Sweet Caroline

Very interesting read. I also listened to the audio. Was there any mention of the impact of the spiney water flea on Alewife diet? It is my understanding that Alewife have adapted to feeding on them which should provide a plentiful food source for most of the summer. I always thought the arrival of these was somewhat of a saving grace as an alternative and plentiful food source for Alewife. Not sure if there has been much research done on this dynamic or not. We really need to get to the point with our stocking efforts that we can follow the Alewife hatches. High hatch, stock more, low hatch stock less. You see this with just about any other natural population i.e when food sources are low, reproduction is decreased and when it is high reproduction is increased. Stocking the same amount year after year regardless of the previous year alewife hatch is not a healthy way to manage a fishery. We are doing the bait trawls now. The results of the YOY alewife findings should determine the Spring 2017 Salmon stocking. According to the Huron study one of the biggest factors leading to a crash is missing bait year classes. By continuing to stock the same amount of salmon after two years of poor alewife hatches doesn’t make a lot of sense. We very well could decimate those two year classes making it all the more difficult for the alewife population to recover as there won’t be a sizable breeding population of Alewife 2-3 years from now. Add in a bad winter in one of those future years and a bait crash is very is very possible. Out of everything mentioned in this report, the most concerning factor is the additional efforts that will be done in the future to decrease nutrient load in Lake Erie. A highly productive Lake Erie feeding Lake Ontario clearly is what separates us from Huron and Michigan as the more productive lake. The balancing act that will follow is not allowing the adult Alewife population to get so high that the lake cannot support a good hatch. This is what happened in 2003 in Huron. A record high Alewife hatch was followed by a total crash of the whole population. Basically they ate themselves out of house and home and nothing survived the winter. The other side to that is that if the Adult Alewife population is lowered and has a couple bad years of YOY hatches and the predator population remains high the Alewife population could be decimated. To be honest, I’m not sure we can control any of this and we may just have to deal with the cards we are handed, much like Huron is doing now.

Great info and a lot think about when it comes to managing Lake Ontario. The Huron perspective was very insightful. I don't think for one minute we couldn't end up in the same situation if we are not careful. LO is more productive but we also stock 3X more fish/acre in LO than both Huron and Michigan did before the crash. LO stats will show that in the past decade catch rates have increased and size has decreased which is exactly what Huron and Michigan saw before the crash. Thanks for sharing.

No denying that 40lb Kings are pretty much gone from LO and 35lb+ fish are scarce. Next will it be 30, then 25, then 20 like Lake Michigan? If the theory is that the fish are all maturing early because of excessive bait, then wouldn’t Lake Michigan and Huron salmon mature late because of not enough bait? 4 year olds should be common in their catch if that is the case. I like the optimism and I’m not trying to be a naysayer, but I think we need to be happy with what we have and not push the envelope. Stocking more salmon is risky. Nature is weird. We could be seeing more mature 3 yr olds because the environment has changed and evolution kicks in and says it is better to reproduce earlier than later. 20 yrs ago those same fish may have stayed in the lake for another year and put on another 10 lbs. All just a theory of course, but my point is the best thing we have right now is examples of very similar environments in other Great Lakes. I know the Lake Ontario is different, more productive, etc, but let’s not kid ourselves that we can possibly end up in the same situation if we are not careful. The cold winters don’t help, but does anybody really think if we had two warm winters that 40lb or 35lb plus salmon would be back in the numbers they used to be 10, 20, 30 yrs ago? My two cents…J

1988 23ft Sea Ray. 2 Electric cannon downriggers, trailer, 2000 15hp honda 4 stroke , rod holders all included, 5.7liter. merc engine. Well kept and clean boat. Stored in pole barn year round. Engine & lower unit oil changed every Fall, washed/waxed every Spring. Both engines run great. Can be used for fishing or pleasure. Fishing equipment easily removed. Will consider lower bids without equipment. $5499 OBO. End of Season - Boats got to go

just sent you a PM

Just sent you a PM

also was in late August

Probably about 5-6 yrs ago

Biggest walleye I ever caught was trolling in the Genny river. I hooked a 4 ft stringer that it had through its gill. Fish was still alive too. Somebody must have lost it from shore upstream.

Thanks. Out of curiosity what is the water temp right now?

Dave, Is it only steelhead that are more susceptible to mortality after being released? The reason I ask is that I have had many instances with browns in the tribs where I have caught the same brown in the same hole 2-5 times over the course of a trib season. They fought just as well and looked just as healthy (sometimes even more healthy) after each time I caught them. This made me a true believer in the benefits of catch & release. I would think the same would apply to steelhead? Granted a steelhead probably would be on the move more and not stay in the same hole as much as brown does during the trib season. Great insight and points of view from everybody BTW

I speculate that with all the transportation of invasives throughout the world that in 100 years similar climates throughout the world will have the same ecosystems. There are already complaints of largemouth bass taking over areas of Asia and Pacific salmon running Atlantic rivers. Typically once an invasive enters a system their population explodes until a predator develops and keeps them in check i.e gobies/sheephead on zebra mussels, trout and bass on gobies, alewifes on spiney water fleas, etc

How much longer are we going to continue trying to restore native species i.e. Lakers and Atlantics? I understand the state likes getting the free funds for these fish but at what point do you call the program a fail? 5, 10, 30 years? Natural reproduction is never going to be enough to sustain a viable fishery of these native fish on its own. Despite what we do the ecosystem has changed forever and instead of trying to restore it we should work with it. Totally agree that stocking a fish that can live 30yrs makes management of a predator/prey relationship difficult. I’m still not buying the fact that we have “too much baitâ€, enough bait, yes, but too much, not so sure. Record high catch rates the past 10 yrs and a declining average size do not add up to a system that has too much bait no matter how you slice it. Also still can’t help think of the 80s when we talk about having too much bait. Lake Ontario will always be more productive than Lake Michigan, but after two years of poor alewife reproduction and now heavy cannibalism by an abundance of adult alewife on the YOY I’m not sure how stocking more Kings will help the current and near term (1-3 yr) situation. The abundance of adult alewife that we have now will be out of the system in two years and then what is going to replace them? My concern is that if we are not careful we can turn a poor situation in to a disaster like what happened on Huron and Michigan. Certainly stocking more lake trout is not going to help the situation. Stocking more browns and steelhead that have a shorter life span and diversified diet probably would be the better solution…. and are a species many would prefer to catch over lake trout. Don’t get me wrong, I like catching Kings as much as anybody on here but I think given the unknown of what is going to happen with the future adult alewife crop, stocking more Kings at this point could be risky. And with all the back and forth about what should be done, after a normal or mild winter fishing could be on fire again next Summer and we could chalk this all up to two bad winters that made the fishing difficult. Conversations like this tend to be forgotten after a good season. I personally have experienced much worse seasons than 2015 and really don’t have any major complaints about the fishing. Would have liked to have had more matures and steelhead, but we still caught a ton of fish. I understand that some years are better or worse than others when it comes to catching matures.

Probably not what people want to hear, but wouldn’t it make sense to stock less Kings after a Spring of poor alewife recruitment and more after a Spring when there is strong recruitment? Instead we stock the same amount each year regardless. If my understanding is correct, an alewife hatched in May or June doesn’t become food for a 1yr salmon until the following Spring? So if the Spring of 2015 had poor recruitment then you would stock less salmon in the Spring of 2016. Conversely, if the Spring 2015 had strong recruitment then you could stock more in Spring of 2016? Seems more logical to manage the salmon stocking in parallel to the previous year alewife recruitment then just to dump in the same amount regardless? There probably were many years we could have stocked many more salmon and years when we should have cut back. My fear is that if everybody is saying that we now have 2 bad years of YOY alewife anything we stock on top of the cannibalism by the adult alewife will decimate what is left. Seems like we could be setting ourselves up for a disaster. If there is a huge population of adult alewife out there now and we have a warmer winter we have the potential to have a great 2016 YOY and we could potentially stock many more salmon in 2017. I’m willing to accept the good with the bad if that we means we have a stable fishery for years to come.

Been fishing the lake for a long time. This August seemed similar to what was typical in the mid 90s to mid 2000s…. 1-3 matures per trip albeit smaller than what they were back then. Been a little spoiled the last 10 years with insane catch rates on matures. The past two winters took their toll on the fishery in many ways….abnormal migratory patterns, consistently changing conditions, reduced growth weights of both salmon and alewife, just to name a few. Caught tons of skippys and teenagers this year (95% C&R btw) so I’m not concerned about overall numbers of fish. Slower growth rates could potentially have produced more 3 &4 yr olds for next year as many salmon may have a delay in maturity. A little concerned about the reduction in steelhead at least with my catches. Also, despite a strong belief by many I feel alewives populations are struggling in both health and numbers. Can’t help but refer to the 80’s and early 90s when we talk about too much bait. Granted I found bait just about every trip but most schools I marked were tightly bunched most likely as a result of being hammered by predators. Also, why hardly any 30+lb fish this year if there is so much bait? I’m in this fishery for the long haul with two young boys that I want to experience the great fishery as much as I have. I do not want this to end up like Lake Michigan and experience a crash because of all the pressure we are putting on the DEC to keep catch rates high. Catch rates will be high until they fall off a cliff and then you are fu$#*%