schreckstoff

Also interesting that Fulton chain smelt numbers seem up the same year LO smelt are more abundant

U have tried everything I would have suggested, Your smelt reasoning makes sense to me. Have you tried increasing your speed for the LLS?

That picture is awesome!

Suggests the shock from warm to cold changes ion concentrations leading to tremors and loss of equilibrium. These papers and the news articles talk about upwellings as temperature shocks....but swen it was calm and alewife were dying it made me wonder if cold shock also happen when prey avoid surface predators and disturbance as in the picture (from GreatLaker). Stanley and Colby - 1971 - Effects of Temperature on Electrolyte Balance and .pdf

Cool pics!

Rolmops, I’ve been thinking similarly to your lots of super vulnerable alewife, emerging from deep dark winter water, all thin and in poor condition being super easy pickings leading to stuffed predators. I started to wonder if this phenomenon has an effect , whether it partially contributes to “transition” time each year.

A bunch of dead and dying small alewife on the surface out at Sandy Creek today too. Still looking for that elusive first coho....could also use a net man who can scrap up big LTs and not knock them off the hook. I guess that is why his handle is “Great Laker” and not “Great Netter”. It was a big old cool dinosaur of a fish, hit a spin n glo behind a cowbell, 85’ or so. Good times!

Keeping the alewife spawn timing and ages straight can be counterintuitive. Alewife definitely come inshore early, but more to eat (or die) vs to spawn. Spawning is more like late June, July, even early August. Spawn Can be earlier in embayments. An abstract about LO alewife spawning, (here) from a great fisheries scientist and friend . PM me if u want the paper. Bruce is spot on with calling them age-1 or yearlings. I see some posts talking about these small alewife as YOY , but the YOY or young of year (from this year) won’t be around until July or Aug and will be tiny then . Ultimately they grow to 3 or 4 inches by winter. These 3-4 inch fish are age-1 and as many are seeing can be REALLY abundant in the spring when spawning and survival conditions are right the previous year, but they will draw every predators attention, I loved the post about jack perch chowing them. Bruce your observation about the few adults is key, and A-L-A’s points about multiple hatches too! It doesn’t take many adults if conditions are right and we seem on the right warming track this year so far. The work we did with Brockport showed even a few age 1 fish ( very few, only big ones ) could spawn....but it’s not thought they help much. What’s most fun to contemplate is what happens with wild kings in a year like this when there are so many similar sized Alewife, does their survival shoot up...which then boosts predatory pressure that crop alewife back down? I’m all fired up to fish with Great Laker on Friday, still looking for my first coho! no wasted fish flesh right VP! I know, this pic both resembles and describes me

I saw a few of those yearling sized Alewife at ramp in Little Sodus and heard of others in Port Bay. Likely to see more over next few weeks as inside water warms and the bid schools of them start coming up from deep water.

Congrats and great post, love that second pic of that LT just under water. “Idk if there's ever been a place or website with such a wealth of great lakes fishing information as we have here and we owe that to generous members “ couldn’t agree more. This site is the gold standard for great people and information sharing, In fact just the other day one of the sites sages reminded me to run my Gambler rigs slllooowwer.

Thanks for the update!