fish ladders

[kingslamon22]

i think that if the oswego river had a fish ladder, the number of salmon would double. natural reproduction would skyrocket due to spawning habitat being opened up in the oswego watershed. i understan people think that invasives would decimate other fisheries but ive caught gobys in fulton above the power dams. walleye live just fine in black river while shareing it with salmonids.who knows but sources from the early 1800s say that there was much more salmon back then than we could imagin seeing today. spawing habitats would spread out more, taking pressure off the few tribs we have to fish now. salmon and trout were always native anyway. has anyone else ever thought of that??? i dont know how my crazy mind thinks this stuff up but, im always thinkin.

[ray koziatek]

atlantic were the only native salmon back then,and ill bet there were a few good days streams for those who knew of them

[muskybob]

The Oswego River ran from Oneida Lake to Lake Ontario with no man made barriers back then and salmon were the staple food for the native indians back when. They lined the banks of "Sylvan Shores" to set up their drying racks in the fall in preparation for the upcoming winter. Just a bit of history I read in "The History of Oneida Lake".

[Has Been]

How do the fish climb the ladders with no hands & feet?

[muskybob]

They go to the "sturgeon" for prosthetic devices.

[L&M]

[ray koziatek]

when musky was a boy back then he helped with the racks,he was known as " Little Running Bobby Musky" now we just call him " Running Musky" on the boat after he takes his water er i mean good luck pill!! As the rods always go off about the time he turns the faucet on.

[FX]

Didn't he write "The History of Oneida Lake"?

Shawn

[L&M]

It's his autobiography I think um.

[muskybob]

Dang, I try to give you guys a bit of historical trivia to enrich your lives and I get chastised for it.

[jimski2]

Our problem today is that we do not "overstock" salmon. There is only so much forage to grow large healthy populations of salmon in Lake Ontario. Lake Huron has "crashed" due to low forage numbers where last year they were catching skinny 10 pound kings there. Our hatchery provides more than enough salmon. It is the wild reproduction we can not control. The wild salmon smolts are smaller than our spring water raised salmon and they may contribute to the forage base though.

[kingslamon22]

its ok musky i hear you. u say forage base would be strained? what about the gobys. 75 percent of all the browns i keep are stuffed full on gobys with no smelt, alewives or shiners. and they are just as incredibly fat as ever. so then they should stock the hell outa browns. i would love to catch a 42lb brown and slap those elated michiganians with it.

[Has Been]

As I recall the goby invasion was going to kill the fishery way back when. The Zebras were going to do the same thing but the fishery prevails. I say you never know what is going to happen .These Aiaisn carp are suppose to take over also. You just don't really know . A lot of the biggest perch I caught the last few springs were full of goby to . The fish love them . I used a three inch trick stick ( brown gold ) on a 1/16 oz jig head draged on the bottom & did real well. About 20 years ago there was a huge die off of alwife. Floating on the surface all over, the surface shimmered with them. DEC said netted salmon looked stressed out because of lack of food. To me that would mean if they were that hungry they would hit any lure presented. The Salmon looked healthy to me . A record Brown was caught then also. They were lacking funds & wanted to cut back stocking so I think they were looking for an exuse. Maybe fish stairs would be better.

[LongLine]

The goby invasion has hurt the fishery. They occupy a major percentage of the biomass and alewives a much lower percentage than ever before. Stocking was cut back considerably a few years back so the alewives wouldn’t get decimated. Mussels have pushed the alewives much farther out than they used to be in the open water.

You’re finding more nearshore fish eating gobies not because they love them but because they have very little else to eat. Browns are eating them and so are the Smallmouth. Smelt are just about gone and Emeralds are really struggling. Tactics of Smallmouth fishermen have had to change quite a bit along the south shore because of Gobies. True that Smallies have gotten larger but also true that they are fewer & farther between. The numbers for Smallmouth trips is going down because guys aren’t catching the numbers that they have in the past.

The salmon appear healthy; however they are not nearly as healthy as they were years ago. Look at the weights in the annual reports & in the fishing derbies. This last year’s derby had the best weights in many years because of the warm winter we had a couple/3 years ago allowed that years Alewife class to have a great recruiting year. That was a real anomaly.

I agree, no one can tell the future, however from what you see on the Illinois River, do you want to take the chance of that on Big-O? (In addition to the other 185 invassives we have?) There are very few other fish in the areas they have taken over.

Tom B.

(LongLine)

p.s. Asian Carp are vegitarians - they're filter eaters and don't eat other fish.

[Has Been]

Unfortunatly these things happen no matter what has been done to stop it. The barriers for the carp will only work so long untill life finds a way & they suddenly show up. I fished smallies a lot & I attribute lot of the decline to VHS( maybe from the goby). Did a number on the Rockies , Sheapheads & Smallies. They are starting to make a comeback slowly & who knows what will happen there. We are catching more wallys than we have in previous years . Where I fish for perch the creek is packed with small niagara blues but the perch have gobys. I think fish are oprtunistic & hit whatever is an easy meal. Perch patterns work on Salmon, not their prefered forage. . Glow green laderback J is a hot lure when salmon are close in fall , looks like a perch to me. . The fishing changed when the zebras showed up to me because the water cleared up.Less nutrients, less bait, means less fish can be supported I know , but it's not that bad.Sizes are down because of it but the fish are there. Colors that work pre zebras were not as effective after. No one knows for sure what will happen till it all pans out & even then we might have surprises. I think the fishery will survive one way or another. Might be different ,but it will survive.I think the fishing was better when the lake was "polluted".

[Has Been]

And as for the sizes of the salmon , does genetics have anything to do with it? Take eggs from smallfish & maybe you get small fish. Take eggs from the first spawners & maybe they run the rivers a little sooner each year. Just a thought. Early on about 1978 we were disscusing why they like a different color each year . My buddy Shongo speculated that maybe it was where the eggs came from . I think we were getting some from Michigan at the beginning.

[Knotlost]

I have been not only a fisher man, but a scuba diver, who dives allot. I have logged hundreds of hours under water a year diving, and I can tell you the single biggest thing I see underwater is the the same cycle every year.

When the time for little fish (minnows) are hatched in the shallows and weeds you will see allot of them, fairly healthy numbers about 5 years ago (its getting smaller). Once the minnows get about 2 to 3 inches long (very small predation up until this time) the cormorants can see them better and thats when the predation starts, as the year progresses you see the fish number (its easy to see the years hatch-lings from the rest of the fish) slowly disappear, and by November you are luck to see any minnows, or by now the small fish from the last years hatch.

Now if you spend enough time under water you see whats eating them, and its the Ducks - Cormorants and they can eat 5 to 10 fish a day each! They make any other predator look ridiculous in comparison, and I have seen them go down to 30+ feet and swim fast as any fish and catch them. The will catch any fish less than 6 inches long. There is a huge gap in fish size because of this, you see small fish and then big fish but in the arias where there are allot of fish (there are always cormorants present) you will notice this size range very thin. What is happening is the big fish that are laying eggs are keeping the waters alive but when they die off there isn't hardly any to take there place, there being caught by the colorants before they can get big enough to lay good hatches. If you think the predation is by some other fish, thats a entertaining thought sitting in a chair or making up things in a class room, but when you dive in the aria where these smaller fish are, (I have spend hours in the shallows decompressing from dives) the bigger fish that would eat them don't exist, they have been eaten by the cormorants. So thats what the kids in school tell you but its not true, the cormorants are really doing a number on the sub-breeding size fish.

It may be interesting to some to know that gobys stay right on the bottom, almost all the time, very very rarely have I ever seen one in the water column off the bottom more than 12 inches, normally within an inch of the bottom. The cormorants normal feed on the fish in the water column from 16 inches off the bottom and up, so I'm not sure if they find any gobys in cormorants but it would be interesting to know, as I have never seen a cormorant get a goby. I would bet if they do eat gobys they only get them in the real shallow water as they are very hard to see from the surface in water thats over 6 feet.

I believe the best advantage to the rivers is the aria available for fish to hid from them is increased a million fold. The best help we could give the fish is a way to hide from the ducks until they get to a size the cormorants don't like.

By the way I have never noticed how the zebra mussels have hurt the fish, not one way by observation is it noticeable, other than the fact the cormorants can see them better, but it also has made seaweed grow to give them cover in the shallows. So it hurt them in the water over 20' where the weeds don't give protection, but helps in shallows where it can.

Anyway I know my observations do not account for everything but they are what they are; draw your own conclusions, but if you tell me the Cormorants are not causing any noticeable effect on the fish population your flat out wrong. I believe they are by far the single largest problem on the lake.

P Komrowski

[kingslamon22]

this has bocome an interesting topic now becasue i KNOW gobys have made it beyond the power dams in oswego. who knows how, but stopping invasives is futile. look how far those carp made it already. or anything else for that matter. stocking could cut back to save our wallets while numbers of natural fish would take over. natural spawned fish are hardy and have less health issues anyway. as for genetics, natural selection is what occurs in the wild. that means only the biggest, fastest and smartes survive. if you want to call pacific species invasive, than focus should change to coastal brookies, lakers and atlantics. that was what thrived here before people sucked the life out of this area. natural is better. granted, i have respect for his magesty but i wouldnt be sad to see a new top runner. fish ladders, definatly.

[Has Been]

Back before the Zebras showed up ( maybe 20 years ago) even on a clean water day you couldn't see the bottom in 6 feet of water very well . When I was a kid & we went to Cape vincent to fish the weeds around Fox & Grenideer Islands were Thick. Now I can see the Bass on the bottom at 20 feet somedays. Went back to the cape & no thick weeds & you can see the bottom easily in all the places we fished back them. Thats from the zebras filtering out all the Nutrients & plankton out of the water or so I'm told. No phosphous or better fertilizers make for no weeds so it's a vicious circle the cormerants take advantage of.Which is why I say you never know what will happen. The canal runs from Niagara river to Oneida so I think thats how the goby are there. They came from the other way. And We stock so we get aroung natural selection a bit.DEC grabs the fish ,gets tha eggs & mates for them. Puts them in a tank , Hatch t& grow them to a certain size , then release them where they want in the numbers they want. That part is hardly Nat selection.

[LongLine]

Taking eggs from smaller fish yields smaller fish sounds almost plausible except that the salmon the DEC stocks have been taken from the same gene pool for many many years. IE Those that return to our rivers. The original eggs were indeed imported from other places but since then, have been the same stocks. They have however introduced Browns, Lakers, etc from different area/gene pools over the years.

That gobies stay near the bottom shouldn’t surprise anyone. They have an air bladder problem. IE they don’t have one.

Zebra & Quagga mussels directly affect the lower food web thus have an indirect affect on the gamefish. Zebras are very near shore. You probably won’t find them deeper than 20 ft or so. Quaggas will go from there out to over 400 FOW. As filter eaters, both take in everything they can suck in, including phytoplankton & zooplankton. (Up to a gallon per day per mussel) That which they don’t like gets ejected covered with mucus. (psuedofeces, not just the normal feces.) The phyto & zooplankton die one way or the other. YOY alewives that develop in the nearshore areas depend upon the zooplankton for survival and that’s how it hurts. No alewives, no salmon. There are a couple of plankton that no longer exist out there. Clearer water does not mean cleaner water. Most of the toxic chemicals dissolved in water are clear.

Lake Ontario is a very dynamic place. The damage one invasive can do, can be debated, however we have over 180+ invasives so far. That, to me, is devastating. What is the next invasive or disease going to be? It has never bothered me that the dinosaurs or saber-tooth tiger populations went to zero. However, it would bother me if the Trout & Salmon populations went to zero and I don’t want to take that risk.

The DEC & just about every organization associated with the Great Lakes restoration place a high value on natural reproduction. Flow is now regulated on the Sal River, some dams have been removed on the Canadian side, etc. Nat Repro is being monitored and that is a main reason for the DEC’s fin clipping trailer. (Any shaker caught on Big-O this year with an adipose fin was a natural.)

Two last thoughts: what if a whole bunch of fish swam up the ladder with some kind of disease? Fishstix posted a link the Bonneville fish ladder camera a few years ago and it was amazing how many lamprey swam up it.

Tom B.

(LongLine)

p.s. Fill in that Chi San. ditch…quick!

[L&M]

That gobies stay near the bottom shouldn’t surprise anyone. They have an air bladder problem.

Correction Tom: The only time they are lured far from bottom is when "Gobie Bob" also known to some as Muskybob goes perch fishing. He has an uncanny way of luring em right to the boat.