schreckstoff

Suggests the shock from warm to cold changes ion concentrations leading to tremors and loss of equilibrium. These papers and the news articles talk about upwellings as temperature shocks....but swen it was calm and alewife were dying it made me wonder if cold shock also happen when prey avoid surface predators and disturbance as in the picture (from GreatLaker). Stanley and Colby - 1971 - Effects of Temperature on Electrolyte Balance and .pdf

Cool pics!

Rolmops, I’ve been thinking similarly to your lots of super vulnerable alewife, emerging from deep dark winter water, all thin and in poor condition being super easy pickings leading to stuffed predators. I started to wonder if this phenomenon has an effect , whether it partially contributes to “transition” time each year.

A bunch of dead and dying small alewife on the surface out at Sandy Creek today too. Still looking for that elusive first coho....could also use a net man who can scrap up big LTs and not knock them off the hook. I guess that is why his handle is “Great Laker” and not “Great Netter”. It was a big old cool dinosaur of a fish, hit a spin n glo behind a cowbell, 85’ or so. Good times!

Keeping the alewife spawn timing and ages straight can be counterintuitive. Alewife definitely come inshore early, but more to eat (or die) vs to spawn. Spawning is more like late June, July, even early August. Spawn Can be earlier in embayments. An abstract about LO alewife spawning, (here) from a great fisheries scientist and friend . PM me if u want the paper. Bruce is spot on with calling them age-1 or yearlings. I see some posts talking about these small alewife as YOY , but the YOY or young of year (from this year) won’t be around until July or Aug and will be tiny then . Ultimately they grow to 3 or 4 inches by winter. These 3-4 inch fish are age-1 and as many are seeing can be REALLY abundant in the spring when spawning and survival conditions are right the previous year, but they will draw every predators attention, I loved the post about jack perch chowing them. Bruce your observation about the few adults is key, and A-L-A’s points about multiple hatches too! It doesn’t take many adults if conditions are right and we seem on the right warming track this year so far. The work we did with Brockport showed even a few age 1 fish ( very few, only big ones ) could spawn....but it’s not thought they help much. What’s most fun to contemplate is what happens with wild kings in a year like this when there are so many similar sized Alewife, does their survival shoot up...which then boosts predatory pressure that crop alewife back down? I’m all fired up to fish with Great Laker on Friday, still looking for my first coho! no wasted fish flesh right VP! I know, this pic both resembles and describes me

I saw a few of those yearling sized Alewife at ramp in Little Sodus and heard of others in Port Bay. Likely to see more over next few weeks as inside water warms and the bid schools of them start coming up from deep water.

Congrats and great post, love that second pic of that LT just under water. “Idk if there's ever been a place or website with such a wealth of great lakes fishing information as we have here and we owe that to generous members “ couldn’t agree more. This site is the gold standard for great people and information sharing, In fact just the other day one of the sites sages reminded me to run my Gambler rigs slllooowwer.

Thanks for the update!

That last picture is awesome, that one gets my vote for next years reg book, the green shading is awesome.

Going in to Swega tomorrow will check ramp and post. No clue as to ramp availability later in season Hawkeye, but I’ll post conditions when I can. Gill you crack me up! FYI we had some recent success getting permission to do the trawl survey, it has been an uphill battle! My Canadian colleagues are battling too. Niagara Co samples are definitely key, but as we know from the past 4 years equally important is North Shore sampling, fingers crossed the grey & the green boat get the necessary permission to sample CA waters this year. Sorry we can’t accommodate ride alongs this year, stay tuned for next year. As always keep the prey fish observations coming, they are our best source of comparison and critique. Also, look for a report on all the salmonid diet samples you have collected (over many years) in this year’s annual report. Had coho cakes for dinner, man are those things tasty!

FYI

Kisutch- Welcome to LOU! I’ve Been following your posts (and corkdusts and others) on Lake Michigan sportsman forum for 8 years now and they have been incredibly helpful, thank you! You will find a lot of support here for you ideas on the role of temperature driving Alewife yearclass strength. 2016YC was above average in LO, but it was surrounded by lower than average classes and one or more years of above average wild king production. Your observations about 2020YC are quite helpful are those from LM, LH or both? Also The tournament-derby results, especially ones from the early parts of the fisheries are an underutilized information resource IMO. It’s great to know folks are collating them. I bet if a website and motivated, data-interested users pulled those results together, digitized them, and posted them it would be a great service to the fishery (cough cough hint JF). You might already use it, but if not be sure to check out the report the Cape Vincent DEC & partners put out annually. Hachimo , I’m with you on that early spring positive thinking!

Rick those screens are awesome, thanks for sharing. perfect example of the Alewife hiding out in the deep dark water and for good reason.

definitely a super cool fish, one of my favorites. Lake Whitefish are in Lake Ontario but numbers are low, current research is looking at spawning habitat as an issue. this link is to a report on the historic Lake Erie Cisco and Lake Whitefish fisheries, its is a cool read , especially the pics of the boats and landings https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/81373/report.pdf there is a very substantial sport fishery for them in a bunch of places like the Detroit River, Luddington, and the Green Bay ice fishery has been hot , YouTube has a bunch of videos showing angling. I’m always interested in talking Whitefish and the potential to bring them back in Ontario