Salmon fishery

[Gecha (Gerry)]

More numbers / details:

356 hours breakdown on my engine for 2020:

30 hrs tubing with the kids / 37 hours Lake Ontario (one trip) / 167 hrs fishing Champlain for salmon / 3 hours break-in December 15th 2019 / 15 hrs Sabin/Mirror/Forest lakes in South Woodbury / Calais Vt

Steelhead was a bright spot this season for us landing maybe a dozen. We never landed a single brown this season. I am guessing somewhere between 50 and 75 legal salmon (I don't keep records). Shorts maybe 20 (Most in the Inland Sea). 5 Walleye.

I fished 17 hours on Dave's boat on Lake Ontario for trip #2 / I fished 2 trips on a friends 24 ft boat totaling 17 hours here total 184 hrs for Champlain / 1 trip for Walleye on Ken's Pontoon for 6 hours.

10 trips to Wagga / 1 trip to Keelers / 5 Inland Sea / 1 St. Albans Bay / 5 trips from Providence to Sister Islands / 1 trip to Ausable / 3 trips outer and inner Malletts Bay / 1 trip Shelburne Bay / 2 trips Shelburne Farms area / 1 trip Boquet / 12 trips to Converse / 6 trips Arnold Bay / 2 trips after dark for Walleye.

We averaged per trip 6 hours with 2 anglers and 4 rods. Looking at the rod hours metric 4 rod hours X 184 hours fished = 736 hours fished for 50-75 legal salmon for Champlain. No derbies fished.

We still have 4-6 weeks to finish the season for Frostbite depending on winds and snow/salt in December could finish early in most years. Hoping for another 6-8 trips and finishing with 400 hrs on my engine. I haven't fished this much in 30 years in a season.

Impressive report Ron.

[digitroll (ron)]

Thanks Gerry. I do now remember a 4.5 lb Brown trout we caught in the Sea now in early June. So we did catch one for the season. My error in reporting none. Also the most Walleyes caught in decades with 5. Once Frostbite is over I will summarize our trips and track salmon caught / hours. December 7-10th is usually our last trip over the past 12 years due to snow events with salt making the roads pretty messy. Only 1 or 2 times we made it to the 20th of December with clean dry roads. One footnote: 95% of our fish are returned like this brown below. Once in a while a smaller fish is kept for a meal from a guest on my boat and or a fish doesn't make it when we return it in 78-80F water mid Summer. On my boat on our Lake Ontario 4 day trip in July all 37 salmon and 2 Steelhead were returned and survived.

[fishy1]

Steelhead and browns do reproduce in Champlain and there stronger And healthier than salmon . Browns can survive in any depth of water are spooky feisty to and great eating. Steelhead you catch one you better have your drag set right. Fish and wildlife just need to find a better time to stop stocking them cormorants are terrible on them. I witness it here every may in port henry

i forgot to mention ny doesnt stock steeleheads.

[digitroll (ron)]

Some good news to pass along! 71 salmon trapped in one day at hatchery brook yesterday and 6 of those were males 28" of more. Some nice females 24-26". Late run this year.

[digitroll (ron)]

2020 legal salmon/ brown / rainbow revision total: When I think back to maybe 8 skunk trips / 1-3 fish trips / two double digit barely trips add in a brown and 10 rainbows I am hard pressed to hit 40-50 fish. Combined. Plugging in 40 legal fish combined resulted in 5 hours per legal fish for 200 hours on the lake March-October. I will have some hard data for my Frostbite season to publish when our season is over. I certainly didn't want to overstate my estimates thru October.. Recount! LOL

[EagleCrag]

I'll suggest that the lake trout are eating the salmon, hence the lower numbers. IMO, Lake Trout will feed on smaller prey (smelt, alewive) until they reach a certain size, then they transition from wanting a snack, to wanting and eating a meal. A large lake trout will eat a 20 inch salmon with no trouble. I suspect that some of the salmon that folks see jumping out of the water in the lake in the fall are actually trying to escape from Lake Trout. Just my opinion and belief.

[Reelax]

I'll suggest that the lake trout are eating the salmon, hence the lower numbers. IMO, Lake Trout will feed on smaller prey (smelt, alewive) until they reach a certain size, then they transition from wanting a snack, to wanting and eating a meal. A large lake trout will eat a 20 inch salmon with no trouble. I suspect that some of the salmon that folks see jumping out of the water in the lake in the fall are actually trying to escape from Lake Trout. Just my opinion and belief.

Very interesting hypothesis!!!!! Makes you wonder

[riverrunner]

Fishy1, must be NYDEC stocking them that late. I know for a fact that all salmon, browns and steelhead are stocked at the latest by 2nd week of April From Ed Weed and Eisenhower (Chittenden, VT). When the Ed Weed fish culture station is stocking they try their best to stock fish as soon as the ice starts to break up from the shore at boat launches. Often under the ice and very rarely in the open water except for the Grand Isle-Plattsburg and Essex-Charlotte Ferry. This year NYDEC and USFWS are supposed to be doing a net pen study I believe. The professionals are trying, and there are many new things that are going to be put into effect on the horizon. Hatchery Brook run was later than normal this year. From what I hear many BIG clean fish are in the brook, as well as younger year classes represented.

[EagleCrag]

With the abundance of lakers there is no doubt a forage issue. The lakers are eating the salmon. They eat their own, why wouldn't they eat the salmon. The larger lakers also have a preference for larger prey, hence the lower salmon numbers. I seldom fish Lake Champlain but do fish lakers elsewhere and suggest you may want to keep some larger Lake Trout that appear to have a full stomach and do some research on your own. Not trying to downplay anything anyone else posted, just providing my opinion as food for thought.

[C-Hawk]

I agree. Keep some Lakers, smoke them up, tell your guests it is salmon. Bring them home for your neighbors. Time to reduce numbers.

[riddlervt]

Howdy,
So I do not fish for Lakers. I also mainly fish the Inland Sea. I live 5 mins from Apple Tree launch and have for 41 years. I mostly target salmon.
and I used to fish walleye as well. Gave that up years ago when the meantime between fish went from hours to days. I posted about the lack of juvenile salmon 3-4 years ago. That was the first clue the salmon fishery was in trouble. I also have never caught a laker in the IS. I had never caught a white perch in the IS until 5 years ago. That year the white perch where so thick you could not get a spoon down to 50 feet without a white perch.
I quit salmon fishing because they where so thick. We also have Alewives. Not ideal. Thiamine deficiency. Read NYS DEC's studies on Landlock and Steelhead mortality due to dietary issues. Smelt used to be the main food source for these species, those have been displaced with alewives. We also have a bulging cormorant population. Thousands, not hundreds. How many juvenile salmon do you think one bird eats a day? Any clue? More than one!
In an earlier post I read we need F+W to collect data. This reminds me of the walleye scenario 20 years ago. Anglers where fully aware of the the lack of adult fish. F+W did creel surveys for 2 years collecting data, basically confirming for two more years that the walleye fishery had collapsed. I am not opposed to collecting data, however that will not solve the problem. Lake trout spawn in lake champlain. This has been documented. Salmon need clean cold moving water and gravel to spawn. Where does this exist? Our rivers are choked with sediment from erosion and run off. Gravel is virtually non-existent below the power dam barriers on our main rivers. Then there is water quality. This is probably the most important variable. Green Blue algae blooms, a by product of phosphorus loading. This used to be blamed on the farmers. Read the sewage discharge reports as well as the effluent content of our river systems. This is gross and disturbing. What about lamprey? Did they go away? No. Years ago Vermont had a control program. It was not an eradication program. Vermont(not NY) and Governour Dean let the permits expire. The plan was to get Lake Champlain re-classified as the sixth Great Lake. This would transfer the financial burden to the Federal level. The plan failed. In the meantime the treatment had stopped. The Permits expired, and no funding was earmarked for treatment. This left the lampreys unchecked and uncontrolled for years. I still fish, not like I used to.
My three cents worth. I wish it was a better story.
Riddler

[Wallyandre (Andre)]

@riddlervt,
You are expressing my exact thoughts
Lake trout: don't think they affect the salmon. They don't share the same habitat and their is plenty of alewives for both
Alewives: negative effect on the reproduction capabilities of the salmon
Lamprey: better but need a more agressive program
The last but not the least: water quality and climate change. Dry summer = low water level so less new water
That's why I book a small camp on Lake St-Jean for August next year. All natural salmon, smelt, major big rivers for spawning. We had a blast catching 3-5 pds in less then 15ft deep.

And on top of that the lake is full of walleyes

[ChessieMan]

Guess I'll add my 2 cents - my fishing log reflects what everyone is saying - looking back to 2015 I average 15 Frost Biter trips per year - 2016 was my "best" year - 220 total fish - 115 salmon, 89 lakers, 15 browns and 1 steelhead - those numbers declined to 40 total -22 lakers, 14 salmon and 4 browns in 2019 - my 2020 YTD numbers are - 121 lakers and 2 salmon - I don't know where they went, but they're not where they used to be.

Looking at NYSDEC Stocking data 2015-2019 lls stocking ranged from 25,000-28,000, so fish are goi9ng in the lake - I have no answer.

It is disappointing that 2 Fisheries personal retired from Region 5 and were not replaced - one was the Co-operative Angler Program guy - and that program was suspended for 2020

[Detritus]

Howdy,
So I do not fish for Lakers. I also mainly fish the Inland Sea. I live 5 mins from Apple Tree launch and have for 41 years. I mostly target salmon.
and I used to fish walleye as well. Gave that up years ago when the meantime between fish went from hours to days. I posted about the lack of juvenile salmon 3-4 years ago. That was the first clue the salmon fishery was in trouble. I also have never caught a laker in the IS. I had never caught a white perch in the IS until 5 years ago. That year the white perch where so thick you could not get a spoon down to 50 feet without a white perch.
I quit salmon fishing because they where so thick. We also have Alewives. Not ideal. Thiamine deficiency. Read NYS DEC's studies on Landlock and Steelhead mortality due to dietary issues. Smelt used to be the main food source for these species, those have been displaced with alewives. We also have a bulging cormorant population. Thousands, not hundreds. How many juvenile salmon do you think one bird eats a day? Any clue? More than one!
In an earlier post I read we need F+W to collect data. This reminds me of the walleye scenario 20 years ago. Anglers where fully aware of the the lack of adult fish. F+W did creel surveys for 2 years collecting data, basically confirming for two more years that the walleye fishery had collapsed. I am not opposed to collecting data, however that will not solve the problem. Lake trout spawn in lake champlain. This has been documented. Salmon need clean cold moving water and gravel to spawn. Where does this exist? Our rivers are choked with sediment from erosion and run off. Gravel is virtually non-existent below the power dam barriers on our main rivers. Then there is water quality. This is probably the most important variable. Green Blue algae blooms, a by product of phosphorus loading. This used to be blamed on the farmers. Read the sewage discharge reports as well as the effluent content of our river systems. This is gross and disturbing. What about lamprey? Did they go away? No. Years ago Vermont had a control program. It was not an eradication program. Vermont(not NY) and Governour Dean let the permits expire. The plan was to get Lake Champlain re-classified as the sixth Great Lake. This would transfer the financial burden to the Federal level. The plan failed. In the meantime the treatment had stopped. The Permits expired, and no funding was earmarked for treatment. This left the lampreys unchecked and uncontrolled for years. I still fish, not like I used to.
My three cents worth. I wish it was a better story.
Riddler

It's usually mildly annoying or dumb to quote such a huge chunk of text on a forum like this.

But, in this case, I think it is appropriate, because from everything I have read and experienced myself, I believe all of what was said above, and is worth reading again.

Thanks Riddlervt.

[Detritus]

However, I should add I also agree with c hawk and the other guys above on the subject of keeping some Lakers.

Those are obviously plentiful right now, at least the smaller ones are. It does seem like the native spawner population has really started to take hold as well affecting the whole dynamic of trolling and the general laker catch size as well.

I've never seen a salmon inside of a laker, and they are absolutely delicious when you do the brine/pellicle/smoke thing.

Yes you can throw a salmon in the oven without much prep, and it comes out great, and Lakers do not. However, if we were all out here to do things the easy way, we'd just buy salmon at the grocery store.

Save a salmon, smoke a laker.