Dead Gobies?

[Pierless]

Thought I'd see if I could start a discussion here,...

With the amazingly clear (and cold) water we've had it has been quite easy to see the bottom. Yesterday (Apr. 27th) I started seeing dead fish on the bottom. They were about 6" - 8" long and belly up on the bottom. Some appeared to have their bellies ripped up/open.

I suspected that they were Gobies, as they weren't very long and had rather fat heads/forward parts of their bodies. Finally, I saw one that was belly down and looked really like a Goby, except for it was grayish and not the typical brown color I have seen in living specimens.

I saw these dead fish all the way from Hughes to the Sodus Point channel. In most cases they were one here and there, apparently stuck in the spaces between smaller rocks. In some places, like in about 6fow off of Boller Point they were a bit more numerous.

When I got to the channel and went in there was a bunch of fish lying on the west pier. I asked one of the pier fishermen if the dead fish on the pier were Gobies. He shouted, "Yup." That fairly much answered the question about what kind of fish I'd been seeing scattered on the bottom for miles on end.

I know very little about Gobies. As they are appearing dead all over the place and in coincidence with the poorest brown trout fishing I've had in the past 8 years, or so, have to wonder something about them.

Has anyone else noticed these dead fish?

I've heard that Goby patterns are working fairly well on browns etc. Are the browns just gorged full of them and eating them preferentially ignoring everything else that swims buy? (If so, is this the end of the "Goby problem?")

Do Gobies have intolerance to temperature changes like some of the other fish in these waters?

I know there's an armchair ichthyologist out there with all the answers!

Thanks,

Pierless

Neil

[LongLine]

Neil,

One of the guys from the DEC, at the "state of the lake" meeting said the gobies go deep in winter. I imagine that means they can take awful cold water. Also that just about everything is eating them. I take this as to mean we have to do some adjustments to our techniques.

I did see a few small dead fish on the bottom off shipbuilders weekend before last. Couldn't ID them though. Definitely greyish-white bellies. There also were a lot of birds in the water, the diving type. Neat to see them dive down & guess where they'll come up. I don't know what "damage" they're doing.

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[gokudl3]

I think it was two years ago in Wilson bay near cape vincent and i was out near the middle of the bay heading to Mud bay and the water was crystal clear. I stopped to admire the great day and looked down(about 15 feet) and i almost crapped my pants when i saw how many dead Gobies there were. In spots you couldnt even see the bottom, that was a while ago and i have never seen anything like it since nor do i remember if it was early in the season or not.

[bringley]

I was off Shipbuliders a few weeks ago and noticed an abundace of dead gobies I would bet that the amount of dead ones that you see is like throwing a deck chair off a cruise ship as far as the total pop. of that species goes, prob just normal die offs from the winter. As far as the birds go there were lots of mergansers which are very common to this area and are considered diving ducks that feed on small fish. The merganser prob. do little damage to the fishing resource it's the darn cormarants that you should worry about!

[walrusb]

3 years of awsome perch fishing from my boat in my marina. About 4 comarants moved in for a couple days. Havent caught another since.

I hate them.

PS. I thought the gobies were indigestable for our resident fish and birds. Thus the piles of dead gamefish and birds that washed up on the shores of lake erie afew years ago when they were first discovered???

[fosterm22]

every fish I have caught this year has had gobies in their mouth

[LongLine]

BR - At the state of the lake meeting they said the Goby population was the about same or a little more than the Rainbow smelt population in Big-O and increasing. (Hopefully still a minority compared to alewives) I don't know what the birds were. All I know are gulls, commorants, ducks & geese. They definitely weren't gulls, commorants or geese & there must have been 300 of them scattered around shipbuilders. There were fairly large black ones and those that flap their wings at 90 miles per hour. I agree with the commorant problem.

Walrus - Gobies are very digestable. They're carriers of diseases (botulism) which is killing the other wildlife.

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[bringley]

The bird is are Mergansers both red brested and common they are migrateing through here this time of year, there were also some other assorted diving ducks out there but it was 90% Mergansers. Duck Hunters like me dislike shooting them because of the horrible taste due to the ammount of fish that they eat!