I don't know what data has been reported for alewives for 2014. I know we had a die off down here in June, first time I saw dead alewifes since 2002, Region 8 fisheries indicated it was all along the lake. Past data says alewifes are seriously impacted by harsh winters, and 2013-14 was the harshest in a long time. If the Boat survey is skewed, it has always been skewed, DEC has been using it for years as an indicator of relative health of the populations. A lot of this also seems to be eastern Lake, as I saw lots of Salmon in the Genny, although they were late, and were still around into mid November, and that is reported for the Oak and 18 Mile as well. The lack of eggs everyone has spoken of could also be a function of steady moderate flows during spawning, so that the vast majority of eggs spawned actually got buried, or it could be what I speculated a while back, that a lot more salmon running late dug redds in the middle river where most of the posters here do not go, but a lot of savvy boat guides may have know of, as there were a lot more boats going out of Pineville, at least when I was there. I have yet to hear anyone I know in DEC comment on a bad salmon run, and they have certainly got their fingers on that pulse, as they depend on the eggs for the next few years. But since we are all free to speculate, here's another "perfect storm" scenario. ~60% of the returning kings when measured in the last couple of years are natural reproduction. My recollection is that June a few years ago was extremely hot. Maybe a whole year's worth of fry didn't make it to smolt in a "hot" river. As the last few years have been natives followed by hatchery fish, the gap in September could be the lost year class. This is transparent on the rest of the tribs because they don't have significant natural reproduction, they just had late runs of hatchery fish, but it would manifest as a major loss on the SR. Another possibility is that there was heavy alewife mortality, so a lot of fish hit the bottom in the deep lake from starvation, but then why only in the eastern basin as these fish rove the whole lake, traveling beaucoup miles in one day. As to the Thiamine deficiency, this is one thing that has been very well documented as a result of an alewife diet, and has been strongly implicated in reproductive failure, but if everything else is constant, why would it weaken rainbows this year and not other years (although there was that long period of nearly no steelhead) and why not other fish that also consume alewives. The kings that were in there were pretty stocky fish. I think thin fish have not been getting enough to eat, and if what bait they were getting to eat depleted vitamin B, and then you hit them with additional stressors like lice or over and over and over being caught, a lot belly up. And the "not getting enough to eat" part could be a lot less bait due to last winter. But I'll have to wait until Brian Weidel and Company release the trawl data in the spring. And if that is also skewed, well, again that has been the measurement system for that part of the data for years.
My main point is that until the data comes back it is all just speculation, and it is a complex enough system to come up with myriad scenarios.
As to letting DEC know about things like Kelts dying, of course you should always drop a quarter to report what looks out of the ordinary, but most of the literature points to heavy post spawn mortality in trout and Atlantic salmon due to the rigors of spawning, but it is not complete post spawn mortality like it is for Kings and Cohoes. So I don't know that dropbacks dying is not to be expected. If that worries you, stop fishing in mid-March and that eliminates an extra stress on the kelts.
If rainbow trout in some way rely on salmon eggs, how do they survive in systems like the Esopus and the Finger Lakes, where they are the dominant spawners and often over winter in the streams? The eggs are mainly fat for the fry to live on in early development, certainly there were less, and the moderate flows would also have dislodged less insect larvae, but steelhead are also adapted to live off fat and protein reserves, they just usually don't enter the tributaries already using them. Also remember Randy Jones' post about the fish regurgitating alewives in the lower river, and my question as to whether they were alewives or shad. Certainly, the early steelies in the Genny were gorging themselves on the shad that were running here at the same time. But the fish I caught in both the Genny and the SR were healthy, not thin for their length, and did not show signs of any undue stress.
I could probably spin another half dozen, but my fingers are tired!
Cheers!