" Any insight to why the cohos have been an issue at the hatchery or why they seem to have issues with disease specific to the browns? Lastly why would flourishing Atlantics lead to the demise of Steelhead- predation from the atlantics or competition for forage like baitfish?"
At the SOL meeting in the spring, Mike Connerton reported that they had a problem with eye-up of coho eggs last year, and lost a portion of the eggs before hatch out. I don't think this is reflected in the 2013 numbers but will show up in the 2014 stocking numbers, as the 2013 numbers only show about a 15% shortfall. Because of the disease problems in so many systems, they can't go elsewhere for replacement eggs anymore. But cohos are a sort of "extra" to the program, numbers reared are way below kings. They stock about 30K cohos in the SR, and over 300K kings, plus the naturals. They are working on the fin clip studies with cohos next. As to Browns, they had problems statewide for disease in one hatchery, so they missed the 392K target for LO in 2013, but still stocked 331K, not sure about impacts for 2014. On the Atlantics and Steelhead (or kings), there is at least one camp of people who want to see restoration of the native lake Ontario ecosystem, which would have Lake trout and Atlantics as the top predators. In a full realization of that scenario, all these exotics would go. Atlantics and steelhead, being of similar size, compete a lot for habitat and spawning sites. But short of finding a magic bullet to get rid of the alewifes, I don't see a natural species only policy happening, as the king is still the control valve for the herring. We actually had a short lived and sparse alewife die-off on the lake this summer, which got a lot of people remembering what a manure pile the beaches were in June and July before the salmon program.
L13