Learn About DEEP's Fall Stocking

Learn about the current and future status of trout in Connecticut from Matt Devine of the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection. Pizza will be available.

Matt has over 12 years of experience sampling, studying, and enhancing cold and warm-water fisheries. He has worked for state and federal agencies as well as non-governmental organizations specializing in fisheries conservation. After receiving his BA in Environmental Studies from the University of Redlands (Calif.), Matt’s fisheries career began in Litchfield as a Seasonal Resource Assistant for the CT DEEP Fisheries Division crew.

In 2009, Matt scratched his itch to move to the Northern Rockies. Matt held positions with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, USGS (Wyoming), and Friends of the Teton River (Idaho), and spent the off seasons on the Snake River raft guiding and winters working at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Matt returned to the Northeast and worked with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife before returning to school.

He completed an MS in Fish and Wildlife Conservation Biology at UMass Amherst in 2015 and is currently wrapping up his PhD, also at UMass, where he is part of the Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.

Now Matt, originally from West Hartford, has seen the light and has come full circle back to CTDEEP as a Coldwater Fisheries Biologist, and will be working out of the Eastern District Headquarters in Marlborough. Matt’s graduate work focuses on the population dynamics and restoration ecology of anadromous river herring. For his master’s Matt developed a sampling protocol for juvenile river herring in freshwater lakes and investigated their density and growth. His doctoral research expands sampling to large rivers and estuaries in an attempt to close the loop on understanding limits to juvenile productivity. His research also investigates the response of river herring to restored aquatic connectivity in coastal Massachusetts watersheds.

Matt is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys hunting, fishing, snowboarding, searching for antlers with his dog, and spending time on and around rivers and streams with his wife Vanessa, two young boys Wyatt (6) and Jamie (3), and trusty golden retriever May.

Eric Peterson will also return this meeting with a fly tying demonstration.