State of the Lake Summary

SOL 2013 Summary is now posted on the DEC website.  Full report by May. 
 
http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/fish_marine_pdf/lou2013hilights.pdf
 
Go to the Lockport or Pulaski presentations if you can, a lot of great information.  A couple of points:
 
Coho returns were good last fall, higher than usual egg take toward mid October, but poor egg eye up.  DEC thinks this was because eggs were for the most part taken at higher than optimum temperatures (either take them or lose the fish, they were starting to weaken and get fungus in the holding ponds)  As a result no fall fingerling coho stocking in 2014, numbers will be made up with Chinook which are at 100% plus of target now.  New protocol for 2014 will continue egg taking later if temps not optimum and if they get enough late eggs, they will dump the early ones. 
 
Conditions and numbers of salmon and trout were comparable to prior years, down a little but close enough to just be measurement error, I thought.
 
Alewife populations and conditions stable.  They did not say it but, I interpret that as an indication that the right numbers of fish are being stocked in relation to the amount of natural reproduction.
 
Highest Catch per unit effort recorded for lake trips in the history of the fishery.  Average catch per charter trip was approximately 8 fish, private boat average more like 2 fish per trip.  The pros know their stuff, and the technology and internet are definitely helping.
 
Average 3 year old king returning to the hatchery was 37" long weighed 23 lbs.
 
3.5 hour meeting and discussion, I can't get it all here, get to one of the remaining meetings if you can, check the summary and devote a few nights (ha!, maybe a month of nights) to reading the full report when it is released later in the spring.  And tell all the newbies you see on the tribs how much better it is out off the boats!
 
L13

Thanks Chuck!
 
First thing I notice is a decrease in lamprey scars.
I thought I saw quite a few this year and my memory is that others seemed to feel the same.
Maybe the fish I caught were biters because they were weaker because of lamprey attacks?
 
Over 75 % of chinooks caught in SR were wild fish.
 Overall 7-20% wild.
Given proper conditions ( better summer flows, overhead shade lowering temps) other streams wild number would grow to match?
 
New well at SR hatchery is good news!
 
Did they mention exactly what portions if I C banks they were looking at rebuilding?

I think the State portion of the IC work is in Powdermill where there are a couple of spots (up toward the camp is one), where debris and beaver action have been causing a lot of erosion.  US Army Corps had a lower creek project in Ellison, but I think they dumped it, too low a habitat score or something. 
 
I spoke with Mike Connerton about the fin clip work and some western tribs.  Lower success of natural reproduction is also a function of substrate.  Long stretches of some WNY tribs are mainly bedrock or finer gravel.  Kings like cobble (think softball or grapefruit), and some tribs have very limited amounts.  He said he walked on WNY trib last November and there were still kings spawning, but there were limited spots. SR has large areas of cobble (think about the area upstream of the William Perry Memorial hole, there are salmon out there almost to Thanksgiving).  Shade and temp are also factors, that is why the Atlantics went extinct in LO to begin with, but without the right size substrate, there is nowhere for the eggs to develop. 
 
L13   

This also brings up another question to my feeble mind.
With only 6-13 % straying (and I assume that is the number straying to the SR, one of the bigger flows)
Where do all the kings in I C come from?
Some years fairly significant numbers  other years only dribs and drabs.
 
 
 

Lucky- What about Shipbuilder's?  I remember trolling off that area for Spring Browns and was told that it gets a good run of fish provided the water levels are good.

I recall Combs saying that on the West Coast, they figure an average of 10% strays in any system, sort of a natural fail safe system.  If all the fish returned to their natal streams and you get a Mt St Helen's event like on the Cowlitz, you would never get another run without the dribs and drabs from other systems, also maintains  genetic diversity.
 
I got called for spot burning a couple of years ago and last fall  as well, so I'm not using "real" stream names anymore except for big rivers.  Suffice it to say that everything from step a crossers like Mustela creek to the Genny, Black and Niagara, gets a fish now and then.  And some have natural reproduction documented back to mid 20th century rainbow plantings way before the current program.  Certainly water temperature is a huge limiting factor for recruitment (fish attaining a size that allows them to be a part of the fishery), but the eggs have to hatch out to fry, and what Mike C was saying is that a lot of the streams have limited substrate of the right size for the number of fish that come into spawn.  If Pair B spawns where Pair A spawned last week, a lot of Pair A's eggs are wiped out by Pair B.  And Kings need the bigger, rounder stones, areas of which are limited in these shale bottomed streams that were stripped of a lot of cobble over the last 200 years for building all those beautiful cobblestone houses we see in WNY (and yes a lot of those were also picked up from fields after frost heaving from the winter, but the ease of gravel harvesting from streams is well known, part of the reason for Article 15 of ECL).  Low flow is also a function of shade removal, but it is related to conversion of the whole watershed to greater amounts of impervious cover, rooftops, parking lots, roadways, etc, that cut off percolation to groundwater and route runoff directly to streams in rainstorms, causing higher highs, lower lows and shorter duration to the " events", what is called greater flashiness in the stream, instead of the aboriginal forested condition where a lot of water gets held in the leaf canopy and slowly reaches the ground and mainly infiltrates to groundwater, keeping flows between storms higher and cooler. definitely what has  happened in IC over the last 30 years.  Also, the silt at Russo may come from development upstream and settle at Russo due to lower gradient.  Eliminate the source of sediment upstream in the PM area (and at places like the old Sheafer Landfill in Ontario County), and the stream will gradually clean itself in the depositional places downstream.  This is also evident in the areas below Philbrick since the wall got built.
 
I think I am in the run-on sentence competition!
 
L13
 

O K while I don't know anyone who enjoys fishing for rustbelt chrome more than I do, although you Lucky have been doing it as long as anyone and go back to your early childhood on the Finger Lakes tribs as I do and  big Bill was pretty excitable the day this year when we were hooking sparkly bright steel every 3 or 4 minutes between us for several hours straight ,would have been less often had we been more intent on landing them instead of concentrating on getting walloped repeatedly, I wasn't trying to imply that our GL tribs would be self sustaining of chinooks no matter what we do and I don't think I would even want that since they are non natives and I would rather see coaster brookies or landlocks  if we could take our tribs back to a pristine condition again but only that we could have perhaps some eggs in each streams basket in case there was trouble at the hatchery.
 
 
Another pretender to my thrown.
In your face.
 

Access should be secured first.
Fish do get beyond the falls at times.
I thought you were with me when I went up and found redds aplenty.
It was pretty silted above the dam so unless it flushed out I'm doubtful much success would come of the spawning up there
Seen them swim up the tube on the east side channel.
They should have spent some money on access a decade+ ago.