where are the salmon

[Silver Fox]

Funny you say browns,

Up to 2009 was a phenomenal tributary (SR) brown trout fishery for myself .. I haven't seen it near as close since.. Funny thing is "I" blamed the lake harvest.. Who knows.. I have caught 2 browns on the lake this year.. 1 in the 15lb range in June and the other in 5lb range in Aug..

Bt fishing was completely aweful this year. I've NEVER seen it so bad. I'm hoping it was just a funking year and all is good, but the stories I hear about how Sandy Creek gets absolutely crushed with poachers kind of makes me wonder. All them fish in a small area. The place looks like a brown trout graveyard after they yank the eggs. Some take fish to hidden coolers and get more limits. Its a complete mess and because its hunting season, their are no Dec around. Oh yeah, and when they do ticket someone, it gets thrown out of court.

silverfoxcharters.net

[Sk8man]

Great posts Gill-T and King Davy and great sense of humor as well ....something we all need to keep at the end of this season. My son and I trolled from 7 AM until 430 PM yesterday from Sodus Point to Hughes and back without a hit with 6 rods out but worse than that we hardly marked a fish and very little bait and we fished from 40 ft. to 430 and back depth-wise. I had assumed that we would run into some matures enroute east or some silvers out deeper but it was a vast wasteland in appearance out there. Am I giving up on Lake O for ever? Hell no....it is just one of those years in a down cycle probably for most or all of the reasons stated and I look forward to giving it a go next year and hope for the best.....this situation is de ja vous for the many folks who have fished out there for many years. Don't lose heart....this lake has come back from many severe problems

Edited September 17, 2015 by Sk8man

[Gill-T]

Gill your math is great if the numbers in your equation are correct. Less then 10% of the stocked and wild fish are making it to adult sexually mature stage. Actually a lower number has been the norm since the start of this whole fishery. When it comes to numbers they HAVE to be accurate. We wouldn't have any kind of predator to prey imbalance as people are wary of if we had those numbers of salmon in LO. It's just not the case. Of the three year classes take the 2.1M that goes it...for round numbers sake let's say 10 M fry hatched in all the lake....that's 12 million salmon in one year class. That's 1.2m if 10 % survived, and 600K at best if the normal 5% survived. it's highly conceivable that the number is much closer to 5%....discount the YOY cause nobody is counting them as a target, now you are probably dealing with 1.2 M total 2/3 YO targets in the entire lake.

Mix in harvest by lake and trib anglers, fish that die who are handled and released, death by lamprey....cannibalism, add in two outrageous winters that may have killed many, toxic alewives and the number is even lower.

My point is, we all have to have a realistic understanding of the true numbers we are dealing with. Not what got stocked or what hatched. That's at the starting line....a fraction of them make it to the finish line....

and then Gill you said it best.....don't sell the boat and the tackle, we've had two really bad hands,(winters)that we'd all fold in high stakes poker.....Got to hang in there. And play the next hand.

Not to be too light hearted...but this flashed at me.....much like the cows asking you to eat more chikn'...

See a Salmon with a sign painted on it's side...."eat more lake trout"

 

 

I am not really trying to be accurate just generalizing to show percentages.  Those numbers I guesstimated are not scientific and include Canadian fish.  No I don't think there are 17 million 2 or 3 year olds swimming around at any time.....that would be a disaster.  The numbers I threw out there are fingerlings coming into the system and probably are low considering the amount of natural repro the North shore creeks are getting and the X-factor of what is happening in the Niagara (nobody will ever know).  The exercise is just to show that of the myriad of challenges facing a baby salmon getting to adulthood.......charter-take is miniscule. 

[Gill-T]

We will be hearing soon from the DEC about the trawler take on the health of baitfish in the Lake O.  The results of the trawler haul will show that we lost the 2013, 2014 YOY alewives due to the last two harsh winters.  With fall and winter time zooplankton species limited to Copepods and Mysis Shrimp....these species put on fat reserves (lipid sacs) in the fall as a primer to spawning over the late fall and winter.  After these zooplankton species mate and die there is a window during the winter where there is little food available in the system until the spring starts the process all over again.  With a system overloaded with adult alewives eating everything, the YOY alewives and emerald shiners starved.  This is a concern as you need these smaller baitfish sizes to feed the year 1 salmon enough so they can catch and ingest adult alewives.  The shaker kings I was catching this year were puny.  I was starting to see some bulges in stomachs on 1 year olds by my last outing over Labor Day.  Hopefully we had a good hatch this spring of YOY to feed the next generation.  The pain to the system could have smoothed out if the DEC and OMNR were allowed more flexibility in stocking numbers of Kings year-to-year to better reflect the bait populations need for predator balance.  We missed the mark badly with alewives numbers too high going into the winter of 2013.  Many of us were warning the DEC of the problem and advised more Kings were needed for the system at that time.  With the DEC/OMNR's hands tied with the international stocking agreement, there was nothing that could be done.  The DEC archaic trawler survey transects are outdated as they take the same routes when evaluating bait numbers that they did when they started recording bait levels in the 1970's.  The lake has changed and the bait is more concentrated in the Hamilton Harbor - Genny area......esp. in june.  The survey is spending a lot of time netting and surveying in dead water out deep where the baitfish have already left for the shallows. The result is inaccurate information about the true amount of bait in the lake.   That is why the DEC has been saying for years that alewife levels were decreasing while fishermen were saying the opposite.  Hopefully the state-of-the-lake meetings this spring where these discrepancies were brought to light might bring about change on how the DEC/FWS/OMNR evaluate bait levels to gain a better picture.  It would be nice when the new stocking agreement with Canada is worked out that greater flexibility in stocking numbers could be agreed to by both parties. 

[salmonboy41]

There are a lot of great ideas on this thread that should be looked into as many of these ideas can greatly help the Fishery.

Personally I'm starting to wonder if the issue is tied to the fact that lake wide populations of Smelt and emerald shiners are WAY down.  Which could cause issues for the young fish as the emeralds and smaller smelt would provide food for the young fish when there in that inbetween stage, where insects and such are not enough or to small and the Alewives are to big for them to eat.  This would cause a gap in food chain for the fish, then compile that with the harsh winters and you have even less for them to eat which would cause lower survival rates of yearling fish which leads to less mature fish like we are currently seeing.  This would also explain the thymine issue in the steelhead as well if the theory is correct.

[salmonboy41]

We will be hearing soon from the DEC about the trawler take on the health of baitfish in the Lake O.  The results of the trawler haul will show that we lost the 2013, 2014 YOY alewives due to the last two harsh winters.  With fall and winter time zooplankton species limited to Copepods and Mysis Shrimp....these species put on fat reserves (lipid sacs) in the fall as a primer to spawning over the late fall and winter.  After these zooplankton species mate and die there is a window during the winter where there is little food available in the system until the spring starts the process all over again.  With a system overloaded with adult alewives eating everything, the YOY alewives and emerald shiners starved.  This is a concern as you need these smaller baitfish sizes to feed the year 1 salmon enough so they can catch and ingest adult alewives.  The shaker kings I was catching this year were puny.  I was starting to see some bulges in stomachs on 1 year olds by my last outing over Labor Day.  Hopefully we had a good hatch this spring of YOY to feed the next generation.  The pain to the system could have smoothed out if the DEC and OMNR were allowed more flexibility in stocking numbers of Kings year-to-year to better reflect the bait populations need for predator balance.  We missed the mark badly with alewives numbers too high going into the winter of 2013.  Many of us were warning the DEC of the problem and advised more Kings were needed for the system at that time.  With the DEC/OMNR's hands tied with the international stocking agreement, there was nothing that could be done.  The DEC archaic trawler survey transects are outdated as they take the same routes when evaluating bait numbers that they did when they started recording bait levels in the 1970's.  The lake has changed and the bait is more concentrated in the Hamilton Harbor - Genny area......esp. in june.  The survey is spending a lot of time netting and surveying in dead water out deep where the baitfish have already left for the shallows. The result is inaccurate information about the true amount of bait in the lake.   That is why the DEC has been saying for years that alewife levels were decreasing while fishermen were saying the opposite.  Hopefully the state-of-the-lake meetings this spring where these discrepancies were brought to light might bring about change on how the DEC/FWS/OMNR evaluate bait levels to gain a better picture.  It would be nice when the new stocking agreement with Canada is worked out that greater flexibility in stocking numbers could be agreed to by both parties. 

Darn it Gill-T you beat me to the enter button on my post. eventhough yours is way more detailed.  needless to say I totally agree, and I think the ideas that have been posted on the this thread could greatly help to reduce the possibility of what is currently happening from happening in the future.

[Gill-T]

Darn it Gill-T you beat me to the enter button on my post. eventhough yours is way more detailed.  needless to say I totally agree, and I think the ideas that have been posted on the this thread could greatly help to reduce the possibility of what is currently happening from happening in the future.

 

I am done talking now....LOL.  Time to get ready for fall.

[Tall Tails]

We will be hearing soon from the DEC about the trawler take on the health of baitfish in the Lake O.  The results of the trawler haul will show that we lost the 2013, 2014 YOY alewives due to the last two harsh winters. 

 This was confirmed by the Region 7 manager last night at our public meeting.

[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

Gill-T, I for one appreciate your posts on this subject. Your observations as a veteran "weekend warrior" are spot on. I have said all along the Skippers appear desperate, recklassly hammering everything that comes within a mile of them. Yes, there is not enough pelagic predators to control the massive adult alewife population. The last few days I've spent alot of time offshore in deep water, there are ample large bait schools(adult alewife), but very little on it. Lake Ontario has always had excessive alewife schools. As a contrast, in August of 1983 we were off Manistee trolling number 3 J-Plugs on every rod(why not, it was a west coast SALMON lure!) Schools of bait were not commonly trolled over, but one mid morning we had a school fill the screen-- EVERY rod went off with screaming adult Salmon-- all in the 20lb range. Now ask yourselves, how many schools of bait did you troll over the last two seasons and not even take one rip? What we experienced on that trip was DENSITY of Salmon, enough to be competitive.

 

Just a point on "charterboat harvest."   Let us not ever forget the economic generator that each fish brings to NY. The average Charter party is spending gobs of money on the way through NY, and at their chosen harbor town at restaurants, motels, general shopping, and of course with the boat Captains. The local resident Captains then of course spend the money in their local communities. When push comes to shove, economics are one huge justification of many to continue the program.    

I am done talking now....LOL.  Time to get ready for fall.

[TileMan Dan]

Vince, how were you able to determine the bait schools you trolled over were adult alewives? What kind of electronics are you running on you boat ? Please explain you scientific method you use to arrive at these conclusions !?!!!??

[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

Hi Dan, It's ok, I've been down this road before. If you want to minimize 40 yrs of Lake Ontario observation with the last 30 as a Full time professional--feel free. I know what I see on my electronics--they capture the alewives suspended--where the bottom trawls miss them. The adult alewife are ALWAYS on the feed, but especially now with winter coming. We have participated VOLUNTARILY in EVERY stomach contents study done by either NYS or the Feds, and look at thousands of stomachs every season. The Salmon this season have had 99.9% adult alewife of what was recognizeable. The skeletons that were not identifiable were also large in nearly every case. We did have some casualties of skippers that we would normally release. Several of these only had insects in their stomachs.

Vince, how were you able to determine the bait schools you trolled over were adult alewives? What kind of electronics are you running on you boat ? Please explain you scientific method you use to arrive at these conclusions !?!!!??

[GAMBLER]

Aren't most YOY alewives found inshore in brown waters?  Hopefully we have a very mild winter and things get back on track.  This is my biggest fear when they stocked more lakers.  If there are two bad years of YOY alewives, another bad winter we could have bait issues down the road.  If it was extra kings they stocked, we could get them out of the system in a couple years and minimize the damage.  We will not be able to get the lakers out of the system for a long time and we could be in trouble.  They say lakers are eating mostly gobies but the majority of baitfish spit up when we fish lakers are ALEWIVES.  This past June, we were trolling the bottom in 120 fow and watching fish streak back to the empty bottom and then the rods would pop.  The upper part of the water column was loaded with alewives and they were spitting them up like crazy.  Most of the lakers we found this year were not on structure, they were under bait schools.  Normally, I find my lakers hugging the bottom on structure.  Not the case this year.  I had to fish the bait schools like they were structure. 

[Gill-T]

Brian, a Canadian charter captain I know told me during the fall of 2013 while out fishing the blue zone near the fence there was a YOY school of alewives on top of the water that was 5 miles long. I think most of the small fish get spun to the middle by the toilet bowl effect of the lake currents.

[Yankee Troller]

I'm one of the few that fishes both the lake and the streams HARD. This season on the lake it was horrible the last half of the season. April-June was pretty knockout if you fished from Rochester to the West. I kept telling myself all Summer "they are gonna show." They never really did. Labor day weekend is one of my favorite weekends of the season. I try to book 4-6 charters in that 3 day span every year. I fished 4 trips this past labor day and had a total of 18 bites between 4 trips. Where did they go is right?!?!?!?!? Oh, and by the way I bet in one day I went over 30+ pods of bait, and only 1 or 2 had fish on them. This is offshore fishing. Those pods should be loaded with 2yr olds and Steel. Nothing but happy unpressured bait out there.

Last season I was dead set on the fact we lost a class, but that wasn't the case this season if you fished this Spring. There were 20lb fish taken in April and it continued to be great Salmon fishing through May. Also, I hate to say it, but last Fall/Winter Steelie die off was worse than we expected. In July and August COMBINED I don't think I cleaned more than 20 Steelhead fishing 3-5 charters a weekend OFFSHORE.

Here's my gripe. I'd like to see the state stand up to Uncle Sam. People are not driven to this lake, and spending their hard earned money on Lake Trout. Do I like that they are there? YES! There I said it! However, the population is beyond plentiful! If I can go out and get a 4-6 man limit in under an hour EVERYTIME with only 2 rods in the water there has to be a mega population down there. Show the feds the data, stats, and financial gains. Let that money they have help the state financially with BOTH the Salmon (Chinook and Coho) and Steelbow programs.Those are the sportfish that drive the local economies. Not to mention Salmon stocks can be rotated through the system much faster than Lake Trout in case a predator/prey unbalance.

It's proven when Salmon are around people wont fish for any trout unless you're Brian Gambell.

I will end with this. Starting in April when we were smoking the Salmon in Rochester. Then it carried on at the first Tourney in Canada through our Summer. We saw two things on the Salmon that are worrisome to me. 90% of the Salmon we caught had "bullet wounds" on them. I saw baby lamprey to a few instances with 2 mature lamprey on one Salmon. They were getting hit hard all Winter by these eels, and throughout the Summer. I didn't notice it on Lake Trout almost ever. I'm sure the lamprey program isn't an easy one, but they need to take a closer look, because it has gotten worse out there. Is it possible the lamprey are killing our Salmon? They were there thick this Spring, but disappeared late in the season. Also, we caught a lot of Salmon in the first half of the season with half a gill plate on one side. I don't know what that means.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Yankee Troller

[Sk8man]

Great points Rick   There is a lot to think about and mull over in this thread.I think the picture is becoming clearer in some respects as the season is rolling on (and the fish just aren't showing up) ....so much for the "delay" theory.  After the other day I'm pretty convinced the salmon just aren't out there in any numbers right now for whatever reason (s).

Edited September 18, 2015 by Sk8man

[pvelyk]

I had a half gill plate fish this year and I thought and hoped it was an anomaly due to poor fish handling procedure at the hatchery or the fish being release as a skipper out on the lake.  The plate the fish had was very thick so I assumed that part of the plate got folded in an fused. But now that you bring this up this seems like it might be a bigger issue.

 

 

[Sk8man]

Hopefully they are not "escapees" from gill netting activity

Edited September 18, 2015 by Sk8man

[Gill-T]

 This was confirmed by the Region 7 manager last night at our public meeting.

 

Brian, was there any discussion regarding the amount of "gill plate missing fish" at the meeting?  I would be interested to know if the alarm bells have gone off with biologists yet or do we need to tell someone our concerns?

[Patriot]

Not sure what the target was but there were a few nets set out in front of Oswego, a few weeks ago, during the loc

[Gill-T]

Gill plate questions should come from a member of one of the Charter Associations as it will carry more weight.  Contact James Johnson at Tunison lab via email [email protected] .  Use your personal email as I have no idea how their outlook email service works.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Gill-T

[Fishtails]

I have always been a hopeless optimistic, so this thread is killing me because you all make such great points. Vince, Davey, Chad and some others - you guys are spitting out views I never even thought about. This is GREAT stuff, though I admit all this info I apparently lacked has me feeling a little lake dumb at the moment     

 

So as I let this all process, my optimism for Lake O fishing next season is beginning to wane. Are you kidding me right now ? That's not how I want to spend my off season   I spend every winter PUMPED for the following spring like a little kid looking forward to Christmas.

 

I witnessed all the same things the rest of you did this year. I did NOT know about the YOY alewives and now catching all those 1 yr old salmon makes much more sense. That year class obviously took a big hit this season and are in all likelihood not in great shape going into the winter.  The 2 yr old class of Chinooks helped fill a void as we searched for mature kings and after a great spring they started to vaporize. Steelhead were also sparse this season and that was apparent from the OOO right on through the season from one end of the lake to the other.   IMO, Steelhead survival was sub par as I found them extra difficult to revive with many going belly upon release despite my efforts to revive. I contributed this to the deep temps we experienced this season pushing the fish deeper and lengthening the battle once hooked. I did not cull a single steelhead this season, though I may have killed many.

 

The brown trout saved me this season and I became much more efficient at catching them and that's what I personally took away from the 2015 season. I even targeted lake trout a couple times this season. Like many I was forced out of necessity to fish a different species and new waters this season and now I have that experience and knowledge moving forward. That my friends is what I live for. Being forced out of a comfort zone to explore new adventures. The old when life gives you lemons theory. 

 

I am not putting bass rods on the boat just yet, but I do see the next couple years as a potential grind and the experiences gained over these past two seasons will certainly pay dividends. I never had a skunk on my boat this season (or last season for that matter), though I did have a raccoon once   .  Lake Ontario ALWAYS has something to offer and perhaps seasons like this are necessary to teach us to diversify. I just hope I'm not forced to fish lake trout next year, or the bass rods might become a reality.

 

Keep up the awesome thread my friends, this is the best read on LOU in years !!

Edited September 18, 2015 by Fishtails

[ShawnPin]

The USGS boat has been in olcott the last few days. Looks like it set up a field of bouys from 50' out to about 200' just west of the harbor. Does anyone have any info on what that may be for..?

[Gill-T]

Probably Adult Lake Trout survey. They spawn in November.

[Yankee Troller]

Another concern of mine are the pen programs. A lot of people (state employees and volunteers) put a lot of time and effort into this program. I personally want to thank you for all of your time and effort as do the Cormorants. 

Edited September 18, 2015 by Yankee Troller

[Sweet Caroline]

Probably not what people want to hear, but wouldn’t it make sense to stock less Kings after a Spring of poor alewife recruitment and more after a Spring when there is strong recruitment? Instead we stock the same amount each year regardless. If my understanding is correct, an alewife hatched in May or June doesn’t become food for a 1yr salmon until the following Spring? So if the Spring of 2015 had poor recruitment then you would stock less salmon in the Spring of 2016. Conversely, if the Spring 2015 had strong recruitment then you could stock more in Spring of 2016? Seems more logical to manage the salmon stocking in parallel to the previous year alewife recruitment then just to dump in the same amount regardless? There probably were many years we could have stocked many more salmon and years when we should have cut back.

My fear is that if everybody is saying that we now have 2 bad years of YOY alewife anything we stock on top of the cannibalism by the adult alewife will decimate what is left. Seems like we could be setting ourselves up for a disaster. If there is a huge population of adult alewife out there now and we have a warmer winter we have the potential to have a great 2016 YOY and we could potentially stock many more salmon in 2017. I’m willing to accept the good with the bad if that we means we have a stable fishery for years to come.