DNRoch

I love the fact that those who think I am a biologist believe that i have a hidden agenda. I am a rec angler like most of you. I happen to hold a guides license but I am in the IT security field for my day to day income.

I don't see a direct attack anywhere where berating is done. just answering questions and stating that there should be reviews of comments made... Once again, you might want to review our quote before you spin them to be used against someone.

Completely agree since stating that you don't like to fish for kings is somehow a taboo topic here.... Then if you add on not only fishing for fishing for kings is not fun, but also the primary way to fish for them is not your favorite method, that brings out all of the negative comments. I actually thought it was a great initial question Gill-T.

Never attacked anyone, just stated that I don't enjoy trolling. But hey if trolling makes you feel all big and bad and more manly, then by all means troll. Id rather fish a different way for different species because there are other species that are better to fish for than LO kings. Is that simple enough for you to understand?

Really out of work, hardly, I've always been employed since leaving college. If you think that I am a biologist then you are sorely mistaken. I'm a concerned sportsman who actually has the ability to comprehend the data that is presented at state of the Lake meetings. I question what I don't agree with to understand how that argument has come to be, but I don't always agree with everything. When I don't agree i present arguments to back up my stance or view, not make up statements or views off of very little factual information from small periods of time. But he if you really enjoy knee jerk reactions then have at it.... I really could care less

Quite an original though, not one that I agree with since you equate real men with standing on a boat with 4 footers. Love the try and I just prefer not to toll why can't you accept that people who fish don't do it the same way as others all the time. Will I ever go for blue fin, probably not since I have no urge to catch a fish that I am not going to release or consume myself. Your comment is shallow minded don't you think?

Nope I'm just smart enough to actually use a word that describes you that will not be censored.

Sounds like there is an uninformed buffoon that has access to the boards.

And Hawkeye's response here is why the lake guys will always have their own little club and think that they are the best, their money drives this fishery, blah blah blah. Here is the point bigshot... 1 never have I stated that I am targeting a fish that is spawning. That would be fishing to fish on redds. Never was that mentioned there you mental giant. 2, I will guarantee that the fish that I do land in any trib has a better chance that a fish that has been dragged while the boat is in gear for hundreds of yards while fighting against you. #3 I avoid salmon in the tribs if I am able to. My target steelhead atlantics, and browns. All of which will spawn multiple times in their lifetime, so you little statement about fish in the tribs to breed and then die shows that you are one of the more ignorant posters here. I have no problem voicing my opinion here or anywhere, but never will I enforce my view on someone else, nor will I expect them to do the same to me. I have no problem standing on my own here. Most of the conversations are interesting and well written and kept to the point, but knee jerk reactions, uneducated and unfound facts have no place to be spread anywhere. So like it or not, the original question was a view of opinions that are out there. Mine was stated, and if you don't like it tough... I really could give a rats arse if you do or not, but to be challenged and give reasons why i don't feel a certain way and you don't like the reasons, you are then the one that needs to re-examine your views. Never did I say it was wrong, but I DID state that trolling is something that I personally find quite boring. It doesn't matter the species, Walleye, Tuna, Salmon, Dolphin... I find the tactic boring overall, and since that is the majority of the way that I have fished for LO salmon, (and the majority that you all have too) then you have my views on why that is. I will state that jigging for kings is way more fun, but it is not a tactic that can be used from start to finish of the lake season. Thus since it is not something that can be used from start to finish, i threw it out... Do I have to re-iterate that arseholes and opinions are one in the same, everyone has them, you need to respect them, but don't rub them on others?

and the 30 Atlantics that I have landed while fishing the MIramichi river in Quebec would blow the doors off any king in Lake Ontario I have caught... Everyone has their favorites, mine is not trolling, others can't stand trib fishing... to each their own why is that so hard to get into the heads of others.... People who state that 1 is better than the other might want to do a bit more self censoring then they have before.

I find trolling for anything to be quite boring that is my point. Trolling is not as challenging as you people make it out to be. To catch kings you can have 3 main things to figure out... 1 temps (non optimal temps = no fish), 2 electronics to see where bait is (once again leads back to temps) and 3 the ability to how fast or slow your presentation is going ... . If you get those 3 things down, then you are presenting to fish. I personally find driving around on a boat dragging spoons and flies on divers , lead core or flashers quite boring. there is no action for long periods. And when I mean action, I mean doing anything. You don't change your presentation as much as you do for live bait, jigging or stream fishing. you are not fighting fish the entire time. The boat is doing 80% of the work. I have fished for these fish on the lake, and I just prefer to do it on the tribs or via jigging for them rather than blowing 200 bucks in gas for a few hours of relaxation. The comments about manhood should really check themselves. There are 4 stages of fishermen 1 catch a fish 2 catch a ton of fish 3 catch the biggest fish 4 catch the most difficult fish I personally have moved to #4 and I choose to do it the most difficult way possible, are the others any worse. no. are they better no... It is a personal choice. The other part that i have a problem with is the fact that if I am going to release the fish I have a much better shot at being able to do that in a trib than on a boat dragging these fish for a few miles from depths that are not conclusive to allowing for a release. Do the kings fight better out in the lake absolutely, but an atlantic salmon or even a smallmouth bass fight pound for pound better than any pacific salmon out there lake or trib.

Personally I would love to never see a Lake Ontario King Salmon again. I really do not like them in any way shape or form. They bring out the worst in those who target them, and this ranges from fishing tactics to Environmental management. This is a much bigger picture than the lake or the tribs, yet there are those that still refuse to see that since they do not fish one or the other. Kings are now needed, but if there were no invasive species from the ballasts of ships, the zebra or quagga mussels, alewives, etc. I would have loved to see this lake with millions of Atlantics and lakers. Unfortunately it will never happen again and it wasn't from a lack of trying, but years and years and years of the demise of the entire eco-system. Unfortunately the answer would not be to increase the steelhead numbers since there are quite a few more needs that have to be met to raise them. But the good part potentially would be if the pollution was not there, the water temps were not high, and the ecosystem was back to where it was in the 1800's (Yes it is a pipe dream) then there might be an actual survivable natural reproduction of any salmonids out there so the potential for naturally reproducing fish should theoretically be greater with the 1 control that I would love to see is base water flows for any dam controlled tribs on either shore. Since the initial question was what if there were no kings, then I think that I would love to see steelhead or Browns increased, but only if there is a way to protect the hatcheries from furthering the whirling disease issue.

More knee jerk reactions to a 1 year observation will put the lake in more danger than you think.... 1 year means nothing in the grand scheme of things, lets see what they numbers come up with over a 5 year span, if there is a trend make a move, if there is no trend and the data is an outlier, don't change a thing.

I am seeing the same things as you there Canadadude... Someone who wants to be back in the limelight and a making waves until he does at all costs .... The problem that I have here is that the original post in this thread was asking for more kings to be stocked because the poster was seeing more bait than he had ever before... Now without bringing up specifics, we have he the 5th hardest winter in recorded NYS history, the hardest in over 60+ year (which predates most of the people fishing for these fish in the lake), and making a statement that with seeing more bait in a confined area we need more predators... My response to that was to make a statment without knowledge of what else is out there is really not that educated, but since I seem to use numbers of reported bait numbers and years worth of data to make my statements, I must be in the wrong...

So let me correct you on a little one of your lines there darryl choronzey... First I am only providing facts from the US side of the house not the Canadian side. I don't have access to that data as I do here in NYS with a quick phone call to 2 professors at Cornell as well as to 2 biologists and the Salmon River Hatchery Coordinator, so I really suggest that you keep your little ego in check and read before you attack someone or you will be viewed here on this site like your show is in Canada, (we call it cancelled here in the states, not sure what it is called in Ontario). The data on the US side of the house is much better then what is happening to the north. The Salmon river is seeing returns in the hundreds and is growing. I would suspect that the larger tribs like the Genny and Niagara are also seeing returns, but since there is no way to count those fish unless they are caught, it really cannot be a factor in the grand scheme of things. I personally know of 3 tribs that are also seeing returns but they are very small in size so we will not mention them here, yet there is still natural reproduction going on. Will it ever be 100% self sustaining? Let's say I am not willing to take that bet at any odds, but if there is Natural reproduction of Atlantics, there is also reproduction of Kings, Coho, Steelhead, Browns and lakers... The Salmon river is the Key to the US side of the lake, without it NYS is dead in the water. The closing of sections of the Salmon River, plus with min. water flows has helped. The thiamene Baths of the fry have helped here as well, and the bast part is now that the Atlantics have 2 sources of prey that don't actually have the Vitamin B1 that enhances the Thiamine Deficiency, the goby and the Cisco.... If these fish will feed on those 2 sources over the Alewive, there is the solution, the problem is that the alewive is PLENTIFUL!!! It isn't going anywhere, it is not BOOMING, its not shrinking at an alarming rate, it is steady... The problem is that Atlantics, and others develop a Thiamine deficiency when eating items high in B-1. The direct solution is to give the predator fish a non B-1 food, thus the re-intorduction of the Ciscoes and another invasive... the goby. It is too bad that the US is more successful than the MNR in Ontario, but there are other things that can be done to help like decreasing the temps of the rivers by adding cover, changing top fed power feed to bottom feeds (that is costly and someone will have to pay for that)...

The concerns that are being posted on the increasing thc cisco numbers are really not well founded. IF at best the deep water cisco population will stop any future invasives that can live at the depths that they can, that is basically a win. I am not impressed with the alewives, and the solution to them is the Kings and Coho, but to associate a gamble with the re-introduciton of native fish, and not think that there was a ton of learning from the Huron and Michigan issues, that is very narrow minded. The crash of the baitfish is well studied, but it was not realted to the introduction of native species....

They are not introducing another species in the lake, they are increasing a very minute population that is in the lake that will be beneficial to the predators already in the lake. I believe that their goal is giving the Salmon and Trout another food source which does not expound on the fact that the current food source is lacking in providing Vitamin B to the populations. The kings are much more adaptive than you are giving them credit for, and if there is a ton of Cisco around and a lack of Alewives, I will bet the house that the kings will eat the Ciscoes.

It’s all about giving the big fish in Lake Ontario something else to feed on, and in the process increasing the success rate of their spawning. That’s the reasoning behind a stocking effort that began this past week of stocking deepwater cisco, a baitfish, offshore from Oswego. It’s the result of a collaborative effort between state, federal and Canadian agencies. Deepwater cisco haven’t been seen in Lake Ontario in nearly 30 years. The last known fish was collected in 1983. This stocking program is a first in the Great Lakes. The baitfish grow up to 10-12 inches. They feed primarily on plankton and invertebrates in water depths from 180 feet to 650 feet. They once were an important food source for native lake trout, Atlantic salmon and burbot in Lake Ontario, said Jim Johnson, lab director for the USGS Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Science in Cortland. By the mid-20th century, though, populations took a nose dive because of over-harvesting by anglers, along with competition from populations of invasive alewife and rainbow smelt. The downside of the deepwater cisco’s disappearance has been that lake trout and salmon that feed primarily on alewife can experience reproductive failure due to a vitamin B deficiency, caused by the chemical thiamanase in that baitfish. Fish that feed on native species like deepwater cisco, though, are less likely to experience problems with their eggs and fry, Johnson said. Chinook and coho salmon currently being raised at the state Department of Environmental Conservation hatchery in Altmar often have a B-1 deficiency and have to be bathed in Vitamin B-1 solution, he said. The new deepwater cisco stocking program is a cooperative, effort between the DEC, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. The juvenile fish (about 5 inches long) stocked this past week originated from eggs collected by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service staff on Lake Michigan during January and February of this year. Eggs were hatched and juveniles reared at the Tunison Lab in Cortland, and the White Lake Fish Culture Station run by Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. This year, a total of 21,000 will be stocked and the effort is expected to be long term, Johnson said. "This is unique. There’s nobody anywhere in the world, at any time, that’s tried to restore a forage species in a lake the size of Lake Ontario in order to restore the resilience of the native fish community," Johnson said. "If this is successful, it will make it more difficult for other invasive species to get a foothold on this part of the lake." This is taken from an article/interview from the Syracuse post on Nov. 11th 2012 The big thing to note is that Cisco and Alewives are in direct competition with one another. With Alewives being a shallower prey and the Cisco being a deep water prey that basically allows for the potential of blocking another introduced prey fish in the lake. The major benefits are that the B-1/Thiamine issue is not seen in Cisco, and if that is the prey of the Atlantics, Kings, Coho, Steelhead and Lakers that will help phase that deficiency out over time. The other part is that they have a different makeup to the oils found in their body giving it more of a bang for the buck from a nutritional side as I have stated before. Better oil = better ability to eat and grow healthier predators.... Here is another press release from the DEC from Nov. 8th 2012. The "bloater" fish, a deepwater cisco, was re-introduced into Lake Ontario offshore of Oswego, bringing the fish back to the lake for the first time in nearly thirty years, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and partner agencies announced today. This historic action is the first of its kind in the Great Lakes and is the culmination of several years of collaborative laboratory, hatchery and field research conducted by federal, state, and provincial agencies. The last known fish was collected in 1983. "Lake Ontario's sport fisheries are a significant economic driver in New York State, and were valued at more than $113 million in 2007," said DEC Commissioner Joe Martens. "Re-establishing bloaters in Lake Ontario will diversify the fish community, adding stability to the lake's ecosystem and sport fisheries." Re-establishing self-sustaining populations of bloater in Lake Ontario is the focus of a cooperative, international effort between DEC, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission to restore native fish populations in Lake Ontario. This program will improve food web stability and mitigate negative impacts of invasive species; however, it will require a long-term stocking program. Today's event, at the Lake Ontario Event and Conference Center, also highlighted the new USGS Research Vessel (R/V) Kaho (see USGS link in the right column and put in Kaho as search word), which is stationed at the USGS Lake Ontario Biological Station in Oswego. The new vessel will be used to transport the bloaters offshore for stocking over deep water. Russ Strach, Director of the USGS Great Lakes Science Center, said, "The capital investment in the new research vessel demonstrates USGS' commitment to cutting-edge deepwater science in Lake Ontario. The new vessel greatly enhances our ability to conduct ecosystem-based fishery research to address management questions important to our partner agencies. I'm proud to see the platform used by the partnership working to restore this important native species." Deepwater ciscoes, a diverse group of species including bloater, kiyi, blackfin cisco, and shortnose cisco, were once the most abundant prey fish in the lake and supported important commercial fisheries. Members of the whitefish family, bloaters feed primarily on invertebrates in water depths from 180 feet to 650 feet, spawning in winter at great depth, and were an important food source for native lake trout and burbot. By the mid-20th century, populations declined dramatically in association with over-harvest and expanding populations of invasive alewife and rainbow smelt. Re-introducing bloaters will provide more food choices for predators, such as lake trout and salmon, and diversify the Lake Ontario fish community. Lake trout and salmon that feed primarily on alewife can experience reproductive failure due to a vitamin B deficiency. Predators that feed on native species like bloater are less likely to experience reproductive failure. The juvenile bloaters stocked today originated from eggs collected by USFWS staff on Lake Michigan during January and February, 2012. Bloater eggs were hatched and juveniles reared at the USGS Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Sciences and the OMNR's White Lake Fish Culture Station. USFWS Midwest Assistant Regional Director for Fisheries Todd Turner said, "Restoring native prey fish to Lake Ontario and all the Great Lakes is a priority for the Service. The Midwest Region's Fisheries Program is pleased that the bloater eggs we collected and fertilized from Lake Michigan will contribute to this historic reintroduction event for the Great Lakes." Jaime Geiger, Northeast Assistant Regional Director for Fisheries said, "We support the efforts of this great partnership and look forward to promoting long term success for the fishery of Lake Ontario." Michael Morencie, Director of the Fish and Wildlife Services Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, said, "Ontario has a strong commitment to restoring native species in Lake Ontario. This stocking event is an important step in achieving our shared goal to restore native species diversity in the lake." "Lake Ontario's food web has been devastated by repeated invasive species introductions," said Dr. Chris Goddard, Executive Secretary of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. "Re-establishing deepwater ciscoes in the lake will reduce opportunities for new invasive species to colonize the offshore, deepwater zone and fill the niche that bloaters are most suited to fill."

No one is calling for a decrease in the numbers of Kings because the Atlantics and lakers are being stocked. The Feds are just looking to make the species viable.. I will still hope for the day that the majority of the bait in LO is the Cisco, then you will see real trophy fish, until then the 40 lber will be few and far between...

Nope I am not a biologist. I just read the publications that are made from cover to cover on the LO stats and attend every great lakes fishery forum that I can. I wish that I was a biologist and not in the IT security industry on some days. The information that I type on here is straight from the State of the Lake meetings or from biologist papers that are published via Cornell, ESF or from the DEC themselves. I am really hoping that the deep water cisco program is successful but the numbers that are being put into the lake are still really small in the grand scope of things.

The thiamine issue has been figured out, and there are more and more Atlantics that are returning every year for the past few year. The goal is to continually release native fish back to Lake Ontario, but there has never been a move to cancel the Pacific stockings. It is true that they do very well in the food chain in following the alewives, but at the same time there is a push to re-introduce deepwater Ciscoes as well. Those are the bait fish that everything in the food chain does the best when feeding. The alewives that are in LO. are controlled mostly by the silver and king salmon, Steelhead and Atlantics seem to be more opportunistic feeders, and not keying in on the alewive, but from a health perspective, the alewive is basically a stick of pepperoni vs the Cisco which is like a protein enhanced chicken breast. The oil content that is in the alewive is not the best for large predators like the kings and cohos, but they eat a ton of them. If these fish were to feed on the ciscos they would all be much bigger and healtier as compared to a diet based off of alewives. Will we ever get there, not in my lifetime, but potentially in my grand-kids lifetime.

Plus with the fish being Fed Fish, the count is what they give us, not what we want to release. And yes there is a movement to restore the native species to Lake Ontario, and encourage natural reproduction...

Mostly since the Lake Trout are federal fish, not state fish, and there were 2 major die offs of Lake trout that happened in the past 3-4 years I believe where just about every fish if not all of them were killed from a disease.

Completely disagree with the notion to increase Salmon Stocking at this time. The numbers that are naturally reproducing are roughly 1/3 of the current stocking numbers for the NYS state side, and the data has actually shown that the biomass is stable for roughly 2 years. So 2 years of the same number of counts for the bio mass should increase the number prey fish in the lake? I am not seeing the data to support that. The eastern end of the lake is pretty much a barren wasteland at this time of the year for Chinooks and historically has always been that way, but this winter was one of the worst we have seen in easily the past decade, and we are not sure if we are going to see a natural crash of biomass yet... Local area data is important, but there is no logic in managing a lake for what is seen in a 30 square mile area.