So there were 356 pages. They totally lost my interest by page 20 when everything they said was the baitfish and overall sizes were the lowest in over the past 10 years but the trout and salmon catches reported for 2018 were excellent.
2019 has also been reported to be towards historic levels.

So does all this mean they will continue to cry the sky is falling ?
I pretty much give up on trying to reason their data

This is apple to orange but here is my 2019 stripers report from the might muddy:
Before the season started in NY, there were emergency striped bas closures in some coastal states. I think Virginia was 1. This was announced due to marine data.
A few years back the slot limits hit here and no herring in ct and I believe NJ to help rebuild the fishery.
2019 had one of the best river conditions in a very long time. No ice jams, no flooding.
This season I put 57 stripers on my boat or released along the side. It's a personal record for me living on and fishing this river my entire life .
Now the bad news :
90% of those fish came in a 6 day period.
The other 10 % were just a week prior.
80% of those fish were keeper sized 18-28"
50% were kept.
Not 1 fish was over the slot of 40"

I know and friends of charters that fish there daily. They all had at or near record days.
Only a handful of fish were over 40 and probably 30% in the throw back slot.
By the same token anything legal was kept as there were many more fishers on board.
All that said, they basically pulled out at the same time I did.

Now also get this:
The dec boat is right at my dock.
They did 1 weekend patrolling, no nights or other days. I was told its funding issues.
With the slot obviously not working, I'm reluctant as to the things that happen are better

hot tuna
So there were 356 pages. They totally lost my interest by page 20 when everything they said was the baitfish and overall sizes were the lowest in over the past 10 years but the trout and salmon catches reported for 2018 were excellent.
2019 has also been reported to be towards historic levels.

So does all this mean they will continue to cry the sky is falling ?
I pretty much give up on trying to reason their data

 You are welcome, I spend my time looking for this just so you can vent and kvetch!
 
You would have to read the data to reason with it.  You glanced at the summary, and then wrote the whole thing off.  Sort of like "I heard a POTR song once.  I didn't like it.  Therefore the band must suck all the time."
 
If you took a good look at the data series shown graphically in the full report, not the summary, in the section Brian Weidel does on the trawl surveys, you might see that the sky is precariously close to falling now.  And, having seen the preliminary report on the 2019 netting, I can assure you , things are not getting better. Hindsight says the first and second stocking cuts  should have been larger, or something is going on beyond the control of the managers (remember Alewife are NOT indigenous to LO, and are at the northern edge of their temperature range). Also, look at the full report on fish condition at the hatchery.  Average sizes of returning fish by year class are all down,  hens by as much as 3 lbs.  Of course it was a banner year for catching predators out there, they were unable to find the amount of real food they needed, so they were hitting every shiny thing that went by, as they have been doing this year.  It will be late October before the Lake Ontario Committee (NYS and Canada) finalizes the 2019 reaction to the continuing decline of alewife in the lake, they want data on condition of returning fish this fall before they act, but I'll predict another cut to stocking, and this time all heads will roll, steelhead will not escape the axe, browns might because they are not as pelagic and are apparently chowing down all year on gobies at their depths, but if it is out in the open water in the summer looking for little silver fish,  there will likely be less going in in 2020.  Or, they could sit back and watch the whole thing go to hell in a handbag, or even accelerate the decline, if they listen to west end charter operators, who tend to be the loudest (and rudest) of the naysayers, and increase king stocking (I know when I am short of chicken feed, the best thing I can do for my flock is put a bunch more chickens in the coop).  
 
I know how easy it is to second guess professional biologists, it is almost an American pastime, but, having eked out a living in science and working side by side with some of these guys for the last 30+ years, I can attest to the hard work and dedication of guys Like Steve LaPan and Andy Todd, the Lake Ontario Committee; and others like Dan Bishop, Mike Connerton, Fran Verdoliva of DEC, and Brian Weidel of USGS, etc.  Some of us need a sense of personal satisfaction with what we do (kind of like you and your box farm), and we get that from working toward a set of objectives (The Lake Ontario Fish Community Objectives), and then if nature cooperates with our actions, seeing them met.  And I know from personal conversations with Steve just how much he cares and is concerned about another possible Lake Huron scenario.  He didn't loose all that hair from not giving a **** LOL!
 
I won't go into the possible effects of retention of 50% of legal catch on striped bass populations documented to already be in decline, but a wild card in all that seems to me from reading Cuffs and Collars in the NYS paper that you have already decided is useless, that there is an inordinate amount of poaching of striped bass in NYC and along the lower Hudson.  And I've been called out for thread hijacking before, so I'll mention that here, too.

OK, so here's this year's trawl data.  The LO Committee put it on the GLFC website, so I am not letting anything from the Stakeholders group conference call two weeks ago out of the bag.
 
http://www.glfc.org/pubs/lake_committees/ontario/2019_preliminary_status_of_Lake_Ontario_Alewife.pdf
 
Please look at the trawl data on Size and numbers of alewife hatched in 2018 in the spring 2019 trawls.  My reading of those numbers is they are very small in size, and from a biomass standpoint, almost non existent.  "Oh, they should have been over here 200 yards" does not cut it , if they used standardized depths and locations when they found beaucoup alewife, finding few alewife MIGHT just mean they are not there. 

L-13, your not going to like what I have to say but I have a right to my thoughts. I'm not in any way saying I'm right or you're wrong but I will speak my peace.
Stripers: 100% of those 50% were mortality wounded fish, hence the other 50% healthy fish were released. I could have kept them all. Instead I chose to release the healthy fish . Circle hooks make ZERO difference.
Secondly, I work for a world wide company. Times are very tough in the economy no matter what fake news reports . 2009 is certainly coming again very soon.
Our company put put a global standard notice to first and foremost buy parts and equipment from CHINA. Now, all those other countries do not pay tariffs like imposed by the USA but it doesn't matter. The USA plants are instructed to buy from China first. The justification is the rest of the plants in the world will make up the difference in costs the USA pays in tariff.
Freaking SAD !!!

So with that out of the way in hijacking, here is my sol view.
Absolutely the people doing their job are dedicated and knowledgeable. The belief I have is they are handcuffed and required to provide justification for anything made public.
Let's start with bait and biomass.
So many times I've heard it is in jeopardy, be it a worst winter die off or an over abundance of predators. This does not sit well with me because things have peaks and valleys. I've read thing like changing trawling methods, abundance of zebra mussels, gobbies ,lack of zooplankton and low lake levels have attributes. Right now we are seeing record lake levels which is promoting zooplankton.
Second:
Natural reproduction of chinooks:
Why now ? Chinooks have been planted in that lake since I have been born. All of the sudden there is an explosion of natural reproduction ? Hogwash.. it's just justification to reduce stocking levels. As we all know, a fish stocked cost $$$ to raise. Bottom line.
Third : ah stocking..
As you also said above, the cuts will go deep. To me its about funding not resources. Have to justify it somewhere on paper to make it stick on the wall. If you can't, someone else will take your place to make it happen.
Currently lake trout and Atlantic are getting federal money. Rest assured once that stops so will their program as well.
Lastly:
I'm sure the 536 page document took as much time and funds to prepare than the actual hands on work to collect the data. Sometimes its just not right the way things work.
I am very skeptical of anything I read put out to the public. Its not the people behind the scenes, it's the information published.

Now that I'm ranting, here is another tork.
Federal funding on the lake trout and Atlantic restoration.
This money is available towards that program. As to my knowledge, it's a use it or lose it funds. Kinda the same with our capital projects funding. If you can't justify using the allotment, typically the following year its reduced or cut.
Straight line says, it's for restoration and stocking of natural fish in their environment.
Folks will put every effort into following that mission, impossible or not spending every dollar no matter where it goes within that mission and saying it's not enough.
Creative minds will use the abundance of chicken feed to put towards improving the flock that puts food on the table and call it research and development towards habitat.
Just sayin..

I'm sorry L-13 but I disagree.
The fish I've seen and firsthand reports from charters are that the fish and the lake are healthy.
The labor day 2019 also indicated a very good population and healthy salmon.
If these fish out in the great blue yonder were not finding forage and just striking anything shining, their heads would be large and their bodies skinny as is the case on ostego lake. This is not the case based on the people putting boats in the water and boots on the ground.

Enjoy it while it's there before science screws it up.

This reminds me a lot of the California DFG and their eradication of high altitude trout. Goldens are native to many lakes, but bows, brooks and browns were planted at 10-11k, decades ago, some by milk can and pack horse in the early 1900's. There's an indigenous  Bufo called the yellow-legged mountain frog whose population is dwindling rapidly. What to do?  Blame the trout and start  killing off lakes. Oddly that sentiment is coming down hill and what are they promoting loudly? Native species.  Hmmmm, with the depletion of ozone, especially at high altitude, and the frog's epidermis being highly susceptible to disease when exposed to prolonged ultraviolet and drying, one would take that as a factor. Not according to the CDFG, it's them **** trout that just started in recent times to develop a taste for frog. Trout fishing on the east side of the Sierra is as important to the economy as salmon are to Pulaski. Opening day is a holiday called Fishmas.  Bottom line? Hatcheries are expensive. 
    I'm as pro-science , pro-biology as can be, but I'm also very aware of budgetary constraints and manipulation.  Also there's the will of  powerful politicians to get their pet projects and ideas done. I'm watching some riparian habitat getting screwed for Cuomo's Empire Trail, a HUGE boondoggle in my opinion.  I've just witnessed over a million  being dumped into 1/4 mile stretch.  State biologists are involved in the project and some of the money is invariably being siphoned from somewhere. To be fair, I've talked to several local DEC officers that make much fun of the Salmon River. Their mandatory duty there during silly season left them laughing and shaking their heads. As much as we on this forum love it, others think it's a fake circus.  I think a salmon /steel license of 25 bucks or so should be instituted  with the money to go directly to the hatchery.  Not everyone looks at sport fishing with kind eyes. We need to pay for ourselves and separate our monies from other concerns, like the massive crowds in the High Peaks, politicians pet projects, and those that think fishing and hunting is murder. Along those lines, why can't all the people trying to become 46'ers pay a fee to offset the **** parking disasters and trail destruction, let alone the  expense for SAR. The dacks have become like a free National Park without the budget to handle the crowds. Has to stop.  Biologists should be allowed to do what they do best- assess and gather empirical evidence.  Not assess the political will or budgetary allowance for certain sets of data. Maybe if we pay more for our pleasures, this can happen. Probably not, but what the hay........

CT instituted a trout/salmon stamp ($5.00) in 2018.  While I'm not against a nominal fee for NYS I am concerned as to where it's headed.  Politics has a way of reinventing and moving the bar by instituting additional fees.  Cuomo is presently trying to play a shell game with mandatory new license plates for a new additional fee of $25.00 per registered vehicle/trailer.  So those of us who purchased a new or registered a used vehicle with new tags may be in for another set of tags and fees if the governor has his way.  As a lifetime NYS sportsman license (hunting- small & large game, fishing, bow, muzzle loader & turkey) holder I don't care for adding another fee to the list unless I have a guarantee that those funds won't end up in some general fund that's subject to the whims of the leeches in Albany.  

And there's the crux, TB. Any fee that should be directly earmarked for the hatchery or adding public access would in all likelihood slither sideways into some other endeavor.  Sucks.