rdebadts

Admittedly, I never fish Lakers on purpose after June.... that being said, I've found that lakers are voracious goby and sculpin eaters. They DO eat alewife, and a lot of them at times, but I suspect it is more of a prey of opportunity for them. Lakers are bottom dwelling and live in cold water- so they have a slow metabolism and are... lazy. I think they'll smack whatever swims by. What I've found in the last 3-4 years is less alewife in lakers. In fact, it's rare that I clean a laker with an alewife anymore. Is that because they are just eating more gobies, or because there's less alewife? I'm not sure. Regardless, I appreciate that the dec agreed to reduce laker stocking. If the bait is as bad as they say, reducing predation in all ways makes sense. I'd hate to see what happened in Michigan, with less and less kings and more lakers... The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

FYI- I believe that both lamprey and alewife predate the seaway by about a century. Those are byproducts of the Erie Canal. The seaway is responsible for almost 100 other invasives though! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

The lake fishing has been nothing short of spectacular for 3 years running. Lots of kings and they're available most of the season. No complaints there. In fact, the lake fishing has been epic April- early August. The issue now is the almost complete absence of a staging king fishery on any port not named Oswego or pulaski, and dwindling stream returns on basically all of the central and western basin tributaries The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Rick beat me to it. I stand corrected on the Caledonia notion. However, I must say that using the tagging truck that we already have to make the data more robust would certainly be good. Overall returns were better for pen reared sr chinooks, though there WAS some year to year variability, and more data would help to clarify those inconsistencies. The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

A few things: 1. I move my boat throughout the year, and for good reason. We fish sodus in April and early May, Olcott in May and June, sodus again in June and July, and the oak in early August. That's not an accident. Each port has a good "time" to fish it (and we follow the fish). What I've seen is progressively better king fishing out west in May and June and progressively worse August "stager" fishing everywhere over the last 10 years. The fish are becoming more migratory, in that more fish head west early and almost all the fish end up east In September. Different ports benefit from this at different times, but it is important that people realize this is happening. These fish are evolving to our lake in real time (know in evolutionary circles as punctuated equilibrium). 2. Though it would be hard to prove, the notion that the Caledonia hatchery PREVENTED salmon from imprinting exclusively to the salmon river makes sense. Without being imprinted, the salmon used to end up in whatever outflow seemed viable when they got the call to spawn. How else can you explain salmon ending up in all the little tiny feeder creeks throughout the lake? They weren't stocked or born there! Now, with all the salmon coming exclusively from the salmon river, they are all pre-programmed to end up there. We may confuse some of that programming with pen rearing, but we cannot entirely undo it! Take a look at the data about straying... and that was before all the fry came from salmon river! 3. We have Terrible bank conditions on most of our tributaries, and that's only getting worse. They are silting more and more, and with reduced tree cover they are warmer. It delays the run significantly, I believe. The hot weather and weird wind has been holding back the kings for weeks now. The exception here is the salmon river. 4. Stream guys should WANT more kings and better king fishing. Alewife are not particularly good for steelhead survival and reproduction, and they are just plain terrible for Atlantic salmon. If you ever hope to restore native Atlantic's, for example, optimal alewife control is vital. Vince, I loved your response. Kings are an absolute savior to this lake and need to be treated as such! I believe that they are key to eventually restoring some of the native species as well! The lake can certainly support both pacific salmon and native species. In the current environment, none of the other species can thrive unless we control alewife optimally. Even warm water fish like perch and walleye depend on salmon for alewife control! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Slice the gills, head down in a cooler for 5 mins, then gut them and clean out their abdominal cavity. I immediately put in ice. It is excellent, if done properly! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Lucky, we are all biased. You didn’t need to take a shot there though The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

By the way- sounds like guys are all finding the smaller fish the last few weeks, as mature stagers become more finicky and guys are focusing more offshore. I saw the same on Sunday out of Sodus The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

I saw and read the report. It is at the very least concerning, and indicates that what the dec has been advocating is probably wise. This year I saw a ton of bait, and I had some trouble reconciling what I saw with what the data showed... That being said, a very important concept in scientific literature is that observational data sucks. I’m not saying that’s it’s useless... but it’s kind of useless. We need consistent, reproducible, verifiable data to make any meaningful inferences about what to do... I would argue that the places they are trawling (specifically a small “hole” directly off the bar) should be remedied, but overall the data seems sound. The issue now isn’t the 2013/2014 class as much as overcoming the shortcoming of their spawning for several years, and the increased predation on the other year classes because of their absence. A few average or above average years (hopefully starting with the 2019 yoy) and we will be out of the woods! We’ve gotta weather the storm. If we are wise, this soon will pass and our beloved salmon fishery will continue to thrive. Remember, we have not felt ANY pain from sticking cuts yet. If next year is down, it will be the first time. The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

King hunter, the fishing has been very far from abysmal anywhere on the south shore at any time this year. The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

22 lb average only gets you 9th. Crazy. Good fishin Rick! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

I caught a pile of small kings in May out of Olcott, and no more than a handful since. It’s quite unusual to not catch all classes of fish in June and July. I am a bit worried about next year’s king fishing. Fortunately the lake is so diverse that there will be something to catch regardless. The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Nice! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Good stuff! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Good stuff! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

I look forward to the Sodus Pro am every year. It is a fascinating tournament- sometimes it's all about kings, sometimes it's all about browns... you have to be versatile. Plus, it's home for us! I fished last Monday and knew there were browns around, so that plan was already stowed away. I heard all week about kings, and guessed that would be the program Friday: I haven't fished kings in almost a month, so we were in search mode. My goal was to find areas with active fish, mark em, and move on. So, we set down in 100 on a NW troll off the trailer park. Immediately we were into mature kings, boating 3 15-18 lb kings in the first 2 hours. with those waypoints stowed, we headed deeper, and banged a few more mature kings in 150 FOW. we stowed those waypoints and moved NE- when we crossed 200 FOW, we banged 3 more kings. I decided to turn around in that water as it looked really good (mostly to make sure it really was that good) and banged 4 more fish (3 kings and a steelie). then we pointed north, and located some nice steelies out in 330-400 FOW straight out. For good measure, we boated another nice king in 150 FOW on the long troll in. Everything worked. Our best rigs were meat on chinook dipseys out 120-180 and riggers with UV spoons down 45-65. we ended the day with ~20 bites, and all but 5 were on kings 14 lbs plus. we even got to do a bunch of catch and release. Needless to say, I felt pretty good about our prospects! Saturday: I was pretty confident. I had 4 batches of waypoints to work, and a bunch of lures that I knew would go. Our temp profile was about the same (temps were 54F down about 55) when we set down. But our screens didn't look nearly as good? we worked our 120 waypoints... nada. We worked our 150 waypoints... nada. we worked out to 200 FOW and did finally hit a 20 lb king, a skipper that we had to throw back, and missed another. But our screens looked like absolute crap, and the ones we did see were VERY negative? we opted to work east a bit, and rotted for about 3 hours. I was dying. So at 10:45, we decided to run out to 330 to at least pick up a few steelies for a morale booster. We were greeted out there by barren screens all the way out to about 460. I knew that weighing 1 fish will eliminate me for tomorrow, so we opted to run in and pick on brownies just for points. we banged a small brown right away, missed one, then watched fish after fish rise to look at our rig, then dive back down. It happened all day, not sure why? we picked up a pretty 25 inch Atlantic at 1:35 that we had to throw back, and we weighed in 2 fish???? I haven't had a day that bad in several years. Sunday: we saw that some of the guys that did well Saturday were literally right next to us in ~200 FOW.... the bite just turned on later for them. we opted to stay in 100-200 FOW all day the night before- that turned out to be a good decision, just based on the weather. It was pretty gnarly out there. We ran out in 2-3s and pretty quickly got into some 4s and perhaps even some 5s. it was a tremendous pain to maintain speed and direction, but the fish were more cooperative for us. In fact, our first fish came just 3 minutes into fishing time. we boated 4 majors in the first 1.5 hours of fishing (24, 21, 20 and 13 lbs)- two on meat down 160 on the dipsey and 2 on riggers with spoons down 70-80. All of our hits came trolling west. Our bite died at 8 am, and we never really got back on them. we did take a steelie out in 200 FOW that we threw back, and that was it. we missed our last 5 hits in 120 FOW around noon, mostly on meat rigs, and went in with just 4 kings?!?!?!? It was not fun out there- we had a bunch of tangles and popped dipseys from fighting the waves. Ill be the first to tell you that I have NO idea why our fishing was so epically bad on Saturday. No clue. the fish were very negative for us. They would streak up, look at our rigs, and dive down. we tried longer leads, shorter leads, lighter line, going slower, going faster, down and outs....didn't matter. It was a humbling tournament (and 2 days of fishing) for me. My team did everything right and deserved better. Fortunately it was a good time overall and the tournament was VERY well run. Ill be back next year, hopefully with a lot better results! The kings are huge this year, so get out there and kill em!