King Davy

Gator I used to live at 7 Bayview Dr a couple doors away from Vic Mason. And I’ve enjoyed many a delicious cocktail on your bar at Skinners back in the day. Ran my charter boat out of there until it got too frustrating to deal with the channel and moved to Sandy Creek At Jim Pascerella’s Marina. Had a lot of great memories with my dad after trolling the lake and getting a cold beer at Skinners.

Yes there is a big exciting beautiful world out there and while I don’t find fishing the open waters of Lake Ontario necessarily boring. To have the stick in your hand when you unleash the primal instinct of a top line predator to come kill a prey fish while you are the presenter instead of the boat and trolling gear for me these days…… is why I fish.

I still love it all. I’ve fished every ESLO or LOC derby, and chartered a boat for 22 years plus a ton of recreational fishing on LO since 1971. And then in 1998 I took my first trip to Alaska. I remember waiting for my small plane flight from king salmon back to Anchorage a guy who I helped duck tape his trophy moose rack to his duffel bag asked is this your first time. I said yes. He said nobody comes to Alaska just once. From fishing all over the Kenai peninsula down through Bristol Bay including a camping tent trip on the Sandy River in the Aleutians catching Bering sea steelhead while waking up each morning finding the wolf, moose and brown bear tracks all around our camp I decided I wanted to go to all the places I read about in Sports Afield, and Outdoor life. I sold my charter boat and passed my clients to other captains and headed out on a 25 year journey of fishing both salt and fresh water destinations. All with a rod in my hand experiencing the power and excitement of the “Take, Grab, Pull, Tug of the greatest game fish on the planet. From GT’s and Tarpon to 50 pound king salmon, 20 pound steelhead and 30 pound sea run Atlantic salmon. And dozens of other species you can’t catch here. From Africa to the arctic circle. While I still love Lake Ontario and its tributaries I don’t regret for a minute to make trolling my least style of fishing.

HB2 my experience is that most of that opening day celebration happens at Powder Mills park and since they’ll still be stocking over 10,000 fish in Irondequoit creek that scene will continue as well as their fishing derby’s for kids and families. I won’t apologize for TU doing stream rehabilitation work to help sustain trout. And I don’t think DEC has to apologize for doing what they do. Study fish. Many of you don’t understand that we are one of several cold water conservation groups in this area. Looking at water quality, habit for both fish and wildlife. How many deer hunters on here put food plots in to yeah kill deer but also grow a healthy population of deer on their land or leased lands. And it’s not just TU members who benefit for the work we do to enhance habitat to promote healthy fish populations. We don’t do any work on private property. Only where there are public fishing rights. So I don’t have anything else to offer. I’ve told you about the work we and DEC are involved in. We didn’t ask them to stop stocking fish. It would never be up to us. It’s their parameters and management criteria that decisions are made. Any kid or parent can fish for the trout in Irondequoit be they wild or stocked by Powder Mills. Plus any of the migratory fish that enter the stream.

That’s what DEC told me about ending stocking on the salmon. It sounds like the same thing for Irondequoit. But it could be two fold. Where DEC has found wild fish in any New York stream including Irondequoit since they did an in-depth electro fishing of it last summer and they find wild fish that they believe will sustain sport fishing they stop stocking it. On Oatka four years ago they stopped stocking twin bridges because we (I was on the shocking crew) found 300 wild fish in 100 yards. Honestly guys I’m assuming and I may be wrong they are stopping the upstream stocking to align their stocking policy for LO tribs. On the salmon river your SOL unless we get a good run of adult Atlantic salmon. They used to stock the yearling Atlantics up top of the river and now only plant them in the estuary. However the one and only case for a continued fishery of a LO trib without a stocking is the Iron due to its healthy population of wild trout.

During covid license sales went through the roof and are still there. As a retired guy I can’t find a quiet place to fish during the week unless I drive an hour and a half to the upper Genny. Or an hour to the cohockton. So plenty of people are out fishing everywhere. We run seminars for youth and take them fishing all summer long as well as fishing programs with girl and Boy Scouts and the city of Rochester at parks like Cobbs Hill. Lindsay for 14 years ran seminars to teach women to fly fish on the salmon river and we ran a fly fishing course for veterans for 14 years to where we had their graduation fishing the summer on the salmon. And since 2014 we’ve guided breast cancer survivors at an annual retreat on the salmon river out of the Tailwater lodge. And five years ago we lost having our summer fish. So I get the frustration. Again we’ve been doing conservation work on many streams in our area including Irondequoit for a long time. Where there are wild trout that need cold water we try to improve their habitat. Not sure if it was Cliff Creech or another biologist but DEC did rate Irondequoit as a wild quality stream as far back as 1979. And it’s actually gotten more productive. There are some big wild fish in there. My opinion of brown trout is they are fairly lazy. What I mean by that is if they find a location in a stream or in the lake that provides them the food and safety they require they don’t stray very far. In the case of this wild population of trout in Irondequoit they have everything they need. In the dead of August when we have stopped trout fishing many other streams like Oatka because they are too warm you can still find cool water in Irondequoit with happy fish. Lake Ontario and all its tributaries were home to the greatest in land population of Atlantic salmon in history. As were lake trout and Cisco’s. DEC while of course interested in providing a world class fishery to get funding through license sales is as interested in science and revitalizing native species. All the Great Lakes DNR and DEC departments are working on these projects. The huge increase in coho’s are not from increase stocking. You are seeing a successful class of highly likely wild fish. If you have ever been in the upper fly zone of the salmon river down at the paradise pool you’ll notice a little stream coming in there. If you walk up that stream you’ll find thousands of wild coho's and steelhead. If that stream that is spring fed stays watered through out a couple of summers those fish will reach smolt stage and descend to the lake. And it takes nearly two full years especially for coho’s. Each spring Dan Bishop of DEC leads a seining project from the hatchery to the DSR to determine the current crop of new salmon and any other trout that have successfully hatched. They see those fish that have made it in that study. Including finding Atlantic salmon YOY. The target to stock sabago strain of Atlantic salmon was 250k. I believe the most they’ve ever stocked was 150k. Let me ask you a simple question. If we didn’t have huge natural recruitment of chinook salmon and they only stocked 150k what do you think the lake fishery would look like? The Atlantic salmon program is not to replace any other species of salmonid. It’s to enhance truly the tributary fishery. Atlantic salmon like steelhead are primarily a river fish. In their natural setting they spend longer time in rivers than open water. And for those of us they target them and all the rest of trib anglers who just fish are catching a lot of them in Sandy and Oak orchard as well as the salmon river and we are working a study with Dr Mike Connerton in Cape Vincent to collect scale and tissue samples. You all know that tributary fisheries have evolved over the years to where most anglers don’t harvest their catch. I know I don’t because I’d rather eat a perch than a spawning trout or salmon. And don’t even start the rant of C&R kills tons of fish. It’s not happening and I’ll tell you why we know this. Cause you can’t hide a bunch of dead fish in the shallow streams we fish. The bottom of the stream would be littered with dead steelhead and brown trout and that just isn’t happening. The last few years the catch rate for Atlantic salmon from creel census supports that it’s a viable species to target. We’ve caught a lot of them and there isn’t a greater river fish on the planet. They can put on a show like no other species IMHO. We have a spectacular 12 month a year fishery in the Lake Ontario watershed. Why aren’t we all together on this fact. And in the case of Irondequoit which has been a fertile trout river since forever we have a LO stream that anyone can catch trout wild trout 12 months a year. The non stop us VS them mentality of lake and trib fisheries is foolish. We have the Disney Land of trout and salmon fishing something for everyone and we should all be happy for each other. Is it perfect? Pretty close. Is there work to do? You bet. But let’s let the folks in charge work through the science of keeping it mighty. You may not like every turn in that journey but remember one thing. We are the only Great Lake that hasn’t crashed in over 50 years of managing it. I think they know what their doing.