those researchers found is that, you know, actually what beavers are doing is that they're, you know, encouraging surface water and groundwater exchange, right? You know, those ponds are kind of forcing water into the floodplain, you know, into the aquifer, essentially, you know, that water is kind of trickling down stream, it's cooling off underground, it's percolating back up through the stream bed. So you've got that kind of that hyporheic exchange between surface water and groundwater that, again, at the scale of a watershed is actually cooling off those summertime flows and creating really good conditions for salmonids.
Katie
Going back to the idea of fish not being able to pass through dams, I had two thoughts on that. One is that unlike the dams that we build, beaver dams are not permanent. I'd love to get into like what happens when a beaver dam goes, but like I've watched beaver dams kind of evolve over the, over the years, ones that I've visited many times. And you'll eventually come up and one has been blown out and you know, the whole pond has drained and it's like, these, these are not the same as like Hoover Dam and you know, or, or any of the dams that are blocking like salmon, salmon passage in the Pacific Northwest. Like this is a, this is an evolving thing. And secondly, I don't remember what species we were talking about recently, but someone brought up how in Alaska there was a species of fish that they were kind of, they kind of had a negative reputation because like they're eating all the salmon eggs, you know, and, and, but it was, it was a native species. And I was like, well, you know, obviously these two species have learned to coexist over the millions of years that they've evolved together. The thought that this one native species is going to wipe out the other native salmon species by eating all the eggs is just kind of preposterous. Like they would have done that long ago if that were the problem. And I, I just generally kind of feel like this is a good way to operate, that if two species existed and thrived together for millions of years, that one is not going to inherently destroy the other by what it does. I feel like that would just be a good kind of litmus test for things in general. The species that evolved together are fine together. They're not going to destroy each other.
Ben
You would think that that argument would be pretty persuasive. Yeah, I wish it were more so. You know, one of the claims that I hear sometimes, especially out of Wisconsin, you know, Wisconsin is of all of the states. It's the state that does the most beaver control, both blowing up beaver dams and killing beavers for the sake of brook trout. And, you know, and the argument that I hear out of Wisconsin sometimes, along with, you know, the warming up the water thing, which again, I think has been pretty clearly debunked, is that, you know, we have different conditions on the landscape than we used to, right? That, you know, that, you know, back in the day before colonization and development, you know, yeah, there were plenty of, you know, of cold water streams out there where beavers and brook trout could coexist. But now, you know, our clean, cold water, salmonid habitat is so much scarcer than it was, you know, that we really need to, you know, manage these interactions so that brook trout can thrive. But so that's just, you know, the kind of the counterpoint that I hear occasionally from managers. But, you know, I very broadly, totally agree with you that, yeah, these are, you know, these are native species who co-evolved. And, you know, actually, I've got this bumper sticker that I think, you know, gets at that connection. It says beavers taught salmon to jump, right? I think that gets at the at the kind of the deep shared evolutionary history pretty frequently. So to me, yeah, you know, killing, killing, or even removing beavers for the sake of, you know, any Salmonid is just, you know, it's not really, it's not evidence-based. And it's, you know, certainly goes against, you know, Leopold's famous injunction to keep every cog and wheel as the precondition for intelligent tinkering.
Katie
I know you've mentioned brook trout a couple times and you're not an ichthyologist so if you don't know the answer that's totally fine but I feel like 90% of the fish I see in and around beaver ponds are brook trout and this is this is like Colorado centric perspective because that's where I do most of my beaver pond fishing but if I if I fish a beaver pond I'm expecting to find brook trout, maybe the occasional brown trout, and maybe the occasional cutthroat. I basically never see rainbows in beaver ponds. And I don't know if you've noticed this pattern as well, that beaver ponds and brook trout seem to really go well together. Do you happen to know why that is?
Ben
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think part of it is probably coincident in that brown trout are kind of warmer water fish that you find in the lowlands. The And beavers are, of course, living in those big rivers. They're just not damning them and creating ponds. And there's also a lot of private property in the lowlands. And, you know, those private property owners are often killing beavers, right? Brook trout are, you know, these cold loving, you know, kind of alpine fish in the West. And, you know, they tend to be, you know, in those public land headwater systems, which, you know, is where the beavers also are. So I think that, I think maybe that's part of it. I mean, I have caught rainbows in beaver ponds, but I agree with you that, you know, that the brookies really dominate up there. And yeah, it's a good question about, you know, what exactly is happening in those systems.
Katie
It seems like maybe it's not that brook trout do better in those streams or in beaver ponds specifically than something like cutthroats, but more just that brook trout tend to out compete cutthroats. And, you know, so they're just in more of those headwater streams, unfortunately, in my opinion, because I like a native fish, but I also won't turn down catching 50 brookies out of a beaver pond if it's offered to me.
Ben
Yeah, totally. I mean, I've definitely caught cutthroat in beaver ponds, especially in Wyoming. But here in Colorado, it's just like impossible, not impossible, but very difficult to find cutthroat in any flowing water, right? I mean, unfortunately, they've been so outcompeted by brookies and streams that they're really alpine lake fish at this point, which is, I think, one of the more tragic things that we've done to our ecosystems in the state.
Katie
Do you happen to know if there have been any studies looking at whether beaver ponds allow fish to grow bigger? I don't know. I don't know how much beaver pond fishing you do, but I feel like if I'm not catching, you know, six inch brook trout out of a beaver pond, I might be catching like a 15 to 18 inch brown trout. Like there might be just one giant fish living in that deep water and feeding on all those brook trout. And it's always really fun to be like, there could be a monster lurking in here. And it's happened a couple of times to know if anyone's looked at the fact that you're taking a stream that's that smaller might not be able to grow as big a trout and turning it into almost like a pseudo miniature lake with with deeper cooler water like can that lead to bigger fish growth
Ben
totally yeah you know it's it's the deeper cooler water and it's also you know it's it's all of those floodplain nutrients right that when you know when those beaver ponds spread out you know they're they're activating the floodplain and you know bringing in all of that you know yeah all of all of those those nutrients as well I mean, that's just, you know, all of the great research out of California, you know, showing how much bigger, you know, juvenile Chinook salmon grow on floodplains, right? Because, you know, you're just bringing in that kind of terrestrial nutrient subsidy. And so, I mean, you know, off the top of my head, one of the great examples of, you know, beaver ponds growing big fish. And this is a story I tell in the book. But there's a rancher in Idaho named Jay Wild, a really cool guy. You know, he grew up on this ranch and kind of remembered that, you know, his stream, Birch Creek, used to be perennial, but it kind of becomes seasonal over the years. And he realized that was because it had lost its beavers, that beavers, you know, had basically built all of those dams, kind of slowed that water down so that there was still water in the stream, you know, year round going into the hot, dry season. And so Jay, with the help of some researchers at Utah State, basically brought beavers back to his property, built some of those beaver dam analogs, those artificial beaver dams that the beavers themselves can kind of maintain and expand upon. Now there are more than 200 dams in that system, I think. And he's got all kinds of cool results, an additional month of water in that stream now. But one of the coolest or certainly the coolest from a fish perspective is that the cutthroat response, you know, he had I want to say their Bonneville cutthroat. I forget what exactly what subspecies he had in there, but probably Bonneville. But, you know, I mean, he told me that, you know, historically a six inch fish was a big fish in that system, you know, and now he and his relatives are catching 15 inchers out of there. And so just, you know, I think an amazing example of how productive those beaver influenced systems really, really can be when you bring that floodplain into the picture and get that, again, that terrestrial nutrient subsidy, you know, contributing to the system.
Katie
I'd love to hear what the evolution of a beaver pond is. So you've got a stream, again, we'll go back to a mountain meadow stream, undammed. Beaver moves into the neighborhood and is like, I want to build a dam here. Walk me through what it looks like from that point to when that dam, maybe years down the road, might give out. And I'd love to hear kind of like how long like the average beaver pond exists and what it looks like at each stage of its existence.
Ben
Yeah, you know, it's a good question. And I think that kind of my cop out answer to the how long question is that it really depends on where you are, right? You know, I mean, there are beaver and we know this from, you know, from railroad mapping that was done in the 19th century. You know, there are beaver ponds on the landscape in Michigan today that were present in the 1850s and 60s. you know, because that's an area with really stable hydrology and, you know, relatively low gradient streams. Whereas, you know, here in Colorado, we've got flashy hydrology in the spring. We've got these, you know, a lot of these really steep mountain streams. And so, you know, maybe our beaver dams have a slightly shorter lifespan. So, you know, it really depends on what system you're talking about, but, you know, anywhere from, you know, weeks to decades, I guess, is what I'll say about how long these structures can last.
Katie
I guess I'm thinking more of like the stages, like, you know, a fresh beaver pond versus like what I would call like a mature beaver pond, regardless of the absolute age of it, but kind of like the stages of a beaver pond as it ages.
Ben
Yeah, sure. So, you know, I think that that cyclicity is one of the really beautiful things about these systems, right? So, you know, the beavers show up, they build that dam, you know, right off the bat, that pond is, you know, it's a nice deep pool. You know, that's, I mean, that might be when it's, it's kind of prime trout habitat. You know, over time it, you know, it fills in with sediment a little bit, becomes a little bit shallower, marshier, you know, then it's great amphibian habitat, you know, and here in Colorado, right, we've got our boreal toads, you know, our iconic, incredibly endangered amphibians, something like 90% of boreal toad breeding happens in beaver ponds, right? These are, you know, essentially beaver pond obligates. You know, I think that those mature ponds that you're talking about, or, you know, those are, those are really prime toad habitat, you know, over time beavers themselves are, are cyclic, you know, they'll, they'll leave an area, they get, you know, eaten by a cougar or they die of disease or, or what have you, you know, they kind of come and go and, and, you know, let's say they, they leave the area that dam breaks down, you know, the pond, you know, sort of fills in altogether or drains, fills in with sediment or drains. Um, you know, and then it becomes a great wet meadow, you know, and that's, that, that's really good ungulate forage. Uh, you know, and then it, it reforests a little bit and you get some, you know, some kind of some primary growth, some, you know, some new Aspen coming back. Uh, and so, you know, it's just this amazing, and then, you know, the beavers, the beavers show back up again. Uh, and, you know, and they rebuild that dam and take back over that lodge because they really like to, you know, move into sites that already have some beaver infrastructure. So that's the kind of the beautiful thing about them, about these, these, these systems, these sites is that, you know, at every stage in that cycle, you know, they're supporting a different ecological community, different, different critters, but, you know, it's, it's always, you know, just bountiful. And, you know, and you see some like crazy things in those, you know, those, those cycling ponds, Like a few years ago, I went to Minnesota to check out some beaver ponds in Voyagers National Park. And, you know, my host with the park service took me to this one spot where, you know, the beavers had left, the pond had drained, and this big beaver lodge was left kind of stranded high and dry in the middle of this, you know, open meadow that used to be a pond. And a pack of wolves actually moved into the lodge and raised their pups in the lodge. What? You know, beavers creating habitat for their own predators. It's kind of wild.
Katie
That is crazy. I've never heard that before. I don't think that was in your book, was it?
Ben
No, yeah. I went there a couple of years after the book came out.
Katie
Okay, okay. I was like, I feel like I would have remembered that.
Ben
Yeah.
Katie
Do you want to hear just from an angler's perspective? I'm sure there's somebody out there like, okay, okay, but get to the fishing.
Ben
That's what I'd be thinking if I was listening to this episode.
Katie
Well, you've already written the book. You already know all this stuff. But as somebody who does fish beaver ponds, I'd love to just give some kind of an overview if someone hasn't kind of taken advantage of fishing beaver ponds. Maybe they're kind of a big river angler and they don't see what the point of fishing for little six inch brookies is. Maybe convince people on why it's fun to fish beaver ponds. And if you were to show up at a beaver pond, maybe you've never been there before, how are you going to approach it? What are you going to tie on as kind of your first fly? I know it would depend on location and things like that, but how are you approaching a beaver pond to kind of maximize your chance of success?
Ben
Yeah, well, I'm excited to hear your thoughts too, Katie, because I know you're a beaver pond angler. I mean, I would say let's think about what's happening in that pond, right, and what the substrate is. Because, you know, as we said before, look, you know, when you've got beavers in a stream, they're cleaning off the gravel below the beaver dam by capturing that sediment. But the pond itself, you know, is kind of a soft bottom, right? So you're not going to see, you know, a whole lot of mayflies or caddisflies, you know, those kind of gravel associated insects. You know, you're going to see some midges for sure. And you're going to, you know, I think those fish are often feeding on terrestrials too, because you've got those, you know, those coppiced willows kind of overhanging that pond. So, you know, having an ant or a beetle, you know, that's often what I'll toss out there first. And then I think a little streamer too can just be so productive. You mentioned those deep ponds often have the one apex predator who's eating the smaller fish. So you've got a big piscivore in there somewhere. And a little streamer can kind of dredge out the bigger fish from the bottom of that pond, I think. So that's often where I'm going there. And, you know, and I mean, sometimes I like to stand right below the dam because that was going to be my tip. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Because I feel like that, you know, that dam is almost acting like a visual screen, right? Blocking, you know, blocking the fish's view of you. So I love standing right below that dam, you know, the dam at, let's say, chest height or so and just, you know, casting right above it.
Katie
It's the only time that I can think of that you can be at eye level with the water you're casting to. Like I can't think of any other situation where you're going to be, you know, like on a riverbank, like on your, like, I guess you could get like on your belly if you wanted to sneak up on a fish on a lake's edge or a river's edge. But yeah, you can be standing fully upright and be and have the water level at your eye level and the fish cannot see you. It's amazing. You've got to hide your rod, but you can be very, very stealthy in a way that I guess is kind of necessary. I find that beaver pond fish are some of the spookiest fish there are, which is why I was kind of surprised that you mentioned a streamer. I don't use a streamer very often on beaver ponds. I know you said the deeper ones, and that might be the right case for them. But those shallower ones, I don't like to touch a streamer because when it hits the water, I feel like every fish in that pond knows what happened because it's so, you know, such a jarring experience for them.
Ben
Right. No, that's a good point. I love your point about being on eye level with the fish. That is really cool. And, yeah, it's such a fun way of fishing, right? But it's, you know, obviously, like it's these are kind of brushy, willowy environments where, you know, you're not going to be doing any any hero casting. You know, you're doing most of the most of the work with your legs, you know, trying to trying to get as close as possible. And it's, you know, and you're also just I mean, look, I always feel like, you know, I love I love fishing. I love fish. But one of the reasons that I love fishing is it just gets you into these, you know, these fantastic environments where, you know, you also see a moose. And, you know, some interesting songbirds. And, you know, there's always, you know, some kind of some cool thing to observe up there. And so, you know, I feel like, you know, fishing is a good excuse to visit some beaver ponds. But, you know, the ponds themselves are just such spectacular little sights in their own right.
Katie
I think they're just really interesting. I think to your point there, it creates such diversity in the water that you have everything from like a couple inch deep gravel runs below the dam itself to like the deep pools. and then the water often kind of spreads up through the meadow and fills all these little kind of channels through the meadow and those could be like a couple feet deep even though they're only you know six to twelve inches wide and there's just all kinds of variety like I spend half my time just kind of looking in looking in little pockets and seeing what's in there whereas you know a stream or river there could be you know structure and and meanders and bends and different different things that give variety to that as well. But I find that a beaver pond meadow has kind of the most diverse set of little pockets for trout to hang out in that I come across. And it's just like fun to kind of explore and look in things. I never want to stop walking upstream and seeing like, what's at the next pond? How is this pond going to differ from the last one I was at? They're all a little bit different.
Ben
Yeah. And they differ within the system and temporally, right? We were talking about that, you know, that kind of that cyclic nature of them. And that's a, that's a fun thing too, is that, you know, you can go back year after year and, you know, and watch, watch these systems evolve and, and, and, and change. And, and, you know, sometimes that can be really frustrating. You know, there's a, there's a beaver complex, you know, here in Chafee County where I live that, you know, I first moved here. I just, I loved fishing it. You know, one of the only places I know you could really get the grand slam, catch browns, brookies, rainbows, and cuts in a single system. And now those beavers are gone, and that stream has lost so much of its complexity. A lot of it is mud flat now, and I try not to weep when I drive by it, but you also know that's part of the natural nature of these systems. and the beavers will be back eventually and it will regain its former glory.
Katie
Yeah, I don't know. I put a pin on my map like anytime I fish a spot and mark some notes about what I caught there. And I'm sure so many of my beaver pond pins are out of date because I marked it three or four years ago and said, oh, full of seven inch brook trout, stand at this end to get a good cast. And you go back and you're like, this is nothing like what I saw before. But it's fun, like you said, because you come back and you never know what you're going to find. I've got a group of friends I go out with every year and we do a friendly fishing tournament while we're out, like who can catch the biggest fish. And for years, there was this one beaver pond that always produced the biggest fish. And so we'd go there and, you know, a couple of years ago we went back and it had blown out. And it was kind of this like, oh man, the glory days are over. That pond doesn't exist anymore. All the fish are gone. And then just last year we went back and it was back. And we were, you know, it's just so exciting. Like we're back, baby. So it's just fun to show up and you never know like what you're going to find. Just to wrap up, I know you have a new book coming out. I want you to once again, plug Eager. So if people are inspired by this conversation, I want to go check out your book and learn more about beavers. Go ahead and plug that. And then I want to hear a little bit about your new book coming out too.
Ben
Sure. Yeah. So and thanks again, Katie, for asking me to plug myself. And I'll just, in that spirit of self-aggrandizement, I'll say that I've got, after I have a second book, which is already out, came out in 2023 called Crossings, which is about how roads impact nature and how we mitigate or manage the impacts of roads. And there's, you know, for the Anglers out there, there's one chapter about roads and salmon passage. You know, this notion that every time a road crosses a stream, there's, you know, there's those culverts we were talking about earlier. And often those culverts are barriers to fish movement. So I've got some cool stories in that book about native tribes and environmental groups, you know, doing culvert replacements for trout and salmon that I think the anglers would be interested in. My next book, which is coming out hopefully in 2027, maybe 2028, we'll see, is about fish migration and really fish movement kind of broadly construed as this keystone ecological and cultural process that we've screwed up in a million ways, of course. and are now trying to understand, protect, and restore. And so every chapter is about a different species or group of species, obviously. Pacific salmon are well represented, you know, cutthroat trout are in there, but also, you know, some fish that maybe anglers haven't thought a ton about, like Pacific lamprey and alewives and, you know, all of these little endemic darters and shiners in the Southeast, which undertake their own little micro movements. There's a chapter about suckers, about all of our amazing native catastomids in North America who kind of get short shrift often from anglers. So, yeah, if you're into the full diversity of mobile fish, I think you'll be into this book.
Katie
And when does it come out?
Ben
We don't have a pub date yet. So just, you know, everybody just put a little calendar notice to yourself to check back in like 18 months and see what's up.
Katie
You're just like the insurance company I got off the phone with. Check back in 14 days and get the status update then.
Ben
Well, here's a question for you, Katie, just because all of the fish-focused people I talk to, I'm asking this question. If you were to read a book about the importance of preserving fish movement, what would you want to read about? What species or places or ideas would you want to encounter? I'll make sure to include you in the acknowledgments if you have a good idea.
Katie
Uh, yeah, you know, this is, this is more, less because I find them interesting, I guess, and more because I don't know anything about them. But I talked to somebody a couple of years ago who mentioned, coaster brook trout up in the Great Lakes. Cause I hadn't really realized at the time that brook trout were native to like the Wisconsin area. I always thought of brook trout as being kind of a, an Appalachia species. So, when I found out that there were brook trout, they almost act like steelhead in a way, that really interested me. And so I don't really know anything about them. And so that's why I'm going to put that as my request, I guess, just because I would love to learn more about these, like what I assume are large migratory brook trout that kind of I feel like get overlooked for the Appalachian area, you know, New York, Pennsylvania, kind of the Smokies, that area. That's what I think most people think of when they think of brook trout. So I would love to hear about these migratory brook trout.
Ben
I love that idea. And, you know, yeah, I just I just love thinking about, you know, that how every time you give a trout a chance to assume an anadromous life history, right, or a char in this case, it does, you know, I mean, like, there's one part of this book that, you know, is that the Elwha River, where, you know, the kind of one of the most famous dam removals in history happened. And, you know, in there, the bull trout ended up anadromous. I didn't even know that bull trout did that or were capable of doing that, but give them a chance and they do. And so I love part of this book is definitely about just that incredible diversity of life history that fish are capable of assuming when we give them the opportunity. And I think coaster brook trout are an awesome example of that. I've always wanted to go to the north shore of Lake Superior and catch these steelhead-esque brook trout. That sounds like an awesome experience for sure.
Katie
You seem correct on that. I feel like anywhere there's some giant body of water, some fish has decided that it's going to be a migratory fish into and out of that lake or ocean. But yeah, it seems like you give a fish a chance and it's like, yeah, I'm going to take the opportunity to go out there and chow down on a bunch of stuff and come back way bigger than I would have otherwise.
Ben
Totally. Yeah. No, it's just kind of an amazing testament to the incredible benefit of anadromy, right? That if you can tie together the safety of the stream and the resources of the giant lake or ocean, the fish will do it. And yeah, I love thinking about kind of the romance of that life history for sure.
Katie
Well, Ben, where can people find you if they want to keep an eye on your books or reach out or anything else they want? Where can they find you online?
Ben
Yeah, my website is just bengoldfarb.com. And, you know, I'm on Instagram and I guess Blue Sky these days and other social media platforms. And the books are hopefully available everywhere books are sold, including your local independent bookseller, especially if you're here in Colorado, because we've got so many great little indie bookstores.
Katie
Awesome. Well, Ben, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this and for your flexibility with my schedule and all that. I just really appreciate it. And I hope people check out your books and give beavers a chance if they still have some misconceptions about how beavers might be affecting brook trout and cutthroats where that exists. If you haven't fished beaver ponds before, I just encourage people to give it a try because it's like it's one of the most like innocently fun forms of fishing there is. So thank you again.
Ben
Thanks, Katie. Let's go fish some beaver ponds together this summer.
Katie
Let's do it. All right. Take care. all right that's a wrap thank you all for listening if you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes you can find those on fishuntamed.com you'll also find a contact link there if you want to reach out to me and you can also find me on instagram at fish untamed if you want to support the show you can give it a follow on apple podcasts or your favorite podcasting app and if you'd like to leave a review it would be greatly appreciated but otherwise thank you all again for listening I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. take care everybody
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