Sea Run Brook Trout Coalition

01/27/2026

A retelling of the loss of the Santuit. Well done but still sad.

Read Warren Winder's "How to Kill a Salter Stream" (2015) in the comments for further information.

When President Grover Cleveland, an avid outdoorsman, went fishing on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, he hired Irving Oakley of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe to take him. Sea-run brook trout were still abundant in the late 1800s, and the Mashpee Wampanoag were known as “guides to the stars” for their ski...

12/07/2025

Fresh Brook (aka Trout Brook), Wellfleet needs your help.

Details in first comment.

Restoration work begun around 2010 has continued slowly but productively. Recent promotional and fundraising work by Cape Cod Trout Unlimited has begun to make signifificant progress. Recently CCTU's Peter Schilling has won a TU Embrace-A-Stream grant of $ 5,000 which (if matched) can be leveraged up to $ 20,000.

05/12/2025

Yep this is a salter - any guesses as to how large this fish is??

Location is - and will remain - secret.

04/29/2025

Hooray - another nice chunk of money for the Fresh Brook project just got voted in last night. This money is significant because it is from the Town of Wellfleet itself - with promises of more as the project progressed.

This is excellent news for the Cape Cod TU team that's taken over the project. Extra special thanks for Peter Schilling, Zyg Plater and Jim Gilbert.

ICYMI, here's a recent article by Jim Gilbert, a Cape Cod native (also known as a Wellfleecian) who grew up quite nearby.

It’s hard to imagine what Wellfleet’s Fresh Brook — or Trout Brook, as it is labeled on some old maps — looked like a half millennium ago, when it was […]

04/11/2025

And more from Nelson Seligman about Mill Brook, Martha's Vineyard.

The return of river herring to Martha’s Vineyard this spring is one of the rhythms of a natural world unaffected by a pandemic that has otherwise disrupted the patterns and rituals of so much of normal life. Fresh from the sea and driven by the urge to spawn, herring will nose their way up Mill Br...

04/11/2025

Here's the second in the series about Wellfleet's Fresh Brook - and a big thanks to Provincetown's Jim Gilbert. Jim was one of Hopper's friends back in the sixties and seventies.

In May 1840, a small group of sport fishermen set out from Newport, R.I. in search of sea-run brook trout. Traveling first by ferry, then by coach and horseback, and […]

04/11/2025

One of two fine articles about Wellfleet's Fresh Brook.

It’s hard to imagine what Wellfleet’s Fresh Brook — or Trout Brook, as it is labeled on some old maps — looked like a half millennium ago, when it was […]

03/17/2025

In case you missed it - here's a long interview with yours truly.

Thanks again Explore New England!

Enjoy!

Learn about the fascination population of native sea-run brook trout that inhabit tiny Red Brook in southeastern Massachusetts—and all that’s being done to protect them.

02/27/2025

The Coonamessett River is an ongoing restoration project in Falmouth MA. The Coonie's progress is considerable - multiple phases have been completed, but a few of the very last phases have run into obstacles. Yet, it is a rich case study of cold water / coastal access stream habitat restoration that benefit numerous species - including both river herring and sea-run brook trout.

On this Falmouth in Focus - a river renaissance. Where the fish swim again, and native plants bloom into an explosion of color and diversity.It’s nature at ...

02/27/2025

This video is a stellar illustration of the research work required to advocate for habitat restoration - of any kind - but especially for cold water habitat restoration. This is good enough to me to be instrumental (and required) training for anyone looking to do habitat restoration aka dam removal at any location.

Excellent work!

Mill Pond From Source to Tisbury Great Pond 2.23.25

02/27/2025

More discussion about Mill Brook, West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard.

One more step in a 20+ year journey.

In a hotly contested issue over a brook circuit that runs through multiple ponds across West Tisbury and Chilmark, a West Tisbury town committee has completed its findings after four years of active field work; it is recommending restoring a pond in the middle of town to its natural state. Islanders...

02/21/2025

Down Martha's Vineyard way, the fight for habitat restoration continues with another beautifully written editorial by Nelson Seligman.

This location was one of the very first projects addressed by SRBTC back better than a decade. Back then, Steve Hurley (MassWildlife) now retired definitely identified a reproducing population of brook trout in the upper reaches of Mill Brook. Perhaps someday the original ecology of Mill Brook - including the brook trout - will win over the Friends of Mill Pond.

In March, the Friends of Mill Pond will sponsor Celebrating the Mill Pond: Sustaining Serenity Together, a delusional, misbegotten, month-long “community awareness campaign” to support maintaining the artificial impoundment that harms Mill Brook.