King Davy

Roger Griel is the biologist at the university and the head of the salmon program in the St Mary’s. There has been many meetings between Roger and DEC. I’ve visited his hatchery which is in the basement of the power company on the river. Truly spartan facility at one time. it took Roger I think he said 12 to 15 years to find the right strain and hatchery solutions to finally be successful. But there is a big difference in the environments. His fish are benefiting from the colder waters coming out of Superior all summer long. It’s a big river with a huge flush of water into Huron. The river has huge smelt runs well into summer, and huge caddis and hex hatches. So there is plenty of forage and water quality to bring the LL’s in while they are still feeding before they move to spawning mode. fabulous fishery, but not nearly and apples to apples comparison for available environments which is the number one key in getting salmon to return and be happy in a river.

Brian, I was with a group of guys who clipped the LL’s this past March at the ADK hatchery that were meant for the LO pen project on the Salmon River at the lighthouse marina. it was so cold in the pens house there was ice formed on the pipes circulating the water. The water the fish were in was very cold, which is pretty unavoidable in the ADK in March. But also affects growth. When you observe fin rot or folding it normally means a possible crowding issue. We put 5k steelhead in the two pens we run at Oak Orchard. They seem to fair well at that number. We put 5k salmon in the pens at the SR (15k in three pens)and some LL experts say that’s too many per pen. Should be 2,500. The LL’s need more space. And we did observe fin rot and folding. For years and years the Salmon river LL’s were stocked at less than a year old at the top end of the river. In hopes as they swam the 11 miles to the lake they’d imprint to the SR. Can you imagine if you did that to the chinooks . They’d be gobbled up before they got out. As the LL’s were. Meanwhile they were stocked at the mouth of the other river at Oak. The returns to the Oak have been successful. Two weeks ago walking the Oak A colleague counted 24 LL’s behind a pod of kings up through the fast water and saw several caught by smart anglers fishing to the flanks of the kings. Two seasons ago DEC began stocking full one year old LL’s at the mouth of the salmon river. Think about the last two summers. Drought conditions this summer the worse in many years, low water, no flush to induce summer runs, even with a few kayak releases. LL salmon imprint at 48 to 52 degrees in a river. The only marina the past two years to offer space at the SR for the pens will not put their docks in until May. By the time the fish arrive, they imprinted at the hatchery in ADK or the opportunity was missed at the SR because the temp has exceeded optimal imprinting range. The crowding in the Pens also enacted higher mortality than expected and the fish were released early. Further complicating condition and probably survival. The LL ‘s I’ve seen at Sandy and the Oak have been decent looking fish. Most are true grilse ( 3 to 5 pound’s) but there have been some brutes caught in Sandy, Oswego a true 15 pound fish and some nice ones in the Oak and the SR. Several caught in the DSR in Sept and Oct. The other factor is since they arrive the same time the kings do, they do get bullied by the kings as do the brown trout. So they get pushed out of the runs the kings decide to hold gravel in. Many anglers are focused on those big fish and not finding the LL’s but they are there. My buddy caught four LL’s in the Sycamore hole two weeks ago fishing well behind the spawning kings. He was actually fishing for them. Also LL salmon are not fished for overly successfully bottom bouncing. Or fishing near bottom. Much like king salmon LL’s aren’t actively feeding once in a river. But they will much like King salmon strike out of instinct. ( Which is why I enjoy swinging streamers at both kings and LL’s because it’s a very effective way to elicit that primal instinct to kill something. Many guys fishing for browns right now are not swinging streamers but rather egg or bead fishing, or nymphing. Not the most effective way to catch LL’s. Not impossible but not nearly as effective as to have a bug or streamer swinging high in the water column. So while a LL may be present in your run, the anglers aren’t likely fishing the most effective method. The DEC is never going to be able to stock millions of LL’s. Why? Because it wouldn’t be a good management move to add that many fish to an already stressed food web. Even though LL’s are an extremely diverse forage feeder. And there isn’t many hundreds of thousands or millions available in federal hatcheries anywhere in the US. Much like the Sturgeon program. They are trying to find a strain that successfully survives the LO lake and tribs. Next hoping to find a watershed that actually produce wild fish. That has happened in the Salmon river. Not to the point where you can expect a wild production of LL’s to create a super sport fishery. However if they can find success even in a limited fashion they can claim some victory on their Mantra to revive a heritage species, maybe there is some sport fishing impact as minimal as it might be. And all of that can’t be a distraction or a detriment to the rest of the stocking program for at this point it isn’t. That’s the situation in a nut shell. I love Atlantic Salmon for sure. But I love all of our salmonid species and fish hard for them all. Would I personally love to have a highly viable LL fishery??? Sure but I’m very happy to at least have them in the mix I get to fish for on a river.

You called it a predominantly trolling web board not I. Go read you words. I don’t know you, but if you recognized me fishing along side you why not come over and introduce yourself. I’d love to put a name to a face. Sure people come here for the world class stream brown trout fishing. ( why we worked the 1 brown trout limit into the regs). But there are many who now ask about LL especially when they catch one. My wife’s clients from Rhode Island the past three days were aware of LL’s in the system asked about them and would have loved to catch one. They are in the mix, are being caught and enjoyed. What’s the big deal? these fish are not replacing a single other species in the stocking plan. They are an added bonus mostly for the trib environment. Why is that a big deal? The management plan included the Feds bringing a strain of LL to the table out of Vermont that are supposed to be resistant to low B1 thimane-ease break down. What’s the issue with the scientists doing science? Good on you for taking your son fishing and introducing him to several types of fishing. I wish you both lots of success. If you run into me on a river come over and introduce yourself.

Brian you see this as only a trolling web board? That’s a shame. It’s way more than that and just shows off your myopic view of the fishing world. There are hundreds and hundreds of people using our streams right now. Take a drive from RT 19 through your local river to Rt 18. People from all over the country here as a river fishing destination. Like I said I was with folks from Rhode Island, Tennessee. And as far away as Montana just yesterday. The 2019-2020 angler hours number was nearly 1.8 million hours. And don’t give me the tired argument that most of it was on the Salmon river. Yes much of it was because it has the largest infrastructure to accommodate visitors. and is a true tail water fishery that can stay open all winter. We have two of these in region 8 and they are fished every day. You seem to love to pick on programs that don’t necessarily benefit your trolling profile. Here’s one for you. DEC, US F&W and USGS just stocked a 1000 sturgeon in the Genny. You’ll likely not catch them either, so pick on that program as well. Like it or not…. This fishery just isn’t only about trolling. From a usage standpoint it’s way more used at this time for stream and river fishing rather than just trolling. Get the facts and stop always firing from the hip (lip).

I’d love for the state to only stock 120k kings a year and see what the impact would be on the lake fishery. Could you afford a tournament every weekend of the summer? Plus the high effort to catch them every day of the boating season to in the end hoping enough fish return to the Hatchey to recruit the next year class. Woukd the limit still be three a day. Would you sign up for that Brian? cause you think a high average of those four to six inch fish survive to become adult fish. Would you be willing to play the same game the AS are in? line up and tell the DEC you only need 120k fish a year that because most of them live to run home to a river you’ll be good. Heck then we can raise coaster Brook trout, pink salmon and sockeyes with all the hatchery space we’ll have. this isn’t an apples to apples comparison. You will never have a super sport fishery with 120k fish. The feds and the DEC are starting a new path and management initiative to find a strain that thrives in this environment. The science behind this hasn’t been in play YOY. and today we do have fish returning and getting caught to the delight of many anglers. You don’t fish for them in rivers so you don’t know what is actually going on. And a river angler isn’t a boat guy trying to fill a cooler. It’s a whole different dynamic. The last three days we guided two guys from Rhode Island. We fished around anglers from Tennessee. Ohio, and three from Montana. Four Landlocks were caught that I know of. One about 10 pounds. A magnificent fish. Many browns were caught as well. But those folks couldn’t stop talking about that one fish. For them it was cool, it was exciting. For them it was good enough. Don’t you worry Brian. We are good that they are in unicorn status for now. At least we know they are around. And we can fish for them. It’s the hunt that still makes it exciting.

So we have millions of king salmon and and less than 10% survive to return to rivers to spawn and you want to put that up again 150k stocked AS annually to where a few thousand survive. And you want to talk about survival struggles. I think both species have hurdles to overcome. For instance we don’t have big salmon anymore. Haven’t had notable numbers of high 30’s to 40 pound fish since the early 2000’s or essentially 20 years. Because there are several issues in the LO environment that hasn’t been overcome. Why don’t you fixate on that for once. The powers that be running the LO fishery have decided they are all in on AS. Good bad or indifferent that’s the play. So stop whining and just fish for what ever is your passion and I’ll do the same. I catch them, I enjoy them and I guess you don’t. Oh well. Go do some actual research. The program has not been running at its current rate for ever. It’s started and stopped for Decades. At present for the first time in forever the State in conjunction with the Feds actually has a management plan which they didn’t have in the past. this fishery is ever changing and evolving . You should do the same.

They stock 850k king salmon. 111k out of the pens in a place like oak orchard. Plus the wild fish produced. And we may have a couple 100 fish total that returned this year. out in the lake you have at least three year classes of fish, well over a million a year from stocking and wild fish and how many did you catch? 100’s. Dozens, maybe 20 to 30 all season. what do you think the survival rate is of these fish ? 10%. 5%. Five percent of 200k fish is at most 10k fish spread out all over the lake. Here’s the bottom line. This is a heritage species. If you have any sense of history of lake Ontario this was the greatest in land Atlantic salmon fishery on the planet. Man f’d it all up. How can you not be interested in some effort to try and create even a minor resurrection of our LO history. Whom is it hurting? How are you being impacted negatively? just because YOU don’t care about them or can’t catch them doesn’t mean I and many other trib anglers aren’t interested in catching them and or trying to bring back this historical fish that is revered in every other watershed in the world it swims. It’s just NOT all about everyone. Just like Chinook salmon isn’t revered by everyone. we have a wonderful diverse fishey that has some thing for everyone. Not just for a select few. Get over it.

Of course there wasn’t 2,700 salmon in the Oak. There were several 100 that were caught and released several times. . What you don’t seem to grasp is that the fish that were present created a viable fishery for the anglers (the many anglers) who fished it from Sept. through the following April. I personally caught 10 landlock salmon in that period several in the winter months where these fish in 34 degree water jumped four feet in the air and tore off a 100 yards of line. memorable fish .

Check with the stream DEC creel guys. I fished a PHW event last weekend with them. There have been great catches of Landlocks in Sandy and oak orchard since mid October. The creel census for oak orchard alone in 2019-2020 netted 2,700 Atlantic salmon caught. they are a river oriented fish. And with only 120k total planted how would you expect to see lots of them. As far as wasted resource it’s the Feds who are invested. Yes DEC raises some salmon at the ADK hatchery for mostly the finger lakes where they have both a solid lake and trib fishery 20k salmon planted at the oak and Sandy each. Let’s plant 20k kings at the Oak and see what the fishing looks like. every year it’s the same nonsense you guys making the same tired rhetoric. Make a phone call talk to Scott Prindle at DEC. Get some actual facts. Are they going to be a big player on the lake? No, are they great in the tribs… absolutely. And what’s so terrible about that?

Troutman10, yes the hatchery is now open to the public again. They opened up last week. I believe the King egg take is finished. They were beginning to sort the Cohos from the kings to begin that egg take. They constructed new decking from the hatchery to Beaver dam Brook, fixed the crumbling raceway walls, new railings and easy view to get close to the fish.

Gambler take the lead on this, get a hold of Chris at Cape Vincent , propose a plan, have all your data and facts aligned for the new treatments. Questions for DEC. How to pay for this, what resources it takes to employ the decoys and traps. I would be willing to bet there is a permit process that must take place to put anything like this in a stream. Research that and find out how to start the process. Are there clubs and organizations willing to pony up the funds to help support it since it’s probably not a DEC budget item for 2023. Or ask them about where they are spending their Covid-19 cash. Great opportunity to take action from the angling community.

Was at the hatchery yesterday during a salmon egg take session. Great group of DEC folks probably a dozen working the different stations. Doing some math of how deep the race ways are with salmon stuffed from surface to bottom, I’d guess there are 20k salmon in the hatchery at the moment. Tom the hatchery manager is the egg stripper of the fish. He can assess right away weather eggs are going to be good enough to milt for spawn. Honestly I never saw them spawn a single small fish. Easily a hatchey full of mature fish well over 20 pounds. You can’t fit another salmon in beaver dam brook. As far as you can see. The updates to the hatchery were really nice and gives visitors up close visuals to the raceway and brook. Tech’s are spawning and aging the fish by taking scale samples. I’ve seen reports on the results in the past be looking for them. But looking at the size of the fish they were working with all looking to be well over 30 inches I doubt many could be two year olds. But that data should be available later on. In the brook I saw a few fish up close that would go over 40 inches. So there was some tanks out there. Fished the lower river after, just thousands of salmon spawning everywhere. Few Cohos. So the good news what ever the number DEC is taking for eggs, they will no doubt get them.

So Gambler, what would you propose anglers do? TFM is produced in Germany and only distributed for treatment by licensed agents of Ocean's and Water from Canada. I think I read where a team from the US did some treatments in 2021, because of the border closings. So maybe one idea is to have more agents licensed to treat. Homework for you, research what it takes to ramp up treatments in the future, and how often a stream can be treated without harming other aquatic river life. The target is the lamprey fry and I’ve been there when they treat the salmon and it also does kill the adult spawning lampreys. Got lots of snakes everywhere in the river bed. We need a cormorant hunting season, and layman lamprey treatment companies right?

Gambler Dr Jim Haynes from Brockport was the faculty lead. I believe this was late 90’s. I believe they also investigated Oak Orchard. The report was made public and I had a copy but have no idea where it is 20 years later. And yes on high water years I’ve found salmon par up in Fishers along with steelhead par.

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Sorry for recoping the link. Problem with Sandy is it gets lots of anchor ice. If spawning occurs and the eggs and or fry get trapped under the anchor ice they don’t survive. However when seining started in the salmon river. DEC along with help from Brockport State did some seining at the mouth of Sandy in June and captured wild Chinook salmon. I see many pods of Par salmon in the spring. But nobody knows what the survival rate of those natural repo fish are and why trying to mange for available forage on stocking decisions is difficult and lends itself to models etc. I agree with Capt. Vince that our salmon have evolved and don’t have the same life cycle they did in the 80’s. I have no idea what the data looks like on average weight etc, either up down or normal, but my experience is these fish still seem to fit their length with regards to average girth. I haven’t experienced long skinny salmon, which would be the beginning of being alarmed.

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Yeah the math is simple. Never debated it. 1.8 million down to about 900k. But there were two banner years of natural repo on the salmon not to mention other rivers. The DEC and MNR HAS to take those fish into account in determining impact on forage. Tell tale survival of yearling king salmon appeared to be off the charts this year. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I read report after report lake wide of the same high catch rates. I would imagine that’s why so many Young bait fish were being cropped off faster. You are either in the camp of sound yet cautionary management practices by scientists to maintain a viable fishery looking more than just one year out at a time……… or your not

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THANK YOU!!!! For providing.

SpoonFed, I’d love to see DEC stock 1.8 million salmon again. And I don’t doubt they would if the science and data of all the work USGS and MNR is collecting on the forage trawls told them the food source is healthy. But it’s not. And it’s that simple. Are they leaning to the side of caution, sure. Do you really want the average size of salmon to drop into the low teens, and then fall off? Lake Ontario is going to be managed by fishery biologists who collect data to help them make decisions. It has always been that way. as Far as TU they are involved in all aspects of cold water fisheries in NY, both inland and on the Great Lakes. But as far as the steelhead regs and Steve Hurst was in the room at their annual conference, they did NOT take a stand as an organization on commenting. They left it up to individuals to decide if they were or were not in favor and to decide personally to comment or not. You’re alway great at just shooting from the hip never ever getting it right, or hitting the target.

This fishey isn’t and can’t be managed by fisherman’s opinions, yet in many cases you get to voice it through comment sections on the DEC sight. DEC in partnership with Canada’s MNR, USGS and USF&W doing science is the decision making body after collecting data that tells them what the environment can support in predator prey balance. There are wild cards out of their control especially in the case of Chinook Salmon on how successful is wild salmon production. And of course climate and what impact might that have on bait fish and young trout and salmon survival. I think if you spent anytime on the lake this past year you had to come to the conclusion that both stocked and wild salmon yearlings had tremendous survival with the loads of little fish everyone caught. the little, mid size and adult salmon are all eating the hell out of what ever bait is available. If you don’t manage for your forage base you risk crashing the whole program. I’ll say it again. DEC has managed this multibillion $$ program for over 50 years. We are the only Great Lake that hasn’t suffered a major crash of salmon.

We’ve heard that the past two years we had successful recruitment of alewives. We’ll find out in a bit with the fall assessment of how 0 age fish went. But I believe the major factor is the high majority of the forage base is 0 to 2 year olds meaning still small size snacks. the 4 and 5 year olds and older are pretty much eaten out if the system. In raising fish in the pens in spring remember a released chinook is four to six inches long and in three years as an adult grows in average between 18 to 25 pounds. That is crazy growth in three years explaining just how much impact they have in the bait populations. 90% of it alewife. So with growing to those sizes they are cropping off those healthy hatches of bait fish as fast as they are hatching simply because the older bigger more nutritious bait fish are in very small supply. And thus aren’t growing to the 30 plus sizes cause they aren’t getting the fattiest nutritional value from the small bait. Ok Atlantic Salmon. We get a total of 120k Atlantics a year. Swimming in 2 million acres of Lake Ontario. How many people think if we only got 120k kings they’d have great fishing? The Salar program is a native species restoration science project. And while DEC and US F&W the major investor of the LO salmon program hopes for it to have a sport fishing impact it’s unlikely with so few fish in the system. But I’m personally ok with that as I’d rather they focus on the science around a heritage species to see if there is a strain that would end up being successful even in a limited role in sport fishing. Remember the very same fish are out into the finger lakes that also have alewives and they do very well as a lake caught fish and especially well returning to rivers they weren’t even stocked in. Lastly fishery managers have no control over natural reproduction of chinook salmon to help them manage their stocking plans. The only measurement they have is the spring seining program on the salmon which yields anywhere from 5M to as many as 12M successful hatches of King salmon in the one river. as a trib angler who fishes right into May almost every river, or stream I fish that time of year I encounter salmon par. I think we have way more dinners at the table than enough food to go around to grow 30 plus pound fish on average.

rollmops when I sat on the stakeholder committee I urged the plan to lean towards irondequoit Creek for all the reasons mentioned here and more. The Irondequoit actually is home to wild steelhead. I’ve caught them for years in the middle of summer (par and smolts) on dry flies. LL’s would survive and possibly reproduce in the Iron. I was around in the 80’s when they stocked it with LL’s and I found good fishing on returns. I felt they didn’t stick with that stream long enough. I fished the Soo for many years. And it is spectacular. But we don’t have that kind of system here with cold water even in mid summer, and the river forage the St Mary’s produces. in 2018 USF&W was working on two thermal relief studies on the Salmon. They floated the entire river in summer to locate thermal relief pockets which they did, and then were supposed to look into stream rehab projects that might create those oasis river spots for summer run fish. they also located thermal relief pockets of water in the lower reservoir and again we’re supposed to look into if and how they could capture those colder thermal pockets and release them below the dam. in august of 2018 I was working on the TU Oatka Creek project in the park with USF&W guys who would come check in on our work and then head to the salmon to work on its potential upgrades. Then Covid hit, and I know that work was either delayed or scrubbed. The plan as you stated never mentioned any stream rehab studies. Maybe they are working that all back in. Be nice to know.

Bingo!!!!!!! Feds are going to be highly involved. While I’d love to have a consistent summer fishery for LL’s and I did experience a few good summer seasons. It hasn’t been consistent. For us who want to fish for Atlantic Salmon we have to travel. I’ll be in Labrador one month from today on the Big River. Sea run fish as well as sea run Brook trout and Arctic char. We’ll see what happens with the new plan but I expect to travel many miles to get good fishing.