This is interesting...hmmm

[LongLine]

USGS stocking 70K Atlantics from Tunison on east end.

http://oswegocountybusiness.com/index.php?a=3612

hmmm... interesting

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[Gill-T]

I think last years totals were 87,000. If they really wanted to plant Atlantics with the intention of getting a run to stick in the Salmon River watershed, then why do they ship the eggs to Cortland? Raise the fish at Altmar in Salmon river water! Just don't displace any Pacifics please. This program is a waste of money as it is currently constructed. This crap has been going on since 1983.......with the same results. If something ain't workin' then it is time to change how things are done.

[LongLine]

Tunison raises the Atlantics. (Feds) If Altmar (NYS) did raise them then some pacifics would be displaced.

NOTE: This is a fall stocking, not the normal spring stocking.

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[rolmops]

My soon to be daughter in law is working on a Masters degree at Queens university in Kingston on Atlantic salmon in Lake Ontario. She tells me that the Canadians have been very successful with the Atlantic stocking over the past few years. There is no reason why our side cannot be successful.

[Tim Bromund]

My soon to be daughter in law is working on a Masters degree at Queens university in Kingston on Atlantic salmon in Lake Ontario. She tells me that the Canadians have been very successful with the Atlantic stocking over the past few years. There is no reason why our side cannot be successful.

Not to disagree, but you might want to ask some Canadians about that.

Tim

[Gill-T]

On the Canadian side since 2006, 5 million dollars spent, tens of thousands of volunteer hours, stream and hatchery improvement projects, a million fish stocked per year and they get a return of approx. 100 fish. The project is still in its infancy but I would categorize it as a failure at this point.

[Iceman]

Been catching many more & bigger Atlantics through the last three years. They are very cool fish!!!! Picked up several in the ten to 15lb class this year. I release all Atlantics I catch, unless they are injured severely (gill damage).

[Tim Bromund]

Yeah, we finally got our first Atlantic in the boat this summer that was 14.5 or so. I think it's great that they are in the system and are a nice component of the fishery, but with the numbers of Atlantics the Canadians have been stocking these past number of years, I'm just saying that I think it is a serious stretch to call their program "very successful"

This is in no way intended to disparage the opinion of rolmops future daughter in law, just think there is some rose colored glasses involved in that statement that reality just doesn't substantiate.

Tim

[jimski2]

As our woodlands were changed to farming and housing, the water temperatures in our streams have risen to the point that natural reproduction of Atlantic Salmon failed. Dams and industries did not help either. Anyway they are native fish and can survive in the lake with help. It really is nice to catch a salmon that leaps out of the water and it makes the fishing experience more enjoyable to handle one of these guys.

[Iceman]

I think it was more the overfishing during the spawning runs up the rivers, that eliminated the Atlantics, than the changes in the landscape, although the environmental changes aren't good.

[skipper19]

Over a century ago overfishing was the problem. What creel limits were in place then. NONE...today we have creel limits by the state and management by the feds and like most things the feds do...its wasted time and money. To bad the idea is great but the bureaucrats can't run it.

It would be a great fishery if it were run like Altmar and the pen rearing projects were used to place the juveniles around the lake in tribs that would support their natural recurrence.

Mark

[ Post made via Android ]

[TyeeTanic]

I am a Canadian.

Have heard a lot about the atlantic program and hear both arguments .... it's a failure, it's a success. Go figure.

Anyhow - I disregard all that stuff and look at the facts.

A lot of us Canadians fishing on the lake have hooked into at least 1 Atlantic this year. I caught about a 10 lb atlantic in front of Shell Pier in Oakville in late June 2011.

Adult atlantics were found in the credit river after an electro-fishing excercise to harvest chinook eggs. This is the first time on record that this has happened.

So, I can't say that the Atlantics have fully taken and considered self sustainable (but what fish is anyhow), but I can say that things seem to be way better than they use to in the not so distant past!

[rebar]

My understanding of the low numbers of Atlantics counted at dam traps in Ontario is because of where the young Atlantics where released. apparently they where released practically in the lake right beside the nets of a commercial fishery.

Apparently they must be released in numerous places up river in order to IMPRINT.

Common sense! The reason this type of release did not take place?? Maybe the ideal rivers withe no dams etc. on the north shore of lake Ontario don't exist?...any more?

I also have read that spawning success of Atlantics... is sensitive to a healthy river system.

compared to Chinooks and coho .Apparently there are some North American STOCKED river/s that have a healthy return of Atlantic salmon...though I cant recall the name just now.

[Gill-T]

Reasons for the demise of Atlantics in order of importance are 1). Dams 2). Over harvest 3). Pollution 4). Thiaminase from alewife ingestion inhibits successful reproduction. None of these problems are going away. I hate waste. My tax dollars could be better served to fix the problems THEN do the stocking. You want to solve the atlantic problem?.........get rid of the dams so fish can get into the headwaters. New York ain't going to do it so stop wasting time and money on a pipedream. Out of approx. 2 million Chinooks stocked.....we catch approx. 70,000/year. Of the 1.1 million Atlantics stocked by the US and Canada.......creel survey shows only approx. 1,500 caught/year and no river fishery to speak of.

[LongLine]

The original post was not intended to start any kind of urination contest. It was intended to show that the Feds have some people studying it, which I found to be kind of interesting, and that it may extend the fishing season in some areas.

Also please remember that it took a while for the Pacifics to develop. (The first ESLO was won with a 5 Lb King.) Serious stocking of Atlantics was given up by the US side many years ago. It was only about 4 yrs ago that the wine company started putting serious numbers of them on the Canadian side of the lake and still those numbers are less than 60% of the US King stocking. No one can expect a "tremendous" fishery to spring up overnight. It's taken 40 yrs, some up - some down, of hefty stocking numbers to get what's there now.

Although some of our canadian collegues believe they put in inferior strains that never grow, you have to admit some nice size Atlantics have been caught in the last couple years.

"Thiaminase" affects other fish besides Atlantics, and they seem to be doing pretty well out there. People always assume that Atlantics will only gobble alewives like the Kings do, however alewives are not on the top of their favorite foods list.

Gill - I somewhat disagree with "None of these problems are going away." Please name a few dams & the headwaters because we do have King nat repro occuring with the current geography. Over harvest was done by the commercial fishermen (i.e. salmon trawlers with nets which no longer exist on the US side) not the sportsfishermen with 1 fish creel limit, lake is cleaner now than it's ever been in our life-times. The issues you mention may not have gone away but they have been greatly reduced. Question is: Have they been reduced enough?

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[Gill-T]

Atlantics are kind of funny. They love to run 50+miles up rivers to spawn in headwaters. During their time, Atlantics ran the Oswego all the way to the seneca river into Seneca and Cayuga lakes and then up their tributaries. Fish ran all the way to Rome even. Reportedly they never colonized the Niagara because the big water did not suit their needs. It appears they need skinny water to spawn. They have been lifting fish over the Streetsville Dam on the Credit and are now finding them 70 miles upstream. If they removed the dams on the Oswego, Salmon, Sandy, Black etc. the fish would find a way themselves. No politician is going to sign off on removing clean energy sources and that is why I think the Atlantic problem will continue.

[rolmops]

According to my my son's girl friend, the problem that has to be tackled is mostly the smolting time that the atlantics need. They spawn very high up in the watershed and then the small ones will stay in the rivers for 2 to 6 years before they return to the lake. That is very different from the king salmon.Most of the stocking experience is with the kings and the cohos and in the beginning the atlantics were treated just like the kings and cohos.That did not work. Her Masters project is mostly concerned with an effort to find or create a current genetic strain that carries very similar if not identical DNA from the strains that lived in the lake 150 years ago.

At the same time there are watershed restoration projects in Ontario to the north and west of Kingston and in the future reaching into Algonquin park and the Ottawa river.

It will probably take a few decades,but it is happening.

[jimski2]

The commercial pen raised salmon fisherys are doing well in Norway, Chile and British Columbia are doing well supplying salmon to the world's markets. Take a look in Wegman's fish counters. It could be the private concerns do something well and government agencies can not do as well.

[rolmops]

The commercial pen raised salmon fisherys are doing well in Norway, Chile and British Columbia are doing well supplying salmon to the world's markets. Take a look in Wegman's fish counters. It could be the private concerns do something well and government agencies can not do as well.

I think that the Canadian government has done about a hundred times as good as the private companies. Not a single salmon has come back to spawn in the commercial fishing pens of the private companies

[LongLine]

Cornelius - OFAH, CRAA & others have done a great job cleaning up trib habitat up there and more projects are in the works. I did some searching and found that there used to be 14 tribs stateside that reported good A.S. runs years ago. Also that in addition to what Gill-T said as issues, is the history of de-forrestation. Trees held back sediment and provided shade for the water, hence they didn't get as warm. Much higher than 70F is lethal to them. They have very difficult summers in the tribs.

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[panfisher]

Rite-on LongLine....!!

[tonyb]

Exactly LongLine, that is the angle that I took on the whole Atlantic project.

When the dust settles and patience and funding runs out with Atlantics, the enhancements to the riparian buffer zones on tributaries that were selected for Atlantic re-introduction will benefit all remaining coldwater (and even warmwater)species.

Sorry for the technical jargon, but it's the correct term for what basically amounts to strategic tree planting along stream banks.

Here is a helpful image, a quality Riparian Buffer would be comprised of Zones 1-3 and the wider the buffer and more mature the trees are, the better.

Until the Atlantics start showing the levels of returns as some of the other proven species like Steelhead, Browns, Cohos and Kings, I'd rather not see a decline or displacement in hatcheries of the proven winners.

Tony

[shorething]

I have caught [and released] 3or 4 the last couple springs from my rock . A few years ago ,they were virtually unheard of . Hope they try to put somemore in , as they are an extremely fun fish to catch !

[frm03064]

Just out of curiosity, why does the US Geological Survey conduct these stockings... seems like to me it would make more sense for US Fish And Wildlife to do that sort of thing...unless atlantics are causing earthquakes...

[LongLine]

Frm – Both USGS & USF&WS are in different divisions of the Dept of the Interior. USF&WS is brother to the National Parks Service & USGS is brother to the Bureau of Reclamation in the Water & Science division.

The USGS reputation you allude to about earthquakes comes from renown Hollywood disaster movies such as Volcano, Earthquake, etc. Actually USGS is highly involved with Land use, Core Sciences, Ecosystems and Natural hazards. They’re more “hard-core†science than USF&WS & have some tremendous research & researchers. USGS has been actively involved with Lake Ontario and its restoration for many many years including monitoring the “health of the lakeâ€, lake levels, micro-organisms, Chemistry, water movement...you name it – they’ve been into it.

Prey fish studies and the stocking of fish (Lakers & Atlantics) is directly related to the ecosystem & the “health of the lake.†I.E. fish abundance is one of the measures of a lakes health, hence USGS involvement.

Differences between the two orgs can be seen from their mission statements:

The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.

The USGS serves the Nation by providing reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth; minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters; manage water, biological, energy, and mineral resources; and enhance and protect our quality of life.

Tom B.

(LongLine)