salmonboy41

  I dare say that many a rancher has also been known to kill hawks on sight.  Especially bird preserve ranchers!

I think that's the big difference.  Around here in NY the Hawks and Owls do a huge number on the game bird populations I think.

You and me both Matt.

I bet within a week we could do noticeable clean up on those thinks.

King Davy,

Thanks for the update on the Hatchery its good to hear that they will be able to reach all of the egg collection goals.  But your reports on how good the fishing is and the number of fish seem to be contradictory of what the DSR itself as here are the reports from the last couple of days and non of them sound all that great and the reports from previous days don't sound any better then these.

 

Another Slow Day
10/18/2015

Fishing on the DSR today was very slow, most anglers reported hooking in to only one or two fish on most of the run. However there were a few spots that seemed to do a bit better on the upper half of the run, but just a few decent pockets of fish.

  Slower Than Yesterday
10/17/2015

The fishing on the DSR today was relatively slow throughout the run. Most of the fish caught were Steelhead with a few Kings here and there. The middle of the run to the lower clay hole seemed to fish the best, however still no big pushes of fish moving through the river, and the pods we were seeing yesterday seemed to be fewer and farther between.   A Steady Day
10/16/2015

Throughout the day we had small pods of Steelhead and Kings moving through the DSR at a fairly regular pace, not a run but fishing was steady enough that most fishermen had no complaints. The Steelhead were mostly in the lower half of the river, below the meadow, while most of the kings that were caught were more near the upper half of the river.

There has to be a way with some sort of tripped light-sensor technology that could be placed in rivers to get a crude head count of fish moving up a tributary. It would be nice to put scientific numbers ahead of opinions.

we defiantly need a wire count on several Key rivers other wise how are we going to truly know if our salmon numbers are up or down? Wait for the DEC to tell us? Cause we all know they will claim greatest year ever no matter how few salmon there are.

love bunny hunting,have 3dogs,but blue tick basset would be cool

Bassets are awesome from my experience as they have an amazing sense of smell and unlike Beagles they only bark and howl when there hot on a rabbit.

I run rabbits and hairs with a basset hound mix best hunting dog I ever seen a little stubborn tho.

I find this hard to believe seeing that there are a ton of lakers over 15lbs in Lake Ontario. How many 20+lb lakers are swimming out there. I don't see a lot of lampreys on lakers either.

I don't disagree that the numbers I gave above seem odd, but per my notes that's what the DEC stated at the state of the lake meeting in 2014.  I do know  they say they have documented some natural reproduction of lake trout in the Niagara river.

I've also heard that one of the issues with Lake Trout reproduction on Lake Ontario is the fact that the average lake T only live to 5 and half years due to the lampreys and they need to survive to 7 and half to have a sustainable population.

Yankee:

Did you know that in 2014, with the lower lake trout stocking and lack of coho, they DID increase the Chinook stocking from 1.4 million to 1.9 million ?

That is a 500,000 increase in chinooks.. Yea maybe to late but yes they did put an increase in Chinook as an off set..

Actually I believe the target rate for kings is around 1.75 Million so the increase in kings was 150K.  Also this wasn't do to lower Lake Trout stocking but was due to the fact that they where well short of there target goal for Coho stocking, because the DEC is only having around 16 to 20% eye up rates on Coho's, which I think is a good example of the need for fresh eggs from the west coast to freshen up the genetics in our lake.  As it seems we are creating sterile fish at least when it comes to Cohos.

So long story short the DEC has no intention or atleast has shown no intention of decrease in lake trout increase in kings.

Actually K Red, young Bass anglers recently told me they watched the cormorants stealing 12--14" Largemouth from the shallows of Wilson harbor. Others had told me they have decimated the Greece ponds and Braddocks of Largemouth and there is still many hanging around there. There has been documentation of cormorants relentlessly diving on Lake Ontario stockings and thats got to stop.

This summer I talked to some ppl form the DEC that where taking water samples in Wilson Harbor and I told them that I thought the Harbor may have a water issue because pan fish population in the Harbor is WAY down.  After telling them this, they told me that the issue is the cormorants are cleaning out all of the Harbors on Lake Ontario.

Does anyone participate in any walleye tournaments or know of any walleye tournaments on Lake Erie?  As I'm looking to getting into one or two this coming year and from the online research I've done I haven't been able to find much information on them other then a few articles in the Dunkirk paper.

We will be hearing soon from the DEC about the trawler take on the health of baitfish in the Lake O.  The results of the trawler haul will show that we lost the 2013, 2014 YOY alewives due to the last two harsh winters.  With fall and winter time zooplankton species limited to Copepods and Mysis Shrimp....these species put on fat reserves (lipid sacs) in the fall as a primer to spawning over the late fall and winter.  After these zooplankton species mate and die there is a window during the winter where there is little food available in the system until the spring starts the process all over again.  With a system overloaded with adult alewives eating everything, the YOY alewives and emerald shiners starved.  This is a concern as you need these smaller baitfish sizes to feed the year 1 salmon enough so they can catch and ingest adult alewives.  The shaker kings I was catching this year were puny.  I was starting to see some bulges in stomachs on 1 year olds by my last outing over Labor Day.  Hopefully we had a good hatch this spring of YOY to feed the next generation.  The pain to the system could have smoothed out if the DEC and OMNR were allowed more flexibility in stocking numbers of Kings year-to-year to better reflect the bait populations need for predator balance.  We missed the mark badly with alewives numbers too high going into the winter of 2013.  Many of us were warning the DEC of the problem and advised more Kings were needed for the system at that time.  With the DEC/OMNR's hands tied with the international stocking agreement, there was nothing that could be done.  The DEC archaic trawler survey transects are outdated as they take the same routes when evaluating bait numbers that they did when they started recording bait levels in the 1970's.  The lake has changed and the bait is more concentrated in the Hamilton Harbor - Genny area......esp. in june.  The survey is spending a lot of time netting and surveying in dead water out deep where the baitfish have already left for the shallows. The result is inaccurate information about the true amount of bait in the lake.   That is why the DEC has been saying for years that alewife levels were decreasing while fishermen were saying the opposite.  Hopefully the state-of-the-lake meetings this spring where these discrepancies were brought to light might bring about change on how the DEC/FWS/OMNR evaluate bait levels to gain a better picture.  It would be nice when the new stocking agreement with Canada is worked out that greater flexibility in stocking numbers could be agreed to by both parties. 

Darn it Gill-T you beat me to the enter button on my post. eventhough yours is way more detailed.  needless to say I totally agree, and I think the ideas that have been posted on the this thread could greatly help to reduce the possibility of what is currently happening from happening in the future.

There are a lot of great ideas on this thread that should be looked into as many of these ideas can greatly help the Fishery.

Personally I'm starting to wonder if the issue is tied to the fact that lake wide populations of Smelt and emerald shiners are WAY down.  Which could cause issues for the young fish as the emeralds and smaller smelt would provide food for the young fish when there in that inbetween stage, where insects and such are not enough or to small and the Alewives are to big for them to eat.  This would cause a gap in food chain for the fish, then compile that with the harsh winters and you have even less for them to eat which would cause lower survival rates of yearling fish which leads to less mature fish like we are currently seeing.  This would also explain the thymine issue in the steelhead as well if the theory is correct.

After the winter that wasn't a winter there was a great salmon population which lasted into a second year. Then the very cold winter of 13/14 and on top of it 14/15 and the fishing became very poor (for pacific salmon).

I may be off base but I think that this cold water and the salmon not having the possibility to escape to warmer water( as they would in the Pacific) really caused a lot of fish to die. It is not as if the water coming down the Niagara in winter and spring is 39 degrees and up. It is between 39 and freezing because the 39 layer stays on the bottom of lake Eerie. The Atlantic Salmon in Lake Ontario probably has a better survival rate in these harsh winter circumstances.

It will probably take another 2 years to get back to the larger numbers of fish that we got used to.

I can't disagree with this theory as I'd have to say your more then likely onto something with both the cause and the time needed to rebound. Even though the DEC will never admit it even if you are right.

been having the same issues and doing the same remising on the west end as well. 2013 was a better good season for us and 2011 and 2012 where just crazy good. this season doesn't seem to be much better then last.

After reading and studying all that data.....It seems this is obviously a dying business...  

dying no.  Changing yes. you have to remember this is a relatively new fishery so what your seeing in a lot of ways is just a stabilization/evolution with the changes to the lake.

 

My very first memory was of my dad taking me steelhead fishing in the spring at 3 years old he had a fly rod and I had a spinning rod with a bobber.  I can still see all of those steelhead swimming in that creek.

Still in need.......

shot me a message if you still need someone.

The number of entrants seems low.  I for one would like to see the AM division come back.  If the committee wants to allow teams to get experience and gain confidence with the end game of joining the pro ranks then have the same rules as the pros.  Starting at any port at any time after 12:01 with a three fish limit and no observer is NOTHING like the pro division.  Have an am division with a 12 fish limit and same start and finish time is more of a proving ground.  Bring back the prestige of the am division!

Well its not a bad idea the issue I have the number of people you would need to put on your boat which would be 5. So if you don't have a big boat or a lot of HP(that's my issue) you can't fish the event.  but I love the idea of having some of the same rules and time limits.  Like having to weigh in at 12:30 is way to early in my opinion. 

But you are right something needs to be done there was only 28 or 29 teams in the pro division this past weekend when there used to be 50 to 60 teams just a few years ago.  I like the idea of doing what the Wilson invitational does with weighing in your best 6 fish, but instead of having one division have two divisions to keep it the Pro Ams.

There are a couple of lakes in the ADKS that they stock them in, been meaning to fish for them up there just haven't gotten to it yet.  I used to go up around Timmins and there where lakes that you could only get to by snowmobile that where full of them.

What do you like eating?

I've had pickerel and it isn't bad, never tried Sheephead though.

personally I prefer Walleyes, pan fish, trout and salmon minus Lake trout as I've never had one that tasted very good even the smaller ones from the AKD's.  I think the greatest tasting fish I've ever had was splake.

Can't be any worse then trying to eat a lake trout.

is there a schedule where we can sign up to volunteer to feed them?

Actually when the boom was pulled had little if anything to do with the early spring fishing last year. Believe it or not!

They were catching numbers of kings off rochester in mid April last year. It had NOTHING to do with the ice boom and everything to do with how the lake cooled down in the fall. Rochester was the last place on the lake to cool down so that held the most kings in the spring.

This year is DIFFERENT from last year. Again, believe it or not! If you do a little research you too can find out what was the last region of the lake to cool off last fall. That is the region that will hold the most salmon once the lake temp hits 42 degrees and they become active.

That is all the info I'm sharing. . It's tourney time boys! I'm just sick of hearing all the gloom and doom ice boom talk.

SHUT UP AND FISH!!!

Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

That's true about Rochester, and I believe your thinking about the water temp is correct, but having that ice water from the river screwed up the fishing in Niagara County, as it didn't let the lake warm up in front of the river until after the that week which is when I started catching kings with any kind of consistency.

So while I agree that just because the boom is in doesn't mean there isn't fish to catch it does make things different that what we are normally used to(if you can say Lake O has a norm)

I agree Storm Warning II last when they pulled it on April 29 it totally messed up everything for the whole week of the WHI and LOC.

 

  All of that stuff is so they can look pretty for other women on the most part.  I dont know about you guys, but I'll take a woman with minimal makeup, a normal Tshirt and ripped up jeans any day over someone all done up.  

Anti that the truth totally agree with that statement spot on!!!

 

Have you ever tried tell one of them that though?