Pequod1

I have fished Keuka for a long time and totally agree with Gambler on what happened. A die off of food for alewifes or a pollution problem with toxic chemicals would take a much slower progressive reduction in the population of salmonids. There was a sudden crash of alewifes on that lake following those two winters. Apparently, they do not do well in very cold winters. Those of you that know me know that I am not a big fan of lake trout but I do care a lot about the overall health of that lake including lakers. Starting in the spring of 2017 something bad was happening. Every perch I caught that May had 4-5 baby perch in their bellies. It was great fishing, but I knew it was going to get bad real soon. In 2018, we still had pretty good perch fishing but they were again loaded with perch fry. The winter ice fishing changed a little earlier than that when as Les stated, we were catching lakers in 20’ off Indian Pines and they also were filled with perch young. I tried a few more times after 2018 for perch in both the east and west branch. It definitely is not what it used to be. The best thing right now for that lake is to reduce the laker population. They will eat everything they can catch but eventually, their numbers will hit a level that the lake can sustain. That is if all those population charts I learned many years ago in grad school are correct. Once that happens, the population of other fish should increase too barring any other unpredictable environmental event. Unfortunately, it will take some time.