pvelyk

If charters out, I think LOTSA offers a class during the Niagara Falls outdoor show in the winter.  Won't help now and hands on water schooling is always best, but it is a option.

Really nice post. This is a great story how a little generosity makes a win situation for our future!

When everyone talks about going down to a flouro leader are you using pure flouro leader materiel with the small amount and higher pricier or are you talking about the flouro line in filler pack size?

I sent my boat out fishing once, and it never came back...

Sounds like the start of a country song for fisherman.

I was telling my friend at work, Eric Abate, about the pen rearing projects and even know he isn't a fisherman he thought it would be cool to help out and give back to the Lake. He helped setup the pens earlier this week and sneaked away at lunch yesterday to take these picture of the Trout and Salmon being delivered to the Genny pens.

Long pond by the inlet bridge was always good for me.

About 120 miles. Sandy Creek for this post is west of Rochester.  Sandy Pond is east of Pulaski.

We all need to face reality here that poaching on this lake occurs and is a major detriment to our future fishing.  This discussion was about how to curb that illegal poaching and get it under control.  You may not agree with the ideas to do that, and that is fine, but putting your head in the sand and pretending it doesn't happen is kind of crazy.  Nor does taking arguments presented to extremes to make them sound unreasonable or attacking methods you choose not to use but are legal.  Heck we got enough illegal stuff sliding by that we don't need to focus on chasing after the good guys too.  Boat guys and trib guys really want the same thing, a healthy population of fish to chase after whenever we get out on the water, poaching hurts that so let's creatively and constructively look for solutions we both can live with to do that.    

Not just officers we need to get convictions up.  I believe Rochester legal district either had none or one convictions from all tickets written last year.  I would be one discouraged conservation officer if I knew that.

I'm pretty sure its not 3-4' below normal march levels. Its about 4-6". Well be fine.

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While I believe the overall lake is only 4"-6" inches down it must have a pronounced effect in some areas.  When I was on the Summerville Pier days back I know the difference in water height that it came up to on the pier from early April last year and mid March this year would be measure in feet and not inches.  Like you say I am not overly concerned yet and I know there is still snow and ice out there, but I notice the effects of this lower water here being more dramatic that whats reported.

Law from the books, only eggs of a legal collected fish kept intact do not count towards quart.  Any eggs outside of a fish count on that quart limit.

use and possession of fih eggs
• No person shall possess more than one quart
total of fih eggs from trout, lake trout or
Atlantic salmon while on the waters of the
state or the shores thereof. Fish eggs which
are still inside the carcass of an intact, legally
caught and possessed fih shall not be counted
towards the one quart total

JakeyBaby he is saying if a female trout has loose eggs you squeeze the fish to have the trout release the eggs without having to kill the fish to get them.  Then release the milked fish live.

Theoretically it can be illegal based on egg possession laws.  Your only allowed to have so many eggs on your person stream-side, one quart max I believe. 

Again our problem on the streams stems from a enforcement/conviction problem, not having enough laws on the books problem.  Adding one more doesn't help if nothing comes of someone breaking it and knowing even if they get caught nothing will happen or the penalty is not even enough to be an annoyance.

While I appreciate what you want to accomplish, I mean who doesn't want better fishing, I have issue of putting another regulation that will hamper honest fisherman and will be ignored by the dishonest.  Honest fisherman are getting to the point to to stay within the rules they need to take a lawyer on the stream with them to interpret their actions and bait/lure choice against the general regulations, special area regulations and time sensitive regulations.  While the dishonest ones have no problem breaking multiple and plain regulations each trip out, I doubt adding another one will make them change their methods, it just makes the good guys struggle to be successful even more.

 Most of what you are saying is covered with regulations on limits, fish disposal/possession and eggs rules.  We have a giant problem on the lake and streams in NY and it's not having good regulations in place, it's enforcement and penalties  for breaking those regulations.  I truly believe we need to band together and work on getting the creation of a environmental court the the major lakeside fishing communities with people running the court knowledgeable of environmental concerns and harvesting methods to judge written citations in the proper frame of refernce, similar to how some areas have just a traffic court.  Having these done on regular criminal dockets where judges don't know or understand why treble hooks with weight around them are bad or them thinking  "really I am worried about a guy taking 7 steelhead when I have a rapist and an murder just before this case.".  Maybe once convictions rates go up and responsible fines are attached we will slow down the poaching regardless if it is for eggs or meat to take to NYC.  If we can't get this then at least lobby the current court system to get knowledge of these crimes and treat them seriously.   Adding another law that the resulting ticket is worthless is not going to fix the issues.

Again not fighting with the result you want just struggling with the best method to achieve them.

Done

With hearing a few launches opening up and a few poeple getting ready to brave the waters I decided to see if I could cast of the Summerville pier tonight.  Two things hit me as I crossed the Coast Guard house, the first being that there still was a lot of shore ice out there by the pier.  It went out at least 150 to 200 yards next to the pier.  Once I walked out to open water the second thing hit me and that is the water level is about five and a half feet or so lower than the lower section of pier.  I decided not to cast as the pier where the water started to open was still very icey and my net was not long enough to get to any fish I hooked.  The water clarity also was pretty poor, not brown but a very turbid green.  Here are some pictures.

I went to Sandy too, it is improving as the creeks is opening from lake to the back docks of hatch club. Shouldn't be to long before it gets back to launch and parkway bridge.

Considering the winter we have been having the ice is melting/breaking up at a rate I am pretty happy with.  My cabin fever however is not as impressed!  Hopefully we can all get out there and get our lines in water soon.

Can always use the Brockport Yatch club webcam to check Sandy creek outlet out:

http://www.brockportyachtclub.org/wc.php

I drove down the parkway west of Rochester a bit yesterday and there is still a decent amount of shore ice and floating icebergs. The smaller tribs locked up pretty well, not sure about some of the larger ones but my guess is very limited open water.  We are heading the right direction now but not quite there yet.

Sorry about Parker Matt. Losing a dog is hard enough but especially when he is not just your home companion but shares your time in the fields.

I believe it a method of fishing for chinook where you use two hooks to bait a dead herring. You drift in your boat with the bait on the bottom. I also believe there is a method where your drop the bait to the bottom but also reel it up a bit stop, and repeat.

I am with you on that.  Especially when they open up and tell you all their water issues and the real world impact it has on stocking numbers because of it.  Mortality issues of fry because of silt/sand blocking reservoir pipes or even worse entering incubators.  Seems to me multiple locations would mean more sources of water, a smaller requirement of water per hatchery and having less impact of water issues and diseases.  I get the manpower issues involved in more hatchery but the money involved in this fishery more than justifies it.   The guys in the hatchery are doing great with what they have but the one basket thing kind of doesn't hold up on their side, not that I have a problem stocking a smaller percentage straight to lake.  It never hurts to have multiple sources.

Here is my understanding, feel free to correct any inaccuracies as I may of interpreted something wrong or have a bad memory.

Short story is catch rates were above long term average. Rates for Kings were overall above average but depending on were and when you were fishing you could have poor rates, with middle of summer being on the low side.   I believe in all cases of salmon and trout species while the catch rate was above long term averages the body condition of all species was below those of the last few years.  In other words if 4 years ago a 25 inch king had a weight of 8lbs this year a it was 7lbs (Not exact numbers just number to give you an idea of what they mean).  They also estimated wild production of Kings to be in the high 40% range and that certain areas of the lake having higher and lower wild reproduction than other, with highest being around Salmon River.  I also believe they said surprisingly that few wild salmon make it into the hatchery ponds.

Stocking numbers in general where at targets with the exception of Coho's and Steelhead/rainbow trout.  I believe for steelhead they mentioned that three incubators (250,000 steelhead) had water issues that caused no flow to the incubators and the steelhead in them were lost.  The DEC was able to get some fish from PA and Vermont that were/would be stocked towards the Lake Erie supply.   Once that was done the NY State Surviving Steelhead would be divided by some method between Lake Ontario and Erie.  Gist I got was numbers would not meet target but would not catastrophically low.  They brought up that between browns, steelhead and Kings that last few years there have been surpluss put into the system so long term averages they are still "hitting their goals."  Cohoes eye up this year was around 25% up from 17 year before.  This means better numbers than last year to stock but still lower than target.  They discussed several things they did to increase the 17% to 25% such as less Thiamine in bath but higher grade, less density of eggs in trays.  They also did one to one male to female fertization vs pooling of eggs and milt and collection of eggs closer to ideal water temperature in the river.

Lamprey Control has been positive and they went over methods and streams/rivers they plan on treating this year.

Baitfish (Alewives)  numbers of 1 year old are lower with body condition poorer.  They see this as a result of weather and higher number of older alewives making food competition higher.  This according to them is consistent with the cycle alewife numbers seem to follow since water became cleaner and less nutrient rich.  For those wondering they define the Great Lakes being more nutrient rich around the time of the Cleveland river fires and not the pre/post zebra/quagga mussels.   They believe the clean water act to be a bigger factor on nutrients than the mussels.  Overall they see the alewives as being in a normal cycle but with poorer body condition.  That body conditioning being important for the steelhead issues this winter.

In regards to the steelhead die off and acting weird.  All tests have come back and they blame these issues with Thiamine issue.  Tissue tests confirm this as well as the recovery of fish treated with Thiamine at the hatchery and there recover.  Because the test that actually confirming the deficiency taking so long they used this event to see some other tests they did themselves that are much quicker had results that could correlate to Thiamine deficiency.  This means in the future they will still have to wait for actual test result for deficiency, they have tests they believe will strongly be able to indicate deficiency is a problem thus being able to more quickly react to the situation.  The reaction being to give adult fish a manual a shot of Thiamine.  They believe that because of the alewife population and condition that Steelhead were having to eat more alewives to get the food they needed.  These smaller alewives not only made the steelhead eat more but had a higher concentration of Thiamanese causing the deficiency issue.  Because of this winter being similar or worse than last year they see alewife body condition being similar to last year so this problem has the potential to happen again.

They talked again about hopeful improvements to the Salmon river hatchery to improve water quality and flow to the hatchery.   This includes rehabbing the wells as well as a recirculating system that would reuse water and require less flow of new water from wells.  Potential fromm 1000+ gallons a minute to under 300 I believe.

They talked about the pen rearing ongoing study.  Early studies point to the fish in pens being twice the contribution to the fishery as lake released fish.  These fish also are at about a eighty percent higher  or more to returning to the pens rivers and stream as opposed to straying to the Salmon River.  There are still a few more years of the study before they make a full conclusion.  When asked what would happen if the study finished similar to the result so far, they said they would most likely increase the pen rearing stocking percentage but still maintain a direct lake stocking so that not all the eggs were in one basket.

Cisco stocking study was still continuing but as of right now nothing notable to finding or that they in anyways had a significance to the fishery from being a contribution to the bait fish forage base for salmoniods.   Basically the numbers being stocked were to small in the big scheme of this to be significant forage.

Sure there is more but that is what comes to mind immediately.

I have been doing the smoking thing for awhile as a hobby and the cheap sub $700 offset smokers are complete junk.  The short of it is the metal used in these cheap offset is too thin for them to be properly used as smokers,  which causes all types of issues with temp control and you doing a lot of fire management to achieve even somewhat mediocre results.  Really your to best options sub $500 is the Weber Smokey Mountain or a UDS (Ugly Drum Smoker).  The UDS is basically a 55 gallon drum that you modify at home to make a smoker.  These are not cutting a drum in half like you see in a lot of chicken BBQ's but leaving them intact, creating a venting system on the bottom and top of drum, adding a charcoal ring and round grate holders.  If you are interested in more info I can point you to several websites or answer any question.