&-17-16 Out of Hughes- Sure looks like a bait problem.....

[Sk8man]

Admiral Byrd and I trolled from 6:15 AM until 6 PM  from Hughes and threw everything but the kitchen sink at them. We started in about 140 and worked the water out to 200 plus and back in as we marked fish in there but not out as we went much deeper.  We ended the day with 4 kings (biggest about 14 lbs and smallest about 5 lbs) and 3 lakers biggest about 15 plus. All but the one laker (Spin-N-Glow) were caught on Spinneys and green flies (my home made ones and commercial ones so fly color was probably important ) Most fish came about 85-105 down. The largest king had a humongous 18 inch lamprey on it which we got into the boat and the Admiral applied his "loving touches" to its head with pliers. thus preventing its genetics from further dispersal. During those 12 hrs we did mark intermittent fish down deep in the 100 or so range and a few in the 60-75 ft range but they didn't seem interested in our offerings. The fish we did catch seemed to come out of nowhere especially the king I got on the 200 copper with mag dipsey and spinney/fly . No action whatsoever on the spoons regardless of presentation technique. Had one downrigger release with one on but gone when got to the rod. The most unusual thing is that we didn't see bait anywhere even when we cruised in closer after pulling lines etc. We saw a couple tiny things that could have been a small amount of bait  (or maybe flea pod) and that was it.  For the most part it appeared like a vast desert out there in terms of active life forms. In the past I've always seen some bait within that trolling range often hugging the bottom with some suspended at this point in the season especially considering we trolled past Ginna  to the west and half way to Sodus Point east. On a brighter note. the fleas weren't bad  even on a leadcore that was out for quite awhile and we didn't encounter the nasty biting @#%$&* flies . We also saw a few dead seagulls as reported buy others.

Edited July 18, 2016 by Sk8man

[Dex]

I'm in no way trying to debunk your observations, just sharing experiences in the same general area......

Fished Ginna west to IBay from last Tuesday thru Sunday with the exception of Thursday and there was bait EVERYWHERE from 55'-130' at times depending on the day. BT fishing was excellent with numerous 12-15lb fish landed and Kings up to approximately 29lbs - all of which were fat and well fed. Lakers were everywhere from 100-200 FOW and we all know where there are lakers there is bait (at least close by).

The last thing most of us want (IMO) is to spread a belief that the predator to prey relationship is out of balance cuz it just isn't the case.

Good fishing!!

Dex

Team Thrillseeker

[Sk8man]

Glad you responded as it sounds as though it is a bait distribution situation and that is a bit of a relief and also probably why the king action has seemed to be west of us for awhile.  Probably another good reason not to jump to possible conclusions based on just limited location data.  The fish we had also looked VERY healthy too so that is too a good indicator....was a bit disconcerting however to go so far and not see anything....

[A-TOM-MIK]

From nine mile point east to Pville (approx 45 miles of shoreline) the amount of bait in various locations is absurd. While targeting BT's many days I have to check my lines the way you would check fleas, as tyo not troll around with moon-eyes on my lures lol

I can see where areas (say 2-4 mile stretches of water) you could see no bait, but in the areas I have spent as noted the bait so far this year in 30-140 ft is incredible, only hindering fact is it is mostly adult bait

 

Tom

[Dex]

Couldn't agree more Sk8man - well stated.......

Gotta belief those big Chinnies will march eastward at some point!!! The Salmon River beckons......

Dex

[A-TOM-MIK]

On another note I also fished just west of Hughes yesterday for 6 hours, from 140-220 fow, I saw no bait, had a great day though (: The kings we were catching only had a 1 mile swim to all the bait they could ever want

Edited July 18, 2016 by A-TOM-MIK

[jimski2]

Were the fish you caught have empty or full stomachs? Were they long and skinny? This could answer your concern.

[Sk8man]

As I mentioned at least above  "The fish we had also looked VERY healthy too so that is too a good indicator" . Some fish released  but I think my buddy may have used the big laker that didn't make it for fertilizer in his garden or something so stomach contents not examined this time. We even commented at the time that their body shapes resembled "piggish browns" Thanks for the report Tom  encouraging except for the "adult only bait" not great for the near future....lets hope that turns around.  Sometimes with many species when there is a rapid and significant  downturn in their population they seem to kick up the reproduction cycles to help regenerate......I sure hope this is the case here too.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Sk8man

[LongLine]

Sk8 - I have long held the belief that alewives are NOT randomly distributed as has been the assumption that the DEC has made for many years.  I think you just gave testimony to that theory.  They are not strong swimmers and the currents in Lake O can be awesome.

 

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[Sk8man]

The currents were operating pretty strongly the other day too Tom and I agree that the DEC should be using different sampling strategies and models for making their assessments regarding the bait situation.  Many of their assumptions currently seem to  fly in the face of the experiences of many of the charter guys who probably spend many more hours out there than the DEC. I'm not faulting the DEC but merely suggesting they may need to revise their thinking a bit and pay a little more heed to incoming information despite it often being"anecdotal" in nature.

[rdebadts]

I fished in Sodus Thursday am, and the water from 50-110 was literally plastered with bait... Like I had a bait ball on almost every screen. Outside of 110 it cleared up. I worked a stretch from the old lighthouse to Boller pt and was in bait the entire time....

[Sk8man]

Good info and also good to hear that bait has been noted east a bit too   Thanks. This issue once again points up the real value of this website....the sharing of information and ideas.  In the old days the conclusion would have been reached (based on insufficient information) that the bait was lacking out there rather than distributed in a non-uniform manner both along the shoreline and depth-wise. We are all learning here and this sure underscores the importance of sharing information so that all of us can benefit from it.

[on the lam]

I believe two things. This year's king migration and the quality of the fish will be outstanding, unlike previous three years. But Tom's assessment of the majority of alewives being plentyful adults may have contributed to this. I'm hoping it's not a one and done situation.

[RUNNIN REBEL]

I have the highest confidence in this year's bait trawl assessments. I have attended meetings from Ottawa to Niagara /Ontario were I have talked with multiple Agencies/Colleges/scientist and fisherman (commercial to charter & everyday guy's) from every Great Lakes state and Canada about Predator/prey balance and Alewife in general. A lot of the questions I asked came from here ( LOU website ) you guy's questioned.
****This time US Agencies have worked more closely with their Canadian counter parts.**** There is more advanced Technology coming (especially in saltwater DEEP hydrocustics technology ) !!!!!

This is what we know:

The Alewife Bottom Trawl Survey has been conducted in the same way since 1978. It begins in mid-April and runs through early May depending on weather. It surveys all Alewife sizes and ages. You guys see the Adult abundance index and the Age 1 or Yearling abundance index which come from this bottom trawl survey. There are usually 120+ trawls that go into those indices. From 1978-2015 the trawls were collected by 2 boats (USGS and NYSDEC) and were only in US waters, *****starting this year 2016, it will expand to 3 boats and include Canadian waters as well****. Note, the spring bottom trawl survey can not collect Young of Year (YOY aka Age-0) Alewife because they have not been born yet. (Fish aging is weird, they are Age-0 until their first birthday) If you remember from the talk, we survey how many Alewife were produced in a given year, the NEXT year, because so many different factors influence their survival in their first year of life (and really first winter of life). So in 2016 we will have an estimate of how many Alewife were produced in the 2015 year class.

Lake Ontario is missing 2 consecutive year classes of alewife.

There is strong evidence that the 2014 Alewife year class was low (almost non-existent), and probably a low year class in 2013 do to the back to back cold - long winters. and when these two 'lows' are moving into the adult population, we are likely to see adult density decline in the next year.( VERY IMPORTANT: These remaining adults need to carry the spring spawns with no harsh winters the next few years ) As Tom Allen pointed out this year The majority of bait out there are the remaining spawners.
In normal cycle years When anglers are fishing and 'seeing bait', much of what they have to be seeing are age 1 Alewife, that is fish that were produced the year before. Age 1 fish make up 60-80% of all the Alewife in the lake! Those fish will be anywhere from 2 inches up to 5 inches. Litterally there are billions of those Alewife in the lake...but remember, if we are lucky, 25% of them will make it to be age 2. There may be tons, but in one year, 75% are gone.

 

[Sk8man]

Very interesting info (as well as disconcerting about the near future....lets hope for a mild winter (s) Thanks

[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

I have the highest confidence in this year's bait trawl assessments. I have attended meetings from Ottawa to Niagara /Ontario were I have talked with multiple Agencies/Colleges/scientist and fisherman (commercial to charter & everyday guy's) from every Great Lakes state and Canada about Predator/prey balance and Alewife in general. A lot of the questions I asked came from here ( LOU website ) you guy's questioned.

****This time US Agencies have worked more closely with their Canadian counter parts.**** There is more advanced Technology coming (especially in saltwater DEEP hydrocustics technology ) !!!!!

This is what we know:

The Alewife Bottom Trawl Survey has been conducted in the same way since 1978. It begins in mid-April and runs through early May depending on weather. It surveys all Alewife sizes and ages. You guys see the Adult abundance index and the Age 1 or Yearling abundance index which come from this bottom trawl survey. There are usually 120+ trawls that go into those indices. From 1978-2015 the trawls were collected by 2 boats (USGS and NYSDEC) and were only in US waters, *****starting this year 2016, it will expand to 3 boats and include Canadian waters as well****. Note, the spring bottom trawl survey can not collect Young of Year (YOY aka Age-0) Alewife because they have not been born yet. (Fish aging is weird, they are Age-0 until their first birthday) If you remember from the talk, we survey how many Alewife were produced in a given year, the NEXT year, because so many different factors influence their survival in their first year of life (and really first winter of life). So in 2016 we will have an estimate of how many Alewife were produced in the 2015 year class.

Lake Ontario is missing 2 consecutive year classes of alewife.

There is strong evidence that the 2014 Alewife year class was low (almost non-existent), and probably a low year class in 2013 do to the back to back cold - long winters. and when these two 'lows' are moving into the adult population, we are likely to see adult density decline in the next year.( VERY IMPORTANT: These remaining adults need to carry the spring spawns with no harsh winters the next few years ) As Tom Allen pointed out this year The majority of bait out there are the remaining spawners.

In normal cycle years When anglers are fishing and 'seeing bait', much of what they have to be seeing are age 1 Alewife, that is fish that were produced the year before. Age 1 fish make up 60-80% of all the Alewife in the lake! Those fish will be anywhere from 2 inches up to 5 inches. Litterally there are billions of those Alewife in the lake...but remember, if we are lucky, 25% of them will make it to be age 2. There may be tons, but in one year, 75% are gone.

 

image1.png

 

But yet they are moving "full speed ahead" to replace the top apex predator-the Chinook Salmon-with the federally funded, federally approved Lake Trout NOW. The new, improved, technology is COMING--but the decision to reduce Chinook stocking will be made quickly and quietly(sound familiar?) BEFORE the new technology comes.

The reason there is so much adult bait is because--THE NUMBER OF TOP END PELAGIC PREDATORS HAS BEEN WOEFULLY INADEQUATE to control the alewives in recent years--even with the last 2 hard winters. This has resulted in the large "top heavy" population of older alewives. These older alewives(much like a whitetail deer population) will suppress the "up and coming" year classes of alewives. They know this and that is why they are cramming long lived Lake trout down our throats because they are hoping they can control, if not eradicate the alewife.

I'm shocked, Jerry. It was easy for them to take you into the fold.    

[LongLine]

Jerry - The DEC/USGS guys do a great job - don't get me wrong.  The issue is that their trawl strategy is based upon the assumption that alewives are randomly distributed around the lake. This assumption is not necessarily valid.  Those 120 trawls only have a 10 minute duration and they are basically N-S. 

 

If they were randomly distributed then when a fisherman sees a pod then he wouldn't come back thru that general area time and again,  You wouldn't hear guys talking about, or having the "clean screen" syndrome. If they were randomly distributed then on every trawl the DEC/USGS would haul in their net with pretty close to the same number of alewives...each time. Interestingly, they never publish those numbers of quantity or location. 

 

They can tell us with pretty good certainty the mix and the condition of what they catch but they can't tell us with the same certainty the quantity out there.  Hence they publish "relative indices."

 

Also note: they changed the way they trawl a few years back as they changed the type of net/gear. Remember the "fouling" problem?

 

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

Jerry - The DEC/USGS guys do a great job - don't get me wrong.  The issue is that their trawl strategy is based upon the assumption that alewives are randomly distributed around the lake. This assumption is not necessarily valid.  Those 120 trawls only have a 10 minute duration and they are basically N-S. 

 

If they were randomly distributed then when a fisherman sees a pod then he wouldn't come back thru that general area time and again,  You wouldn't hear guys talking about, or having the "clean screen" syndrome. If they were randomly distributed then on every trawl the DEC/USGS would haul in their net with pretty close to the same number of alewives...each time. Interestingly, they never publish those numbers of quantity or location. 

 

They can tell us with pretty good certainty the mix and the condition of what they catch but they can't tell us with the same certainty the quantity out there.  Hence they publish "relative indices."

 

Also note: they changed the way they trawl a few years back as they changed the type of net/gear. Remember the "fouling" problem?

 

Tom B.

(LongLine)

I talked with the Canadian trawl captain while attending the Lake Huron scare session in Port Credit. They still cannot trawl under 200 fow due to tearing up gear and snagging the rough bottom. Its irrelevant anyway, its clear to me what's going on.

[ut_falcon]

Read through the 50 pages and counting on the michigan sportsman forum and they are pissed off with the lake trout agenda thats being pushed. Hope it's not too late for them to save their salmon fishery. It's a real wake up call for what is happening on lake ontario and we need to put the pressure on before it's too late. We keep hearing that cutting lake trout is a long term discussion but that discussion needs to start now.

[Ryno23]

But why would the state want that to happen? The sport fishery brings in a TON of money to them. If they destroy the salmon population the state is bound to lose a lot of that cash flow.

Not to mention all the people that depend on guys going up to the lake to fish for salmon.

I just can't see them wanting that to happen. Lake O is a huge resource to NY. I would think the reps from those counties along the lake would make damn sure that wouldn't happen either.

[machzrcr]

there was at least 2 if not 3 boats that were out with nets on thursday last week in front of ginna and east right in the line the bait was so curious to see if we ever see the reports from that.

We took this pic right near them.

Edited July 20, 2016 by machzrcr

[Sk8man]

I always enjoy hearing Vince and Tom's take on things and I think in this situation they have hit on important factors that should be considered in the equation regarding this predator/prey balancing act but I also recognize that the decisions made regarding this issue may be very much outside this issue itself or the common sense experiential information provided by fishermen or  "experts" regardless of the quality of it.  Although I have never been a part of the DEC or the Albany crowd I did spend more than half my life working in a state agency as a clinician and for awhile as an administrator. The state agencies run on various revenue  streams  which involve the Federal Government and federal funds. These funds change from time to time  to accomodate new Federal regulations and mandates which require the state to change their tactics and procedures (i.e. meeting the Feds requirements) in order to secure these funds as "new" revenue streams supporting their activities so they can continue doing and offering the things and services that they are presently involved in and they protect these vigorously. Where this may become important in this situation s that  the Feds seem to be pushing the lake trout as a "native" species or "natural inhabitant" of the Great Lakes with attached funding that may support side efforts of the DEC  and perhaps other related agencies as well I don't know.  The point I'm getting to here is that regardless of all the incoming information the state receives that seems to make sense to us as fishermen (whether sports angler or charter folks) they have a strong vested interest in maintaining their current revenue streams so things that may interfere with this may go by the wayside. The chinook salmon may be one such "casualty"  and not because of the predator/prey balance but because of bureaucratic involvement in the decision making process and the states vested interests. Chinook are my favorite fish out of all whether salt or fresh water and I find the current state of things very disturbing in terms of their future. We question why the state doesn't take into account the money coming in from fishing activities etc.it is because they don't directly receive the sum total of those dollars but they do with their revenue streams which are directly related to their valued activities.

Edited July 20, 2016 by Sk8man

[GAMBLER]

But why would the state want that to happen? The sport fishery brings in a TON of money to them. If they destroy the salmon population the state is bound to lose a lot of that cash flow.

Not to mention all the people that depend on guys going up to the lake to fish for salmon.

I just can't see them wanting that to happen. Lake O is a huge resource to NY. I would think the reps from those counties along the lake would make damn sure that wouldn't happen either.

1.  It has nothing to do with NYC or the capital district

 

2. The feds foot the bill for the raising of Lake Trout. 

 

 

 

 

My issue with the bottom trawl is weather.   Every year is different.  This year, the lake did not get below 42 degrees in the core of the lake.  The lake warmed quicker and bait was inshore very early this year (we see it in our intakes at work).  Can the YOY alewives be inside or outside the trawling depths depending on the weather?  The year classes of YOY alewives that seem to be missing were showing up in the stomachs of fish this spring that I fileted and in our intake at work.  I saw more 2" and less alewives than big ones early this spring. 

If they are going to jam lakers down our throats, we need to step it up and fish them and keep them.  No one keeps them and their population keeps continuing to grow. Even through the stocking short falls, the lake trout population continued to grow.  Now that they have added 300,000 more, it is going to explode.  Fishermen can control the laker population.  They are the easiest species to pin point day in and day out all season long. 

[Xxx]

Why would lakers be a bad thing? Because of the forage as they would be in jeopardy? Or is it the old mighty$$$. Taken away from the king program.

[GAMBLER]

Why would lakers be a bad thing? Because of the forage as they would be in jeopardy? Or is it the old mighty$$$. Taken away from the king program.

Lakers live long, eat a ton of alewives and eat all day long.  Ever have a king spray poop all over your boat like a sprinkler?  Not usually.  Lakers eat and eat and eat.  Think about it this way, kings die at 2-4 years old.  The life span of lakers is way longer. No one is keeping them or even fishing them for that matter.  If the lake trout population climbs, there is going to be more predation on alewives.  If the alewive population drops, they will cut stocking.  The thinking that lakers eat more of a diverse diet is true BUT they eat a ton of alewives.  I find gobies dominate a lakers diet in the early spring BEFORE the bait comes in to shore from wintering deep in the lake.  Once the bait shows up, the alewive numbers blow away the numbers of gobies in a lake trouts diet. Most days, you will not find lakers on the bottom unless there are alewives hovering above.  They follow the schools of alewives around and eat when they want to.  Areas that are not holding much bait, you will find some lakers but not good numbers.  I have seen as many as 29 alewives in the stomach of a laker (22lb laker I fileted working on Advocate charters in 2006).  When was the last time you found that many alewives in a 22lb king? 

Edited July 20, 2016 by GAMBLER