Gill-T

That is kind of what they do now. The shaker fitness and king natural repo numbers just add additional layers of info.

To me the tool not being used to track YOY alewife health is the weight of one year old kings by August. Both year classes of the different species are joined at the hip. The returning three year olds (graduating 4 year olds as of October) are going to be recorded as smaller than historical figures. These fish I have been catching are short but fat. These fish as one year olds got stocked in a spring with virtually no YOY alewife survival. I checked some stomach contents of some scrawny shakers that got dragged around and weren't going to make it a few years ago and I found bugs but not bait. Last year the one year olds in August were huge because of the 2016 record alewife hatch coincided with their stocking. These are now the 2 year olds everyone has been catching and driving the record catch rates. I was really worried how this year class of kings was impacting the bait levels as these fish were EVERYWHERE I went-from the Niagara to Sodus. The natural reproduction of kings in the Salmon River in 2016 was the most prolific ever recorded. Why so many two year olds? Was it a fitness issue of the highest YOY hatch every recorded in 2016 meeting the highest natural reproductive success year of kings ever recorded (simple predator vs prey relationship graph). Was there any "extra" surplus hatchery kings that were raised-and not destroyed by Canadian hatcheries (Andy Todd please respond if reading this), placed in the lake in lieu of the mild winter of 2016? Then there is the non-scientific data your eye sees when your are watching the fishfinder throughout the year.....how much bait are we seeing? This year was a tough one to get a handle on bait levels via sonar. There were more deep mixing roll-overs on the lake than I can ever remember on a given year. There was cold water around all year. As such, bait did not appear as large floor to ceiling bait balls like in years past. Bait often showed as loose and around the surface cavitation level of the fishfinder. Stomach surveys of the fish I cleaned ALWAYS had plenty of bait present. Lately, I have felt much better about bait levels as the one year old kings I am catching are big and healthy plus as the lake has finally set-up, there is lots of large bait pods showing on the sonar (Olcott to Niagara). The final effects of next year's large class of graduating kings will have on overall bait levels in Lake Ontario won't be fully understood for two more springs. Who won out .....the 2016 alewife class or the 2016 kings? I would love lake managers to develop an algorithm that considers all the factors effecting alewife/chinook salmon numbers when figuring out chinook stocking figures. With all the years of data, we should know the effects of winter temperatures on alewife survival rates. We should also be able to figure out the effects of water levels/water temperature during October/November on Salmon River chinook salmon natural reproduction success. Merge the two data points into a formula that can be used by lake managers to set stocking figures. In the meantime.....I can't wait until next year's fishing season to start. Lake Ontario kicked ass this year!

Yes, because it was already covered on another thread LOL.

Lots of cool stuff being done on both sides of the lake. Here is a how a video bean counter is being used on Canadian side. Great management tool that will help keep track of the health of run.

Definitely a record breaker for my boat. When you only catch 20 salmon because of an East wind and you wonder why the bite is off .....you realize your prospective has changed. Here is some good Canadian FUBAR TV.

Prayers sent to family.

Lowrance GPS pucks are notoriously bad. Mine died after two years, replaced it and it died again. I have been running without GPS for 10 years LOL. I stubbornly refused to give Lowrance another dime for their crappy product and poor customer service. I am shopping for a new fishfinder/GPS this offseason.

They work on light line. For our leaders we use behind a flasher they don’t work well.

The amazing thing is the strong spoon bite. This group of fish for whatever reason has taken to spoons 10:1 over flasher presentations. They have been on a black pattern for me the last month.

Nice bunch of Kings to the East offshore in 400’-450’.

Cherokee boats were made for our type of fishing. If you can find one ( probably Michigan) !

IMO the biggest factor effecting size of steelhead is the lack of Emerald Shiners due to the effects of VHS and the loss of productivity in the epilimnion since the 80’s. We are seeing the effects on Erie now with walleye growth slowing to “Canadian shield lake levels”. It used to be during the 80’s and 90’s the blue zone offshore had emeralds visible on the surface year’round. Each spring you could count on emeralds thick in each port,river,stream or ditch. Now.....nothing. I saw plenty of trout snagged in tribs via snagging hooks in the eighties and steelhead were bigger. The charter fleet in Canada has had to adapt to steelhead or go out of business as their salmon numbers diminished over the decades. Two factors effecting size are age and food. If you believe the C&R numbers then it has to be the food.