Something Strange in the water September 10!

[garrymny]

Saw something really weird for miles, only 30 feet down. This was present even with nothing in the water, no riggers, no divers, nothing. I Have no clue what it was. See pictures. The pic shown does show my riggers running far below. But when we quit, we pulled all gear, and it was still there! Didn't see it out in 400, and I've never seen anything like this in my three years of fishing lake Ontario. There were no fleas on our lines all day. Very few weeds. I put the fish hawk down and found 65 degrees there, versus 68 at surface. I even put out 5 color leadcore with spoon and it went untouched. Perplexed.

 

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[Todd in NY]

Yep, a mystery

[bandrus1]

Temp

[Todd in NY]

18 minutes ago, bandrus1 said:

Temp

 

That was my first thought, but his probe only registered a 3 degree difference.

[Earl28]

I had the same thing in some areas. It was not concert.

[Gill-T]

Plankton veil. 

[fisherman21]

Bull shark


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[rod hog]

maybe weeds caught on your downrigger cable

[Sk8man]

I think Gill-T has a plausible explanation or possibly a submerged band of algae traveling in the underwater current or at the upper region of the thermocline.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Sk8man

[Tyee II]

If you catch any fish in the area, check stomach contents. A few years ago we had a similar phenomenon on Lake Michigan. We cut some fish open and found them full of baby Perch that were schooling up suspended over deep water. Dense schools that showed up continuously like you were seeing.

 

We also had the same thing happen with misis shrimp.

[Lucky13]

Big schools of baby perch would correlate with a greatly reduced adult Alewife population.

[garrymny]

Lots of good ideas. No weeds on my rigger Cable when I brought it up and down.

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[Lucky13]

Algae are single celled plants. Even Cladophora, the long stringy algae that grows off the rocks and bottom, is single celled organisms living in a colony or association.  You won't see most species of algae on your rigger cables.

[alex1young]

I see this fairly commonly in the finger lakes.  Always assumed it was a temperature break (don't have a probe) or some type of plankton.  

[Lucky13]

Algae are phytoplankton, tiny critters are zooplankton.  Both reflect sonar.

[Yankee Troller]

Current line, Sea Flea band, or most likely a sharp temp brake. Did you go deeper than it with your probe?

[Lucky13]

I used to keep the sensitivity on my hummingbird on full, and I could pick up the top of the thermocline when trolling up in the Adirondacks.  Once I had the depth dialed in, I'd turn the sensitivity down and it would mark fish, but not the constant mark at the top of the thermocline.  Not as accurate as a temperature probe, but it got me in the zone more often than not.  The difference in density of the water between the different temperatures shows up on sonar.

[GAMBLER]

My fathers old paper graph used to show the thermalcline back in the day.  Old technology that worked awesome. 

[Yankee Troller]

38 minutes ago, GAMBLER said:

My fathers old paper graph used to show the thermalcline back in the day.  Old technology that worked awesome. 

 

My birds will mark it if there is a sharp break in a short distance. More so in Late July-August.

[Chowdaire]

How about this one from a couple of Septembers ago. Looks like braided rope.




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[Tyee II]

3 hours ago, Chowdaire said:

How about this one from a couple of Septembers ago. Looks like braided rope.




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I was getting this exact return on my HDS about a month ago on Lake Michigan. Perfect horizontal spirals. Might be a coincidence but the fleas were horrible every time I was getting those returns.

[Tyee II]

On 9/13/2019 at 7:37 AM, Lucky13 said:

Big schools of baby perch would correlate with a greatly reduced adult Alewife population.

Not necessarily true. The year of the perch (2015) was the year prior to the shrimp explosion we had. The next spring the Alewives were out in 300fow and didn't even come in to spawn until the middle of July because they were too busy feasting on the shrimp buffet out there. When they did come in there was an upwelling close to shore right after, and there were ****loads of Ales trapped in all the harbors (almost jumping in your boat) and a dieoff slick from Milwaukee to almost Chicago close to shore. Hardly what would make me think there was a greatly reduced Alewife population...and after they spawned the bait went right back out to the buffet far away from the Perch eggs.

 

Just when you think you have it figured out, Mother Nature throws a curve ball at you. 

[Tyee II]

I forgot to mention, the return Garry got is red on his HDS. wouldn't that signify a pretty dense return that wouldn't be red if it were just a thermocline? I mark thermal breaks all the time that my probe has proven (to me) to be and they are always just dotted streaks on the screen. Garrymny's return is darker red than his rigger ball just beneath it.

[Lucky13]

12 hours ago, Tyee II said:

Not necessarily true. The year of the perch (2015) was the year prior to the shrimp explosion we had. The next spring the Alewives were out in 300fow and didn't even come in to spawn until the middle of July because they were too busy feasting on the shrimp buffet out there. When they did come in there was an upwelling close to shore right after, and there were ****loads of Ales trapped in all the harbors (almost jumping in your boat) and a dieoff slick from Milwaukee to almost Chicago close to shore. Hardly what would make me think there was a greatly reduced Alewife population...and after they spawned the bait went right back out to the buffet far away from the Perch eggs.

 

Just when you think you have it figured out, Mother Nature throws a curve ball at you. 

The Perch don't eat the alewife, the alewife eat the perch.  The decline in perch numbers shows up in later years or, if the perch hatch and the alewife spawn overlap (and they always do to some extent) every year, there is a long term decline in the perch population.  This was discovered by fisheries research conducted in NYS by Bill Abraham, retired DEC Region 8 Fisheries Manager, and published by the American Fisheries Society.  If Lake Ontario still had the alewife population found in the sixties, there would be virtually no perch in the embayments and the big pond.  And correlations do not have to be perfect to be strong.  DEC has been reporting greatly reduced alewife populations since 2013, 14.  Maybe a western New Yorker can answer, how has the perch fishing been the last couple of winters out at Sodus Bay? 

[Tyee II]

What I was saying was the Alewives were not interested in the Perch eggs close to shore because they were out in 350fow eating shrimp, so the Perch were able to have a strong hatch...