rolmops

It is websites like this one and magazines like the In-Fisherman that sing the glory of a good lake. Once that is done ,the crowds are not far behind. The best way to save our fish is to be tight lipped or spread stories about how the fishing collapsed. So please friends,if you want to save your lake,make sure to write about getting skunked repeatedly and how you think about selling your boat and taking up gardening instead.

That is good news indeed. The main thing that I learned from the meeting at the Irondeqoit Club, is that the salmon population really is part of a 3 to 4 year cycle and although we will see more survival and hopefully better fishing next year,the warmish weather we have now will mostly effect the spawn that was put in the water in 2015 and only in 2017 will we see the effect of this winter.

Can you show us a picture?

I think I agree with Gambler, but at the same time Steven is correct as well The original salmon eggs that were introduced were from the Tule strain originatating in the Columbia River. They were the eggs of very fit salmon that were capable of swimming lots of miles (hundreds?) in adverse circumstances. And all the weaker or slower or smaller ones were weeded out by this murderous migration from and to the spawning beds. Yet at the same time the genes that produced these weaker fish were also present in the gene pool of the stronger and larger fish, which is proven by the weaker ones reappearing during every migration. Then they came to lake Ontario. Their spawning migration up the Salmon river really was an afternoon outing compared to the long trips up the Alaskan river. This caused a lot of the smaller and weaker salmon to survive along with the fittest and strongest ones. Survival of the fittest does not happen in times of plenty it only happens in difficult times and with plenty of alewives to go around, slowly the smaller and weaker ones increased in numbers and percentagewise became a bigger part of the whole. This does not explain why the forty pounders are gone, but it does explain why there are so many smaller ones. Lack of competition allows for greater variation and eventually more succesful mutation. It may well be that we helped this process along by cuddling the fry even more with our pen projects. ( Can anybody make a connection between the first few years of the pen projects and the dissapearance of the 40 pounders?) This process happened within the same genepool and its variants. So Steven Lapan is correct there. Also I would like to know if the DEC has actually done a DNA map of the Lake Ontario salmon and compared this to the same strain on the west coast just to confirm that it still is the some gene group or if there were significant mutations that went unnoticed.

There is genetics and genetic potential. If a fish cannot live up to its genetic potential for whatever reason it will remain smaller. And if remaining smaller causes more successful survival then ,that is what will become the dominant population.

After listening to Steve Lapan last week at the Irondeqoit Game and Fish Club, I was left wondering about a lot of the graphs that he showed us. Specially the one in which he showed that there is a direct correlation between the lake temperature and the feeding and growing behaviour of the Chinook. The temperature graph that he showed was of the Buoy off Rochester and in correlation the growth rate of the Salmon which stayed stagnant until the water temperature reached 50 degrees and above. In 2015 this happened well over a month later than other years. Not only did it take until mid June for the water to reach 50 degrees.The temperature stayed well below the average normal well into july while it finally came close in August. ( It did not completely catch up ) One can only assume that with the same severe winter in 2014 a simular delay in rising temperatures happened. That means 2 much shorter growing seasons. All of this probably caused the salmon to stay well below their genetic potential and caused their growth to be seriously delayed or maybe even halted. However,their biological clock kept on ticking and the still small 3 year olds probably lost at least one and quite possibly one and a half growing seasons (the very cold start in 2014 and the same cold water in 2015) because just as the water temperatures started to rise over 50 degrees in July 2015 they started directing their energy toward milt and roe. All of this leads me to suspect that what we presumed to be sexually mature 2 year olds may very well have been small three year olds,while the larger ones probably lived in the warmer plumes of the rivers that flow in the lake. For example the Genesee or the Credit and the Oak. Is all of this nonsense or am I on to something here?