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King Davy

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Everything posted by King Davy

  1. So we have millions of king salmon and and less than 10% survive to return to rivers to spawn and you want to put that up again 150k stocked AS annually to where a few thousand survive. And you want to talk about survival struggles. I think both species have hurdles to overcome. For instance we don’t have big salmon anymore. Haven’t had notable numbers of high 30’s to 40 pound fish since the early 2000’s or essentially 20 years. Because there are several issues in the LO environment that hasn’t been overcome. Why don’t you fixate on that for once. The powers that be running the LO fishery have decided they are all in on AS. Good bad or indifferent that’s the play. So stop whining and just fish for what ever is your passion and I’ll do the same. I catch them, I enjoy them and I guess you don’t. Oh well. Go do some actual research. The program has not been running at its current rate for ever. It’s started and stopped for Decades. At present for the first time in forever the State in conjunction with the Feds actually has a management plan which they didn’t have in the past. this fishery is ever changing and evolving . You should do the same.
  2. They stock 850k king salmon. 111k out of the pens in a place like oak orchard. Plus the wild fish produced. And we may have a couple 100 fish total that returned this year. out in the lake you have at least three year classes of fish, well over a million a year from stocking and wild fish and how many did you catch? 100’s. Dozens, maybe 20 to 30 all season. what do you think the survival rate is of these fish ? 10%. 5%. Five percent of 200k fish is at most 10k fish spread out all over the lake. Here’s the bottom line. This is a heritage species. If you have any sense of history of lake Ontario this was the greatest in land Atlantic salmon fishery on the planet. Man f’d it all up. How can you not be interested in some effort to try and create even a minor resurrection of our LO history. Whom is it hurting? How are you being impacted negatively? just because YOU don’t care about them or can’t catch them doesn’t mean I and many other trib anglers aren’t interested in catching them and or trying to bring back this historical fish that is revered in every other watershed in the world it swims. It’s just NOT all about everyone. Just like Chinook salmon isn’t revered by everyone. we have a wonderful diverse fishey that has some thing for everyone. Not just for a select few. Get over it.
  3. Of course there wasn’t 2,700 salmon in the Oak. There were several 100 that were caught and released several times. . What you don’t seem to grasp is that the fish that were present created a viable fishery for the anglers (the many anglers) who fished it from Sept. through the following April. I personally caught 10 landlock salmon in that period several in the winter months where these fish in 34 degree water jumped four feet in the air and tore off a 100 yards of line. memorable fish .
  4. Check with the stream DEC creel guys. I fished a PHW event last weekend with them. There have been great catches of Landlocks in Sandy and oak orchard since mid October. The creel census for oak orchard alone in 2019-2020 netted 2,700 Atlantic salmon caught. they are a river oriented fish. And with only 120k total planted how would you expect to see lots of them. As far as wasted resource it’s the Feds who are invested. Yes DEC raises some salmon at the ADK hatchery for mostly the finger lakes where they have both a solid lake and trib fishery 20k salmon planted at the oak and Sandy each. Let’s plant 20k kings at the Oak and see what the fishing looks like. every year it’s the same nonsense you guys making the same tired rhetoric. Make a phone call talk to Scott Prindle at DEC. Get some actual facts. Are they going to be a big player on the lake? No, are they great in the tribs… absolutely. And what’s so terrible about that?
  5. Troutman10, yes the hatchery is now open to the public again. They opened up last week. I believe the King egg take is finished. They were beginning to sort the Cohos from the kings to begin that egg take. They constructed new decking from the hatchery to Beaver dam Brook, fixed the crumbling raceway walls, new railings and easy view to get close to the fish.
  6. Gambler take the lead on this, get a hold of Chris at Cape Vincent , propose a plan, have all your data and facts aligned for the new treatments. Questions for DEC. How to pay for this, what resources it takes to employ the decoys and traps. I would be willing to bet there is a permit process that must take place to put anything like this in a stream. Research that and find out how to start the process. Are there clubs and organizations willing to pony up the funds to help support it since it’s probably not a DEC budget item for 2023. Or ask them about where they are spending their Covid-19 cash. Great opportunity to take action from the angling community.
  7. Was at the hatchery yesterday during a salmon egg take session. Great group of DEC folks probably a dozen working the different stations. Doing some math of how deep the race ways are with salmon stuffed from surface to bottom, I’d guess there are 20k salmon in the hatchery at the moment. Tom the hatchery manager is the egg stripper of the fish. He can assess right away weather eggs are going to be good enough to milt for spawn. Honestly I never saw them spawn a single small fish. Easily a hatchey full of mature fish well over 20 pounds. You can’t fit another salmon in beaver dam brook. As far as you can see. The updates to the hatchery were really nice and gives visitors up close visuals to the raceway and brook. Tech’s are spawning and aging the fish by taking scale samples. I’ve seen reports on the results in the past be looking for them. But looking at the size of the fish they were working with all looking to be well over 30 inches I doubt many could be two year olds. But that data should be available later on. In the brook I saw a few fish up close that would go over 40 inches. So there was some tanks out there. Fished the lower river after, just thousands of salmon spawning everywhere. Few Cohos. So the good news what ever the number DEC is taking for eggs, they will no doubt get them.
  8. So Gambler, what would you propose anglers do? TFM is produced in Germany and only distributed for treatment by licensed agents of Ocean's and Water from Canada. I think I read where a team from the US did some treatments in 2021, because of the border closings. So maybe one idea is to have more agents licensed to treat. Homework for you, research what it takes to ramp up treatments in the future, and how often a stream can be treated without harming other aquatic river life. The target is the lamprey fry and I’ve been there when they treat the salmon and it also does kill the adult spawning lampreys. Got lots of snakes everywhere in the river bed. We need a cormorant hunting season, and layman lamprey treatment companies right?
  9. Gambler Dr Jim Haynes from Brockport was the faculty lead. I believe this was late 90’s. I believe they also investigated Oak Orchard. The report was made public and I had a copy but have no idea where it is 20 years later. And yes on high water years I’ve found salmon par up in Fishers along with steelhead par.
  10. Sorry for recoping the link. Problem with Sandy is it gets lots of anchor ice. If spawning occurs and the eggs and or fry get trapped under the anchor ice they don’t survive. However when seining started in the salmon river. DEC along with help from Brockport State did some seining at the mouth of Sandy in June and captured wild Chinook salmon. I see many pods of Par salmon in the spring. But nobody knows what the survival rate of those natural repo fish are and why trying to mange for available forage on stocking decisions is difficult and lends itself to models etc. I agree with Capt. Vince that our salmon have evolved and don’t have the same life cycle they did in the 80’s. I have no idea what the data looks like on average weight etc, either up down or normal, but my experience is these fish still seem to fit their length with regards to average girth. I haven’t experienced long skinny salmon, which would be the beginning of being alarmed.
  11. Yeah the math is simple. Never debated it. 1.8 million down to about 900k. But there were two banner years of natural repo on the salmon not to mention other rivers. The DEC and MNR HAS to take those fish into account in determining impact on forage. Tell tale survival of yearling king salmon appeared to be off the charts this year. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I read report after report lake wide of the same high catch rates. I would imagine that’s why so many Young bait fish were being cropped off faster. You are either in the camp of sound yet cautionary management practices by scientists to maintain a viable fishery looking more than just one year out at a time……… or your not
  12. SpoonFed, I’d love to see DEC stock 1.8 million salmon again. And I don’t doubt they would if the science and data of all the work USGS and MNR is collecting on the forage trawls told them the food source is healthy. But it’s not. And it’s that simple. Are they leaning to the side of caution, sure. Do you really want the average size of salmon to drop into the low teens, and then fall off? Lake Ontario is going to be managed by fishery biologists who collect data to help them make decisions. It has always been that way. as Far as TU they are involved in all aspects of cold water fisheries in NY, both inland and on the Great Lakes. But as far as the steelhead regs and Steve Hurst was in the room at their annual conference, they did NOT take a stand as an organization on commenting. They left it up to individuals to decide if they were or were not in favor and to decide personally to comment or not. You’re alway great at just shooting from the hip never ever getting it right, or hitting the target.
  13. This fishey isn’t and can’t be managed by fisherman’s opinions, yet in many cases you get to voice it through comment sections on the DEC sight. DEC in partnership with Canada’s MNR, USGS and USF&W doing science is the decision making body after collecting data that tells them what the environment can support in predator prey balance. There are wild cards out of their control especially in the case of Chinook Salmon on how successful is wild salmon production. And of course climate and what impact might that have on bait fish and young trout and salmon survival. I think if you spent anytime on the lake this past year you had to come to the conclusion that both stocked and wild salmon yearlings had tremendous survival with the loads of little fish everyone caught. the little, mid size and adult salmon are all eating the hell out of what ever bait is available. If you don’t manage for your forage base you risk crashing the whole program. I’ll say it again. DEC has managed this multibillion $$ program for over 50 years. We are the only Great Lake that hasn’t suffered a major crash of salmon.
  14. We’ve heard that the past two years we had successful recruitment of alewives. We’ll find out in a bit with the fall assessment of how 0 age fish went. But I believe the major factor is the high majority of the forage base is 0 to 2 year olds meaning still small size snacks. the 4 and 5 year olds and older are pretty much eaten out if the system. In raising fish in the pens in spring remember a released chinook is four to six inches long and in three years as an adult grows in average between 18 to 25 pounds. That is crazy growth in three years explaining just how much impact they have in the bait populations. 90% of it alewife. So with growing to those sizes they are cropping off those healthy hatches of bait fish as fast as they are hatching simply because the older bigger more nutritious bait fish are in very small supply. And thus aren’t growing to the 30 plus sizes cause they aren’t getting the fattiest nutritional value from the small bait. Ok Atlantic Salmon. We get a total of 120k Atlantics a year. Swimming in 2 million acres of Lake Ontario. How many people think if we only got 120k kings they’d have great fishing? The Salar program is a native species restoration science project. And while DEC and US F&W the major investor of the LO salmon program hopes for it to have a sport fishing impact it’s unlikely with so few fish in the system. But I’m personally ok with that as I’d rather they focus on the science around a heritage species to see if there is a strain that would end up being successful even in a limited role in sport fishing. Remember the very same fish are out into the finger lakes that also have alewives and they do very well as a lake caught fish and especially well returning to rivers they weren’t even stocked in. Lastly fishery managers have no control over natural reproduction of chinook salmon to help them manage their stocking plans. The only measurement they have is the spring seining program on the salmon which yields anywhere from 5M to as many as 12M successful hatches of King salmon in the one river. as a trib angler who fishes right into May almost every river, or stream I fish that time of year I encounter salmon par. I think we have way more dinners at the table than enough food to go around to grow 30 plus pound fish on average.
  15. rollmops when I sat on the stakeholder committee I urged the plan to lean towards irondequoit Creek for all the reasons mentioned here and more. The Irondequoit actually is home to wild steelhead. I’ve caught them for years in the middle of summer (par and smolts) on dry flies. LL’s would survive and possibly reproduce in the Iron. I was around in the 80’s when they stocked it with LL’s and I found good fishing on returns. I felt they didn’t stick with that stream long enough. I fished the Soo for many years. And it is spectacular. But we don’t have that kind of system here with cold water even in mid summer, and the river forage the St Mary’s produces. in 2018 USF&W was working on two thermal relief studies on the Salmon. They floated the entire river in summer to locate thermal relief pockets which they did, and then were supposed to look into stream rehab projects that might create those oasis river spots for summer run fish. they also located thermal relief pockets of water in the lower reservoir and again we’re supposed to look into if and how they could capture those colder thermal pockets and release them below the dam. in august of 2018 I was working on the TU Oatka Creek project in the park with USF&W guys who would come check in on our work and then head to the salmon to work on its potential upgrades. Then Covid hit, and I know that work was either delayed or scrubbed. The plan as you stated never mentioned any stream rehab studies. Maybe they are working that all back in. Be nice to know.
  16. Bingo!!!!!!! Feds are going to be highly involved. While I’d love to have a consistent summer fishery for LL’s and I did experience a few good summer seasons. It hasn’t been consistent. For us who want to fish for Atlantic Salmon we have to travel. I’ll be in Labrador one month from today on the Big River. Sea run fish as well as sea run Brook trout and Arctic char. We’ll see what happens with the new plan but I expect to travel many miles to get good fishing.
  17. Well Gambler, I wonder why if it was a total lost cause DEC is not only dedicated to continue, but adding more fish, adding pen rearing bringing in a river from the past that had good results, keeping another as a possible stocking site. If all their data year after year pointed south then why bother. I stated I don’t like the plan but then again when is the last time you actually saw a published plan for this species. They shut down the Skamania program. Ended the domestic rainbows in LO. Looks like to me when they don’t think a program has any merit they scrub it. I’d be pretty sure if this plan is executed to their design and fails to meet their goals, they’ll pull the plug.
  18. Welp Gamber I’ve seen plenty of steelhead die from eating emaciated alewives… once in nearly 50 years after the polar vortex which is the only time I’ve ever seen that. I’ve never seen or found a dead LL in a river or stream or floating in the lake or heard of them washing up on the beach. And I’ve never seen it in the finger lakes where they eat alewife in the open waters and run it’s rivers. During the polar vortex seasons and the alewife die off to poor health I witnessed 100’s of chinooks spawning in the DSR. Seemed they didn’t have the energy to run up river. You always get some spawning but not like that 2015 fall. DEC collected eggs from some of those fish and they were extremely high in thiamin-ease. My point is no salmonid is unaffected by sick alewives. It’s hard to compare the effect in a species that spawns and lives, and one that dies no matter what.
  19. Actually Roger’s biggest problem was raising LL’s in captivity. They are according to the scientists I know the hardest fish to raise in a hatchery. His hatchery is in the basement of the US power plant on the St Mary’s. A long way from a highly technical hatchery of today. the biggest problem for LL’s and alewives is not death to the adults it’s failure in reproduction of spawning adults. If the plan is a grow, put and take, the issue with LL and alewife isn’t a big deal. But if DEC was truly trying to gain a natural wild LL population then they should be treated with VB at the egg stage and as fry. Tunison was ( and still are) capturing adult female and male salmon from the LFZ and beaver dam Brook, taking them to Cornell and successfully spawning them, and as yearlings releasing the off spring back into the salmon. Again the releases were all the way up river. Just now they have started stocking them at the mouth as that method has proven most successful at the Oak. So possibly the program continues as new methods of stocking just came into play and DEC wants to see if their stocking changes have a positive effect. The Pen rearing just started as well, and while there were some glitches some tweaks will be in play to see if pen stocking is successful.
  20. For Gambler, Brian of course there wasn’t 2700 Landlocks in the Oak two years ago. But there were a few hundred that were caught several times. As far as misidentified, people usually confuse a salmon as a brown trout not the other way around. The St Mary’s is a multifaceted fishey loaded with everything from Kings, coho’s pinks and Atlantic Salmon as well as steelhead, kamloops rainbows walleyes, bass and tons of white fish. It’s has alewife, smelt, a huge caddis and Hex hatch. Right now the river is filling up with LL’s. Around Labor Day the Pacifics arrive. Then steelhead. Why the river is so successful for all these species is the St Marys drains Superior into Huron so water temps are favorable . And you are catching these fish while the big ships are transversing the two lakes. it took Roger Griel the lead biologist at Lake Superior State University nearly 20 years to create this highly successful LL program. Lake Michigan is also having success with LL’s. All of the Great Lakes programs are members of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. GLFC’s mission is to kill the sea lamprey, and restore native species to each lake. Before everyone gets crazy about the current lamprey infestation, remember our rivers went two years without TFM treatments due to Covid and closed borders. The TFM team is from The Soo and the St Marys river area. There is a new Sheriff in town. Bureau Chief Steve Hurst has revised fishery management plans for all of NYS. Lake Ontario and all the inland waters. And he is keen on trying to rehabilitate native species not just in LO but the ADK, Catskills, Finger Lakes, Tug Hill etc. Love Stripe Bass and they are a formable foe in the salt. But I personally wouldn’t enjoy them more in LO than the Chinook’s. Besides traveling to the sound to fish for them and the tuna’s gets you a shot at some of the greatest fresh sea food on the east coast. Lots of opinions on the LL program. Make yourself heard and respond to the public comment period.
  21. The Alaska king salmon fishery is apples to oranges to the Great Lakes. Bigger than the sport fishery putting stress on kings is the commercial, and native Alaskan subsistence fishery. it’s the most regulated fishery in the US. And candidly Alaskan guides who understand the fragile shape of the king fishery won’t likely let you catch 20 kings in a day. Many won’t take them out of the water to release. In the past 25 years I’ve spent in Alaska the guides I’ve fished with are the most conservation minded men and women I’ve ever encountered.
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