GAMBLER

Careful what you wish for Dave. Without the salmon fishery on the lake and Tribs, you will not have a steelhead fishery. You will be standing stream side wondering if lake trout will ever come into the Tribs. The steelhead would eat too many alewives and go belly up like last fall. Have fun swinging flies to whirling steelhead.

Where are you getting 300,00? Is that what is stocked in the Salmon River? If so, add a lot to that to make up for natural reproduction, and strays that return to the hatchery and not the trib they were stocked in. If 50% of the fish swimming in Lake Ontario are naturals, most of that comes from the Salmon River.

There is a method out there called the Didson system. They use it on the West Coast in Canada. Here is a link a site that talks about it http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/publications/article/2012/02-22-12-eng.html. The only issue on the salmon river is the variety of species.

I wonder if there could be a salmon die off due to thiamin issues like the steelhead? If they died in the lake, would they even know it was happening?

Trolling them is way more productive. I run cowbells just off the bottom with spin n glow rigs. Jogging can be tough due to heavy currents. It is doable but not as easy. There is way more of a learning curve.

If you read the answers from Lapan, the one that concerns me the most is his answer that brings up charters fishing lakers. If you read the objectives for lake trout restoration, the plan only allows for a certain number of lake trout to be harvested between US and Canada. If too many are harvested, what is the plan? Drop the limit to one? If they dropped it to one laker per person, this would allow the lake trout numbers to increase big time. If we had years of good king fishing and no one was keeping lakers, the population would explode. This would not be good for baitfish levels.

Alaskan genetics would not work since they spawn in the summer.

The pens must be cleaned with a brush on a pole. We do it at the Sandy Creek pen rearing project. As for laker survival, as long as you don't horse them up, burp them if they are full of air, and revive them it's pretty good. If you do not take care of them, the will float.

It is old enough that I would not eat it! I'm not really sure. The 34.06 caught on my boat was 27 but the one caught on the bar years ago at close to 40 was only 11 years old. I guess it can vary. I wonder if what strain it is makes a difference?

18-20lbs

I find this hard to believe seeing that there are a ton of lakers over 15lbs in Lake Ontario. How many 20+lb lakers are swimming out there. I don't see a lot of lampreys on lakers either.

I will take the rod caddys. Dylan, I will split the lot up with you if you want just one.

They had hatchery issues a couple years back but that is not the reason for the increase. They are trying to increase natural reproduction by increasing the number of spawning lakers. With alewives as a big part of their diet, they will have thiamine deficiency issues.

Years ago when they reduced salmon stocking

The laker stocking increase is in addition to the 500,000 they were stocking. Gobies are all over the lak bottom out to 200+ according to the reports.

Exactly Les. This summer off of Sandy, the lakers were not on the usually structure I fish. They were sitting under bait schools all summer. My lake trout weigh points were useless the last two seasons. All I had to do is find bait and I found lakers. I was watching lakers streak from high bait schools to the bottom and then follow the cowbells on the fish finder. They are not eating gobies 40' down over 120-130'!

Their reason for increasing laker stocking was to have more natural reproduction. If the lakers eat so many gobies, thiamine deficiency should not be an issue and natural reproduction should be a lot higher. They are eating gobies in early spring before the bait comes back from wintering on the bottom of the lake out deep. I see hundreds of lakers a year and spent many years filleting lakers aboard the Advocate for years. I only see lakers spitting or partially digested gobies a lot in April and early May. Once the bait shows up, gobies and smelt seem to be an afterthought as a meal to a laker.

They were still taking heads a couple weeks ago. It will be a while.