I am sorry to say I witnessed a buck and doe in lockdown breeding in a nearby thicket. I have seen movement slow considerably from Saturday to today. I have been out for all day sits. Going fishing tomorrow. I am going to need a vacation from my week off.
Spent a nice morning on the water off Buffalo today. One walleye, two smallmouth, and a handful of large perch was all. We never turned on fish. Mostly, exploring and enjoying the nice weather for November.
I made the drive today from Maryland back to Buffalo. I saw probably 50 dead deer along the road. Does and small bucks. I made good time and was able get two hours in this evening. I had three does under my stand for an hour until two small bucks chased them off. All indications are that it is on.
I think salmon do better when they can feed up. From chinook stomach content checks during the March-May period, I always find empty stomachs despite hoards of alewives pinned on the bottom during the winter into spring transition. I also think the demise of emerald shiner stocks puts year 1 kings behind in development. Selective forces during the egg and sperm take at Altmar and low tributary water levels favor smaller body sized individuals getting to pass on their genes.
I don’t think we need a study to tell us how evolution works. We know how fitness drives the selection process on passing on genes. I think we just need a directive or policy passed down from fishery leadership to Altmar that states only the biggest and healthiest specimens are selected for egg take and milting. Simple.
Salmon and trout are good indicator species as they tend to do better in cleaner water. If there is some environmental reason for the smaller salmon, it would prove to be a worthwhile study. It might be something super small and unforeseen such as what happened to some Pacific salmon stocks that started to flounder because of some chemical used in the tire industry to reduce wear was found to enter streams as runoff and cause salmon infertility in tiny concentrations.