Finger Lakes Community College, Walleye Culture Facility, Muller Field Station, Honeoye Lake

[cdq]

Hey Everyone,

 

Excited to announce that Finger Lakes Community College, Walleye Culture Facility, at our field station the Muller Field Station located on the South end of Honeoye Lake is in operation as of today. We will begin our Electrofishing runs two weeks from today and hopefully collect broodstock in order to artificially spawn the fish.

 

This operation is an educational environment in our Fish Culture Techniques class, using a hands on approach, and following state protocol to spawn Walleye and contribute back to the Walleye fishery in Honeoye Lake.

 

Walleye are a popular sportfish in New York State. Walleye were not originally found in Honeoye Lake, but ongoing stocking efforts which date back to the late 1800s propagated a population within the lake. Walleye are a spring time spawning fish. They need rock or gravel substrate to broadcast spawn their eggs. In the Honeoye inlet channel the substrate is mud and silt, eggs then land in the mud and do not survive causing a high mortality rate. With this partnership between the NYSDEC and Finger Lakes Community College we are able to bridge a critical gap between poor spawning habitat and high mortality by artificially spawning the walleye and allowing the eggs to survive and hatch in the culture facility.

 

With all this being said our FLCC Muller Field Station open house is April 21st. During this day the public can come see first hand how the facility is operated, the spawning process, and an Electrofishing demonstration.

 

This is also a great opportunity for visiting science classes to see the operation, and hopefully spark the interest of high school students to pursue a career in environmental conservation.

 

I will be posting more as we come close to the open house date, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask!

 

 

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[justtracytrolling]

Sounds like a great idea!  Be even better if you could hatch enough to help the other fingers as the state is too busy overpopulating Oneida and lakes like Conesus and Otisco get a thimble full every other year.  Such a shame considering Otisco produces MUCH bigger fish and faster.

Edited March 16, 2018 by justtracytrolling
Accidentally sent my post before it was done

[Xxx]

Yea this sound very exciting!! Especially us walleye nuts, I feel it the most sought after sport fish other than those overgrown kings in LakeO, if there would be a lake to walleye fish and catch eyes during the day hours or even in the early,hours of the day or night. Like Lake Oneida and Erie a day time bite would bring the finger lakes to life like nobody’s business!! I’d be giving serious thought to move to the finger lakes!! Closer and more fishing opportunities due to weather.  

[fishmandan]

Wonderful to hear! Keep up the good work. Thank you for posting


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[cdq]

Our walleye run has started, last Thursday was our start date for collecting brood stock. So far our numbers look great compared to recent years, here are the numbers.

Thursday March 29th- total of 3 walleye all were males

Friday March 30th- total of 2 walleye all were males

Did not sample during the weekend or on Monday

Today April 3rd- total of 113 walleye 102 males 11 females

In total 118 walleye have been captured 107 males 11 females

Just thought I’d share the numbers and some pictures with you guys, and also remind everyone April 21st is our field station open house where you can come down and see the culture facility in full operation!

I will be posting again soon with updated numbers

Thanks!


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[Gator]

 

We walked Conesus Inlet on Monday. There were lots of pike but very few eyes to be seen at the falls. However, most of the creek was mud, and visibility was low.

 

 

Edited April 6, 2018 by Gator

[Pequod1]

Glad you put some info out there. I had no idea that this was going on.  I’ll try visit and check it out.

[cdq]

Another successful day of sampling. Today our count was 73 walleye on one run, bringing our total to 191 walleye. I left in the middle of the work up of the fish so I don’t have new numbers on males and females. We will be dispatching 30 Fish tomorrow to send off to a lab in Maine for disease testing, do an Electrofishing run, and begin spawning tomorrow afternoon. I will post numbers of eggs tomorrow night.


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[fishmandan]

Keep up the good work. We are standing by for any new updates. Thanks again


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[anytime]

11 hours ago, cdq said:

Another successful day of sampling. Today our count was 73 walleye on one run, bringing our total to 191 walleye. I left in the middle of the work up of the fish so I don’t have new numbers on males and females. We will be dispatching 30 Fish tomorrow to send off to a lab in Maine for disease testing, do an Electrofishing run, and begin spawning tomorrow afternoon. I will post numbers of eggs tomorrow night.


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Looks like these fish are killed to get the eggs and sperm. They look to be all belly up. Who gets to eat them? 

[cdq]

Looks like these fish are killed to get the eggs and sperm. They look to be all belly up. Who gets to eat them? 

Fish aren’t dead, all still alive, they’re just still in shock from being shocked. Their air bladder gets bloated when exposed to the voltage. Once they get their strength back it’s like nothing happened to them.


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[cdq]

Another good day today, 41 Fish on not even one run (generator was being funky). 30 Fish were dispatched to a lab in Maine today, 232 total fish, 222 males, 10 females.

We were able to spawn today, we have one upwelling jar going which has approximately 304,023 eggs in it.


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[fishmandan]

Yes yes yes!!


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[cdq]

Just finished up this mornings sampling and egg take. We captured 29 fish, one being another big female. She gave us another jar of eggs. We didn’t collect the numbers of eggs however we got 1.25 quarts of eggs.


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[cdq]

Update:

Walleye are still going strong today captured 29 fish again however all of them are males. We held a female for about a week because she was hard, today she was finally ready to go so we now have 3 egg jars going. We calculated the number of eggs in our second jar and we have around 165,000 eggs in that jar. In total around 545,000 eggs, that number will go up once we get a count on water hardened eggs in the 3rd jar. Hopefully this warm up next week will bring more fish in, and enhance egg development.


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[zackblain]

Are you able to post the years take#'s along with past years data? Last years eye fishing was the best I can remember in my 20 years fishing the lake, with multiple year classes being caught and lots of short fish as well, which seemed to be absent or eluding us in the past. 

[Xxx]

Absolutely, guys and gals!! This is the most exciting thing I read about in years!! I wish all involved a very impressive out come!! Finally something other than silver fish related is happening 

[Fishnut]

This is great. My question is with so many eggs from so few females aren’t you afraid of not getting enough diversity in your jean pool?


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[FishinHank]

I remember going to FLCC and helping Foust put radio transmitters into a few walleyes. Was pretty fun. Glad to see this program is up and running. We did horizontal tows 3 days after the state would stock 7 million fry into Honeyeye and we didn't find ONE walleye fry. A whole lot of perch fry though.

 

Lots of males due to being early in the run? Are you guys going to hold some males in case the fun loving ratio switches?

[hybridlures]

Are you able to post the years take#'s along with past years data? Last years eye fishing was the best I can remember in my 20 years fishing the lake, with multiple year classes being caught and lots of short fish as well, which seemed to be absent or eluding us in the past. 

Zack 1998 to to 2003 was the best years I ever seen 2014 had some of the biggest avg fish I’ve seen. They need to make it 3 walleye 18 inches and keep stocking the crap out of it! Worst thing they can do is leave it 15 which was a mistake on there part this year.


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[fishmandan]

I agree 15 inches is way off, I was livid when I heard this. We are going in the right direction c’mon DEC let’s change it back to 18 ASAP!!


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[EsoxAC3]

This is really cool thread. Wish i was a little closer to honeoye.... Love to check out the open house with my boys. Keep up the good work![emoji1303][emoji226]


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[cdq]

Sorry I haven’t been updating lately, other classes starting to get in the way for me not being able to get down to the culture facility. Will update tomorrow after we get done with tomorrow’s work.

I can try and get past years data from my Fisheries Professor John Foust! We are seeing a very healthy year class of 2 and 3 year old fish. We will be aging fish from our scale samples which will give us a better understanding of the age classes in our adult population.

We will have a lot of genetic diversity mainly because we are putting 25-30 males for every one batch of eggs. A lot of the females we have captured so far never produced eggs over the winter.

Walleye populations specifically in Honeoye are dominated by males due to them being an r-selected species they produce a lot of offspring but the offspring is cheap and many don’t survive to sexual maturity. Having more males in the population especially in broadcast spawning fish species allows for better fertilization rates. Yes we are still holding males, hopefully with this warm up we get more females.

And DEC has changed the size limit back to 18 under John Foust’s recommendation. We also believe that the reason why the male to female ratio is very spread apart is because females are more susceptible to creel, because they reach sexual maturity at age 3 at 18 inches so they reach the 15 inch mark much faster then males do. So having that 18 inch limit protects those fish at least for one spawning cycle.

Again will give updates numbers tomorrow once we are done with sampling!


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[Xxx]

Thats a move in the right direction!! The Black River used to be 15" from the second island up to and above the dam in Dexter. Now i thought Ny was 18" state wide?? For walleyes.

[cdq]

Thats a move in the right direction!! The Black River used to be 15" from the second island up to and above the dam in Dexter. Now i thought Ny was 18" state wide?? For walleyes.

It is, Honeoye was the exception they made it 15 inches on that body of water, why that is I’m not sure.


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