Clint S
As far as the Lakers I remember hearing something that there was a different strain of Lakers tried for a few years in limited numbers that had more of a tendency to venture up stream a little. Just hearsay, but do recall hearing it.

Lucky13
1.  No one has mentioned eliminating kings.  The Fish Community Objectives clearly name the king as the primary apex pelagic predator.  From what Tuna posted, "Maintaining the Lake Ontario trophy Chinook salmon fishery depends on having sufficient numbers of alewife to feed them and maintain good Chinook growth. A record‐high year class of alewife was produced in 2012 (the 2012 “year class”), however, reduced survival of the 2012 year class did not increase the adult population as managers expected in 2014 when these fish reached age 2. The two severe winters/cool summers of 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 resulted in very poor 2013 and 2014 alewife year classes, and the 2012 alewife year class likely makes up the majority of the current adult alewife population in Lake Ontario. The Lake Ontario Committee (“LOC”: Steve LaPan representing the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation [NYSDEC] and Andy Todd representing the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry [OMNRF]) is concerned that without young alewife to replace the adults that are eaten, there may not be sufficient alewife numbers to support trophy Chinook salmon in a few years."and "The LOC’s current concerns are not related to adult alewife abundance in 2016; we will not be surprised if fishing is excellent in 2016, and Chinook size is good as well. Our concerns surround the adult alewife spawning population in 2017 and beyond. Since a large portion of the adult alewife population should be composed of fish ages 3 ‐ 5, the LOC expects several years in the immediate future when the size of the alewife population will be greatly reduced. The LOC has asked the Lake Ontario Technical Committee to work together and provide the LOC with an assessment of the relative risks associated with a range of management options this summer."  The range of management options is kind of limited to stocking less of the predators, and since the main predators on alewives are King Salmon and Steelhead (pelagic fish all summer) it is likely that cuts will need to come from those species.  But remember that approximately 50% of the returning kings are wild, and they have no control over that.  2.   "increased invasive ( which is omitted)".  I know I've said this before, but, Alewife is an invasive species.  If this is  reference to gobies, it is known that all the predators consume gobies during periods of time when their temperature preferences overlap like early spring, but as the Lake warms the pelagic predators move out over deep water, the pelagic zone of the lake, while the gobies stay closer to shore and are benthic (at the bottom) in orientation.  The major prey in the pelagic zone is alewife.  Even if there were 10 times the gobies it would not help with the pelagic predators because they do not inhabit the same zone of the lake most of the year.  3.  "The boats marking huge schools of bait." Entirely possible that some boats find large schools, but relative abundance as measured by the trawl surveys says these schools are separated by a lot of water with few bait in it.  And they indicate that they expect a lot of bait this year, it is 2017, 18, 19 where the S hits the F.  I sense that Steve LePan sees maintenance of the current predator numbers as the kind of crapshoot that could leave us with a Lake Huron situation in 2020 or so; that is one weighty gamble for a professional fishery manager to make, as the current talk is that Huron is too far gone to ever recover a salmonid fishery. 4.  If, by eels , Dime is referring to lamprey, the pesticide is calibrated to have minimal effects on other organisms and it is relatively specific to lamprey larvae.  Dead adults is something else I think, and my recollection is that the lampricide is a fall application.  But this is all related to low alewife numbers, and the lampriciding has not effected any of this in the past, and they are not talking about juvenile kings when they quote the 50% natural recruitment numbers, that number is unclipped fish RETURNING TO THE HATCHERY. 5.  The Alewife spawn from late April through May, they should be done by now.  There seems to be a notion, especially among charter captains, that less stocking will mean poorer fishing, but if last years predators are eating this year's stockers, maybe stocking less could lead to better survival and somewhat larger size, which could actually be better fishing than what we had last year.  And this is flexible program, so once the bait fish abundance rises, so would stocking numbers, no one wants a lake full of dead alewife either.   But it is my sense that Steve and Andy are very concerned and they are the "pros from Dover" on this one!