October 11th, 2021 - A long way from Home

While we do have pickerel dispersed throughout the Hammond River Watershed, particularly in the lakes, this little fella was quite a surprise!

We found this chain pickerel in the North Branch of the Hammond River- chances are, it's original habitat is in Cassidy Lake, but it is a long way from home! It swam approximately 5km to get to where we found it, through non-ideal habitat for pickerel! We have been busy combing through our historical electrofishing data, and we have yet to find any other record of encountering a pickerel in this location!