Net Pen in 130 ft of water N of Oswego, trollers beware

[schreckstoff]

The pen is north west of the lighthouse, is marked with 4 high flying float flags surrounding it, and 2 yellow surface floats.

 

The net will be in that location till Monday and then there may be another one set for a few days deeper. These are experiments testing ways to increase survival of stocked Bloater.

 

Best to give the marker buoys a wide berth to avoid snagging and losing gear. Happy to address questions or concerns. Thank you!

 

-Brian Weidel

[Gill-T]

Dr Weidel, are bloaters bay spawners, main lake shoal spawners or main lake-suspended spawners?  

[schreckstoff]

Great question, it’s never to my knowledge been observed but all the evidence suggests deep reef/rock/gravel spawning. The commercial fishers. Are probably the best source of that info. I’m Not sure we have habitat in LO anymore. I’m hoping we get some projects trying to figure that out, but information has a hard time going upstream in the Great Lakes.

[Dances with Fish]

Thanks for making us aware of this, we saw this last week and wondered what was going on.  Thought maybe it was part of a sail boat race at the time.   Great to see the effort to bring the bloater back.

Is the main concern now tremendous pressure they will receive with the large number of salmon preying on them and I read that alewife also prey on them.   They live in the depths and temperatures that

appear to be about the same as chinook salmon.

[schreckstoff]

Dances, yes.
 

Like the pen stocked trout and salmon we are testing if we can improve survival when they have a few days to become ‘conditioned’ to the water where they are stocked. This is our first time trying anything like this so quite a few obstacles to overcome.
 

I’m aware of Cisco eating alewife in Lk Michigan and probably annywhere there are big Cisco and small alewife , but I haven’t heard or seen evidence of Bloater eating Alewife. Cisco tend to live shallower and closer to shore, whereas Bloater are smaller, live deeper, and focus on eating Mysis shrimp.

[Dances with Fish]

I meant to say, and I read that the alewife eat bloater when small, not bloater eating alewife.   Again all the best with the program,  I'm sure with persistence their will be success. 

[Yankee Troller]

What a giant waste of time and money IMHO. The food that our Trout and Salmon eat in Lake Ontario are Alewife, Smelt, Emeralds, and Gobies. Gobies need no management at this time. The others could all use help, but we get excuses when we bring up trying experiments to help those species. Typical government BS. Let's put money and effort towards something no ones probably gonna ever see in the stomach of a Lake Trout, which by the way is the least attractive fish people come to Lake Ontario to fish for.

[brucehookedup]

13 minutes ago, Yankee Troller said:

What a giant waste of time and money IMHO. The food that our Trout and Salmon eat in Lake Ontario are Alewife, Smelt, Emeralds, and Gobies. Gobies need no management at this time. The others could all use help, but we get excuses when we bring up trying experiments to help those species. Typical government BS. Let's put money and effort towards something no ones probably gonna ever see in the stomach of a Lake Trout, which by the way is the least attractive fish people come to Lake Ontario to fish for.

I totally agree Rick

[brucehookedup]

So with this abundance of bait in the lake, being alewives, smelt ,(on the rise), emeralds, gobies, sticklebacks, and god knows whatever else. Why in the hell are they wasting time and money on ciscos that will never be preyed upon and bloaters??? The ciscos will be predator for the bait we need to keep our fish healthy. I am not blaming you Brian but this state has there head up their ass. So sad, and they  do not listen, ears are always closed to the people who are seeing what the hell is going on in this fishery.

[Gill-T]

I believe this a federal venture not state

[schreckstoff]

I take no offense nor blame and I think the discussion & debate is healthy. These threads are my favorite part of LOU. 
 

GillT is right, that Bloater and LT rearing is Federal, but as requested by the Lake Ontario Committee.

The net is still out there, we are hoping to pull it on Friday. Thank you for your cooperation steering clear of the buoys!

 

 

 

 

 

[GAMBLER]

Bloater are native to the Great Lakes.  The feds are all about restoring native species.  Restoring native species should be a high priority IF the species are highly successful and it doesn't disrupt the multi-million dollar fishery.   Bloater could be a positive for the fishery.  Without experimenting, they will not know.  Lakers could key in on them and put less pressure on alewife.  We all know a diverse diet is healthier for ALL the species in Lake Ontario.  It can't hurt to experiment.  I would rather see them dump money into a Bloater experiment than expanding the Atlantic program.  

[ifishy]

2 hours ago, GAMBLER said:

Bloater are native to the Great Lakes.  The feds are all about restoring native species.  Restoring native species should be a high priority IF the species are highly successful and it doesn't disrupt the multi-million dollar fishery.   Bloater could be a positive for the fishery.  Without experimenting, they will not know.  Lakers could key in on them and put less pressure on alewife.  We all know a diverse diet is healthier for ALL the species in Lake Ontario.  It can't hurt to experiment.  I would rather see them dump money into a Bloater experiment than expanding the Atlantic program.  

Very well said I agree that experimenting to see if an additional preyfish can be reestablished could prove beneficial both directly and indirectly to the fishery

[Yankee Troller]

13 hours ago, GAMBLER said:

Bloater are native to the Great Lakes.  The feds are all about restoring native species.  Restoring native species should be a high priority IF the species are highly successful and it doesn't disrupt the multi-million dollar fishery.   Bloater could be a positive for the fishery.  Without experimenting, they will not know.  Lakers could key in on them and put less pressure on alewife.  We all know a diverse diet is healthier for ALL the species in Lake Ontario.  It can't hurt to experiment.  I would rather see them dump money into a Bloater experiment than expanding the Atlantic program.  

 

This bloater experiment has been going on for a few years now. Has anyone ever seen one in stomach contents? You can't make fish eat these when they've been conditioned to hunt down what's been there. These do not help the Salmon fishery in any way.  Which I'll say again, draws the most money/attention to this fishery.

 

You want to experiment with a species? Figure out how to make the Coho fishery better/more consistent. I haven't met an angler who doesn't love that fishery when we have good years of it.

[Gill-T]

Answer: you support redistribution of emerald shiners in all the ports that have suffered from the bad winters of 2014-15 by pulling them from the upper Niagara in the spring. 

[GAMBLER]

He

5 hours ago, Yankee Troller said:

 

This bloater experiment has been going on for a few years now. Has anyone ever seen one in stomach contents? You can't make fish eat these when they've been conditioned to hunt down what's been there. These do not help the Salmon fishery in any way.  Which I'll say again, draws the most money/attention to this fishery.

 

You want to experiment with a species? Figure out how to make the Coho fishery better/more consistent. I haven't met an angler who doesn't love that fishery when we have good years of it.

The chances of finding bloater in a Trout or salmons stomach is next to none when their population is so low.  

[rdebadts]

I will say- we've seen a pretty big uptick in lake whitefish catches and no one is complaining about those efforts.  They're native and many didn't know if our lake could sustain them either.  
 

Bloater are interesting because they prefer much deeper sections of the lake (600 +) if I recall, and that segment of the lake is largely devoid of life for most of the year, isn't it?

[Fishsteelers]

What we need to find is a species that eat the fleas!

 

[ifishy]

9 hours ago, Yankee Troller said:

 

This bloater experiment has been going on for a few years now. Has anyone ever seen one in stomach contents? You can't make fish eat these when they've been conditioned to hunt down what's been there. These do not help the Salmon fishery in any way.  Which I'll say again, draws the most money/attention to this fishery.

 

You want to experiment with a species? Figure out how to make the Coho fishery better/more consistent. I haven't met an angler who doesn't love that fishery when we have good years of it.

The bloater experiment is relatively small stocking primarily on the east half of the lake I wouldn't expect to them be common on the west end in fish that primarily move west to east through the season if the do establish it might create a situation where more kings winter to the east and we more often have good spring king fishing to get valid data it has to go at least a couple full life cycles I would much rather see money spent o. This than on Atlantics which will never be more than a minor bonus fishery

[Legacy]

This might be my new favorite thread 😄

[ifishy]

These discussions can be fun there are a lot of knowledgeable experienced people on this site with varied backgrounds Yankee and gambler are two that know there fishing deserve to be listened to and considered thoughtfully even if you don't agree and consider who starred this thread love seeing comments from the biologist we rely on To keep the lake healthy

[schreckstoff]

Oswego net pen and marker buoys are removed. We appreciate everyone's patience. We learned a lot about the process. We won't know the results until trawl surveys next year where we will see if we catch these Bloater in different proportion to those that were direct stocked.

 

 

[Gill-T]

Some discussion on Cisco and other fisheries 

 

[schreckstoff]

Stephanadams - great question.  We suspect they spawn 'deep' in main lake habitats based on catches of spawning condition adults in Jan-Mar and larvae in Jun-Aug, but their actual spawning behavior, habitat, or eggs have never been documented to my knowledge.  'Deep' might be 150 - 600 feet of water. Hopefully we can get some observations from Lake Michigan to fill in those unknowns to help inform us whether Lake Ontario has similar habitat/conditions.