LAKE ONTARIO MEETING with D.E.C/Sea Grant Tue Oct .7th

[Jolly II]

Over Abundance of Alewifes - DEC and many in attendance are at odds over this....as has been the position since 1993 when DEC decided to reduce king stocking due to their estimates of lower Alewife levels to stocking levels. Key is the Spring Trawls by USGS. We had a near or record hatch in 2013 of Alewifes. This spring the most important target is how those fish survived the winter to become a new generation of bait fish. the results of the netting after the brutal long cold winter of those fish to finish their first full year in the lake was a sizable HIT from most likely winter stress. However if you take the over all populations of YOY through say age six, while the chart showed a drop from over all alewife strength for 2014, it wasn't overly alarming. Yet this 2013 hatch took a pretty deep hit. This is the first big hit after years 2009-2013 of above avg. successful hatches. While many in the room debated those findings because of their own personal experiences....DEC reminded everyone in the room of the Audit that was done by a team of Forage base scientists from around the globe back in the early 2000's to asses the USGS and DEC process for the netting operation, and the results of the audit maintained that the process to collect this data was sound.  DEC and USGS stands by the 2014 forage survey. Confirmed there was a spring/early summer die off....which they expected due to the coldest longest winter in over 100 years. and that they have no evidence to state there is an over abundance of Alewife in LO.

 

King Davy, thanks for posting this summary of the meeting.  I attended Tuesday night and had some after thoughts concerning the bait fish abundance.  I wish I had thought of this while at the meeting.

 

I don't think Steve is trying to misrepresent what they are finding in the lake, nor do I think that those of us on our side of the table are wrong in what we've seen this year on the lake with the alewive abundance.  I know Steve made the statement that their data collection process was auditted and found to be a sound scientific method, but that audit was conducted in the 2000's, long after Lake Ontario water was cleared up by filter feeding zebra and quagga muscles.  I was out and about in the world in the 1990s with the U.S. Navy, and only fished the lake in the early 90s before the muscles took a strong hold in the lake.  We all remember what the water clearity was like in the 1980s and early 90s, if you could call it clear, and was really surprised how clear the lake was when I started fishing it again in 2000. 

 

Here's my point on the water clearity.  Many of the older guys remember a my uncle Tom Jolliff, DEC biologist at the Cape Vincent research station, and know he was a thorn in the DEC's side since the stocking cut backs in the early 90s, a biologist who was always on the fisherman's side.  A salvage diver that he knew in the eastern basin region commented to Tom once about water clearity, and that they had to use lights on dives deeper than 60-70 feet, and now they don't use lights until they get down to 200 feet.   Tom thought about that concept, and how clearer water may actually make the lake trawls less affective, becuase the alewives are able to see the trawl nets coming, and simply avoid the nets, making the data bias to lower than actual alewive abundance.  I'm not sure if he ever wrote a paper on the subject, or had data to show that night time trawls could be more affected, but he strongly felt that their data is bias becuase the fish are just able to evade the net.  When he suggested that they experiment with night trawls they pretty much told him the same thing we were told the other night, they there data collection is a sound scientific method.

 

If you look the alewive abendance chart that was presented at the meeting, it's the same chart that is presented at every state of the lake meeting, you can see a gradual downward trend throughout the 1990s as the lake was becoming clearer, as more and more muscles colonized the lake.  I'm sure there was drop in alewive abundance to do less food being available in the bottom of the food chain, but I'm sure Tom was on to something with this theory of net evasion also, and it's a theory that could explain the disparities in what the biologist data suggests and what us fisherman are actually seeing in the lake.

 

Unfortunately this did not pop in my head until I was driving home late Tuesday night and digesting all that was discussed.  Perhaps this question or theory could be pushed towards the biologist from a groupl of fisherman, like LOU, or groupl of captains, like the Genesee Charter Boat Assoc, and put some pressure on these guys to think outside the box on this, but likely won't happen. 

 

Again, thanks to Jerry and Sam for putting that together the other night. 

[Silver Fox]

Remember they still don't have the results from the July super sonar cross section of the lake. The fish can't avoid that.

[Jolly II]

Remember they still don't have the results from the July super sonar cross section of the lake. The fish can't avoid that.

Very good point Scott.  That will be interesting data to look at. 

 

I'm sure the alewives took a helluva a hit last winter, but it's just hard to swallow their data sometimes after seeing what we saw this year.

 

Now... back to the treestand!!

[edwardvh1]

Great points on water clarity and alewives avoiding the trawl net. Makes sense to me. But then I don't have a degree in fisheries management. Bottom line is when you try to play god its not always easy to do.

[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

Thanks for sharing, Chris. Your Uncle Tom was "the man" when it came to these topics. He was a wealth of knowledge, and he loved to share it. His heart was in fisheries management, and you could tell he was proud of the Chinook program and the resurgence of the Lake Ontario fishery.

[GAMBLER]

My beef with bottom trawls is alewives suspend most of the time unless they are at the intersection of the thermalcline and the bottom. We saw them dragging the net one day this summer and they were way outside the thermalcline/bottom intersection area.

[Sweet Caroline]

Still seems odd that we aren't seeing an abundance of legit 40lb salmon if there is so much bait around. Are all the salmon maturing early because of all the bait and not making it to age 4? In the 80's and 90's did they all mature late because there wasn't enough bait and many were able to make it to 35lb to 40lb by staying in the lake an extra year? Did the hatchery used to get all 3 and 4 years olds and now they get 2 and 3? I don't disagree that there seems to be alot of bait in the lake, but I just don't understand why the salmon seem to be getting smaller on average? I'm purely basing this from the salmon tourneys that I have been fishing for the past 30 years. Does anybody have any actual stats on the average weight of salmon over the last 20 to 30 yrs by age class? I would think that would be a decent indication on the health of the bait population.

[daker1979]

A-Lure-A, agreed.  I'm just wondering is it time for an influx of new eggs from the Northwest.     Has the inbreeding of Lake Ontario salmonoids over the years caused a smaller breed  of fish?......

[Yankee Troller]

It's funny you guys mention that, because it's the one thing I took away from the meeting. I saw the chart showing the age maturity at the hatchery, and 2-3yr olds rule the roost, and it looks like it's trending that way over the years. However, according to the chart there weren't the amount of 4yr olds most people think exist in the Lake.

 

I think a new shot of eggs from out West would be a great idea, and a way better use of a tagging trailer to see if those fish mature older.

[Gill-T]

Anyone who has raised tropical fish as a kid will know that the smaller the container, the smaller the fish. I know the Atlantics and Lake Trout in the fingerlakes do not get as big as the ones in Lake Ontario. Stands to reason Lake Ontario being smaller that the Pacific Ocean, should have smaller fish. There has been discussion of how chemicals in plastic effect the hormone levels and could cause early puberty. I wonder if a similar thing could be going on with the early maturing of salmon at age 2? There are certainly enough used tampax applicators washed up on Olcott Beach to supply the plastic byproducts.

[Rich D]

Many of us that have watched the size, and year classes shrink over the years have discussed the inbreeding/weakening of the gene pool. We are in favor of seeing the DEC bring new genes back into our system. Unfortunately as we all know the DEC is state run and the govt controls it. So we will be put on the back burner due to $$$$ even though there is hundreds of thousands of dollars in the account. Maybe we need to all, meaning captains, river guides,weekend anglers and anyone with a vested interest in our fishery to come together and voice our opinion on bringing in new genes. My personal opinion is we should still be clipping all hatchery fish, not just letting the trailer sit there unused, to continue the study on wild bs hatchery. It does not cost much to run all of the fry through this system.

Here is another thought about the baitfish and trawls. The water has changed, and so has where the baitfish are holding. They are still using the same grid to do these trawls, so if the water temp, clarity, and food are diff from year to year, the trawls will show a significant change in population, even though the real population is only 2 -5 miles one way or the other.

These are something's to think about for the state of the lake meetings in the spring.

Capt Rich

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