This is a cut and paste so I take no credit as of 10/18/12
ELOSTA had its monthly meeting at the hatchery last evening and some of the guys from the DEC joined us for a little Q and A on the current state of the hatchery situation. Here are some of the numbers and they are current as of 830pm last night. I would like to thank Andy Groulik (hatchery manager) for the numbers.
2.5 million Chinook eggs have been taken so far. Target is between 3.5 and 4 million They have spawed 2800 chinoooks to get to that number. The stocking projection is 1.75 million so they have enough they just would like to collect there buffer.
1.25 million Coho salmon eggs have been taken. They will have no problem getting the coho eggs. 3200 cohos have been spawed to get to that number.
The Chinook egg situation is a little funny. One would think with all the fish this year it would be no problem getting eggs but Andy told us that the fish are really only trickling into the hatchery on a daily basis. There are more then enough males showing up but they are lacking the females. They think that that because of the low water fisherman have been able to target the larger females more easily. They do think they will hit there target of eggs it may just take a little more effort then a weeks time. They have opened the fish ladder in Dexter and are currently looking to take eggs from the Black river fish. They got about 208,000 eggs out of the black river just yesterday. Also a little side note Canada is having zero issues getting there salmon eggs also the river to there Chinook hatchery is totally closed to fishing.
After all is said and done they will have about 76,000 cohos to release. That is what is left after all the issues last fall with eye up. As far as the current BT stocking predictions they cant nail that down yet as we will have to wait and see in the spring but stocking will be down significantly. The Rome die off really made things worse. The regional fishery managers will meet to discuss where those BTs will get stocked. My OWN OPINION does eastern lake Erie really need BTs, do you guys really target them? Just asking dont shoot the messanger.
ON a positive note the have extra steelhead about a few 100,000 that they will be able to stock.
As far as the water flow issue they feel like they did a better job this year holding the base flow at 185 till they needed the water vs 2007 were they had it as low as a 100. I agree seemed they learned from there mistake. As far as the natural spawn they are attributing this years great run of naturals to not having river flows over 2000cfs during those year class years.
That was a real quick over view of what I wrote down last evening if you guys have anymore questions please chime in and I will see if I have the answer if not I can send out an email and get it for you. They are going to let me know when the process is complete and I can pass that along.