Lampreys off Oswego

[cnyh2ofowler]

It sounds like the fishing has been great along the whole South shore. We have fished out of Oswego 4 times now and it has been great. The only down side has been the number of lampreys on the fish. About 1 in 6 fish have had eels on them. All the fish carry scars from past encounters. Had a 5 pound brown the other day with 2 on it. Is this happening along the whole South shore or is it a Oswego thing.

[GAMBLER]

11 minutes ago, cnyh2ofowler said:

It sounds like the fishing has been great along the whole South shore. We have fished out of Oswego 4 times now and it has been great. The only down side has been the number of lampreys on the fish. About 1 in 6 fish have had eels on them. All the fish carry scars from past encounters. Had a 5 pound brown the other day with 2 on it. Is this happening along the whole South shore or is it a Oswego thing.

I have had 2 lamprey on 73 salmon so far this spring off Sandy Creek in Monroe County.  Nothing like a couple years ago!

[finsntins]

Lots of lampreys in Mexico bay also,not quite as bad as few years ago,but not good 

[arnold]

Its because the lazy bas**** didn't treat the rivers for two years because of covid.  There excuse was that we couldnt put our field people at risk even though it was all outdoors. Shameful.

 

Exactly the same situation on our side of the pond. Sheer incompetence.

[Bassin Bob]

Every fish caught last night out of Oswego had a lamprey on it. 4 for 4

[kcr66]

Mexico Bay- 4Browns/ 2had lamps 

[cnyh2ofowler]

I think that there was a lot that did not get done in 2020 because of Covid, look at the poor numbers of 3 year olds last year.

[Great_Laker]

In Lake Ontario (both US and Canada shores) Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) treats tributaries for sea lamprey. COVID shut down the border and the Sea Lamprey Control Center (DFO) could not treat US tributaries of Lake Ontario because they could not cross into the U.S.. Lamprey wounding increased quite a bit during those years but started to decline in 2023 according to lake wide assessments. Sea lamprey are only in their parasitic adult life stage for about a year so changes should be pretty rapid once treatments resumed. 

[cnyh2ofowler]

These are all small lampreys, must have come out of their larval stage recently. I would have thought if they resumed treatment in 2022, these would’ve been killed. I have fished the lake for 49 years and the only other time I have seen them like this is when we fished the bubble off the oil plant in Oswego for browns in the late 70’s.

[schreckstoff]

New lamprey spawning sites develop and weather constantly messes with treatments effectiveness. If you want to help, you might consider making region 7 and Cape Vincent bios & managers aware you are observing above average small lamprey on Mexico Bay-Oswego BT this spring.
 

RE: lazy control teams - in my 15 years I’ve observed Lk Ont DFO lamprey control field teams to be among the hardest working and most dedicated in the Great Lakes. US and CA field teams of all types were ready to work in 2020 but were ordered to ‘stand down’. Administration risk tolerance, not field crew effort-desire, caused the treatment pause.

[Kingme2Go]

On 5/10/2024 at 8:19 AM, arnold said:

Its because the lazy bas**** didn't treat the rivers for two years because of covid.  There excuse was that we couldnt put our field people at risk even though it was all outdoors. Shameful.

 

Exactly the same situation on our side of the pond. Sheer incompetence.

Nope. They missed one year in 2020 on both sides of the lake due to Covid and government travel restrictions. They treated all in Ontario in 2021 and  some in New York in 2021 according this DEC document. 

https://extapps.dec.ny.gov/docs/fish_marine_pdf/lofapminutes41123.pdf

 

Laziness had nothing to do with it. I'm  grateful for the hard work they do. 

[MikeyP]

Does the west end of the lake (Olcott, Oak Orchard, Wilson) also have lamprey problems?

[AnglingAddict]

We had 4 Lamprey on our BTs Saturday out of Oswego (smaller 6-8" size) - landed somewhere around 17 or 18 BTs

[GAMBLER]

On 5/12/2024 at 10:05 AM, MikeyP said:

Does the west end of the lake (Olcott, Oak Orchard, Wilson) also have lamprey problems?

I have had 5 lampreys in 4 trips so far this season.  Not the numbers you guys are seeing out East.  

[FishingFool34]

I think I've seen 3 lampreys out of the 60+ fish I landed in Mexico this year. 

[Traveling Circus]

2 small lampreys on a dozen kings out of Sandy on Saturday. 

[cnyh2ofowler]

I didn’t know they had lampreys in Mexico, they probably slither right through the border wall. Fished Oswego on Saturday, probably caught a dozen kings, no eels. Caught a laker with a tag in it’s back, called the number on the tag and are waiting for a callback.

[Great_Laker]

On 5/13/2024 at 4:56 PM, cnyh2ofowler said:

I didn’t know they had lampreys in Mexico, they probably slither right through the border wall. Fished Oswego on Saturday, probably caught a dozen kings, no eels. Caught a laker with a tag in its back, called the number on the tag and are waiting for a callback.

Thanks for reporting the tagged Laker. If you want any information on it, send me a private message with the tag info and I can give you all the information I have on that fish if it’s one of ours. If you search for the post from Gambler about catching a tagged lake trout at Sandy Creek, you can read why we are tagging lake trout and what we are doing with that information.  The external tag you saw indicates it has an acoustic tag inside the fish which is how we track them around the lake, sort of like underwater GPS. 

[rolmops]

We only had 3 lamprey scarred salmon and zero fresh scars on about 40 salmon we caught last week out of Olcott.

Edited May 15 by rolmops