The Iroquois Chapter of Trout Unlimited & Dette Trout Flies
Tie One On 3rd Annual Fly Tying Rendezvous was a
GREAT SUCCESS and EXCEEDED OUR EXPECTATIONS!
Thank You to our members and guests who came out to join us! We hope you had a great time. If you couldn’t make it, we missed you, and we look forward to seeing you next year on
March 21st, 2015
There are so many people to THANK for making this year’s event happen:
To all the Fly Tyers, Vendors, and Non-Profit Organizations- THANK YOU, we couldn’t have done it without you!
To all of our Sponsors- We are so GRATEFUL for your support!
To all of the Donors for the Silent Auction- WE ARE HUMBLED BY YOUR GENEROSITY.
To Barbagallos for once again hosting us- GRAZIE!
Your generosity helps us support the activities of Hope on the Rise, Casting for Recovery and Project Healing Waters, as well as supporting the works of our local Chapter.
Congratulations to the Grand Prize winners:
1st Prize-Dave Simmons- Vision Rod Outfit
2nd Prize- Daniel Seifritz Delaware River Float Trip for Two
Remember to SAVE NEXT YEAR’S DATE- March 21st, 2015
WE HOPE TO SEE YOU FOR THE 4TH ANNUAL “TIE ONE ON” FLY-TYING RENDEZVOUS!
Sincerely,
The Iroquois Chapter of Trout Unlimited & Dette Trout Flies
World Class Cutting Edge Fisheries Science
This past Wednesday evening I once again had the pleasure of hearing James (Jim) Johnson, the United States Geological Survey’s Branch Chief at Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Sciences, located in Cortland, New York, speak to a rather small crowd gathered at Barbagallo’s restaurant for the April 2014 Iroquois Chapter of Trout Unlimited’s monthly chapter meeting., Following a similar presentation about a year ago Jim once again agreed to bring us up to date on his work on restoring native Lake Ontario fish species. When I contacted him to join us for a reprise, he was not very enthusiastic, telling me that we’d already heard his Atlantic salmon presentation. But, at my urging to speak to us again, he agreed to expand his presentation to focus more fully on the Laboratory’s ongoing work with two Lake Ontario “forage” species, the Lake herring and the Bloater chub.
My guess is that many of us, when seeing an announcement of a “scientific” presentation, write it off as being “too technical,” or “uninteresting.” I find that a sad commentary on too many of our personal commitments to actually contributing to our national and local Trout Unlimited’s mission to preserve, protect, and restore cold water fisheries (and their habitats). How, you might ask, is hearing Jim Johnson’s presentation on Lake Ontario forge species going to help me? My simple answer? In order for me to be an effective TU member, it is my responsibility to learn and understand as much as I can about the cold water fisheries extant in the region where I live (and beyond).
O.K., now that that’s “off my chest,” what follows are my reasons for finding Jim Johnson’s research so interesting and encouraging. From his last presentation that focused mainly on Tunison’s efforts to restore our native Atlantic salmon to Lake Ontario I learned that Lake Ontario adult Atlantic salmon returning to the Salmon River have already successfully reproduced without our help, and that they are apparently competing well with non-native introduced salmonid species. A good friend of mine is a retired Canadian New Brunswick Province Fisheries Biologist with a very positive and well deserved international Atlantic salmon biology research reputation. Bill was astounded when I told him of our salmon’s success. He told me that Canadian science has figured that it takes some 30 generations to reestablish any Atlantic salmon populations. Again, as was the case in the 1980’s in Little sandy Creek, Lake Ontario has proven its amazing ability support land-locked anadromous fish populations. Sadly, our local human denizens’ kill anything that swims, runs, or flies attitude made short work of those remarkable returns of the native Atlantics.
I’ve often said, “If anyone can restore Atlantic salmon to Lake Ontario, it’s Jim Johnson.” Even more now I affirm that belief. Under Jim Johnson’s able leadership, Tunison Laboratory’s work in the restoration of Lake Ontario forage species is, unlike the top-down Atlantic salmon restoration effort, starting from the biological bottom-up. Now, if you think this kind of work is a “cake walk” or, even worse, unnecessary, consider the fact that Bloater chub (which have been extirpated from Lake Ontario) spawn in about 400 feet of water in January and February. To obtain Bloater chub eggs for Tunison’s propagation and research purposes requires the cooperation of a Lake Michigan (where Bloater chub still live in the wild) commercial fishermen to head out onto that treacherously icily forbidding body of water in the dead of winter with some fisheries biologists on-board and net up enough adult Bloater chub to be gently hand relieved (while still on the water) of their eggs and milt. Assuming that Mother Nature sends them enough good weather to just get out onto the lake, and assuming a successful 400 ft deep netting and hand spawning, the fertilized eggs must then be Fed-Xed the nearly 1000 miles back to the lab for feeding and growing. The first years of this experiment failed to produce any viable adults because there simply was no food available that was small enough to feed the tiny critters after hatching. Happily, that problem has more recently been solved, hence, the future for Lake Ontario Bloater chub is vastly improved, but still tenuous.
Lake herring do still reproduce naturally in the northeast quadrant of Lake Ontario, so human hand spawning them is less of an epic high seas winter adventure than that of the Bloater chub. Nevertheless, ANY cutting edge fish cultural operation is extremely challenging. Success of the Tunison Laboratory’s Lake herring restoration project requires continual close monitoring and adjustment to insure he highest resultant level of this historically important fish’s maturation.
So, you might well ask, “Why would anyone want to do this?!?!? Don’t we already have enough trout and salmon in Lake Ontario?” Again, this writer’s personal simple answer to that is, “Sure there’re plenty of trout and salmon here. But, at this point none of them are our native trout or salmon.” “Well, so what?” My response? “Here’s the problem we’re trying to solve: Alewife, yet another exotic Lake Ontario fish species makes up a large part of the diet of our top end fish predators. This high fat, densely schooling forage fish is an easy mark for our trout and salmon, (and is, in fact, the very reason we have Pacific salmonids in Lake Ontario) but the down side of this equation is that, in waters such as Lake Huron, the Pacific salmon have decimated the Alewife populations and have thereby insured their own demise. So far this epic decimation of the forage base has been less obvious here on Lake Ontario. But their consuming a mainly Alewife diet assures that our trout and salmon are consuming very high levels of thiaminaise because Alewife are naturally very high in this enzyme.” Again, you might say, “So?” Another simple answer with a complex base: “High levels of thiaminaise cause a condition that is commonly called “early mortality syndrome,” which is the result of thiaminaise drastically reducing the level of thiamin in fish. This thiamin deficiency basically causes newborn trout and salmon (although not only trout and salmon) to “fail to thrive,” and die. Sadly, Atlantic salmon are especially sensitive to the negative effects of thiaminaise. Neither Bloater chub nor Lake herring have abnormally high levels of thiaminaise, and therefore make a much healthier food source for trout and salmon. Then you might say, “Well, all you have to do to disprove all this is go to the Salmon River and check out the huge numbers of salmon that come back there every fall.” To which statement I’d answer, “Those Chinook and Coho salmon are the end result of huge numbers of stocked fish stacking the percentages against E.M.S. in their favor. In other words, there are so many Chinooks that many more of them survive to adulthood and those that don’t survive simply go unnoticed. Of our salmonids, the Atlantic salmon, as noted above, is the species that is most sensitive to thiaminaise and the resultant Early Mortality Syndrome. Couple that with the much lower numbers of Atlantic salmon we currently stock, and the math just goes against the restoration of a robust Lake Ontario population of our native salmon species.
O.K., to wind this up this “technical” section: Again, “Aren’t there enough trout and salmon in Lake Ontario to make us happy?” At one level, I have to say, “Yes.” But, then there’s this: A couple of years ago I had the privilege of being one of two anglers fishing a very private piece of Miramichi River Valley water. Between us we had an estimated 750 very active Atlantic salmon in our pool just above and just below a wooden paper company bridge. I chose to fish the slower water below with an all yellow Bomber dry fly while my friend Al fished the faster water above with wets. If Chinook salmon would as aggressively rise to and take dry flies as did those Clearwater Brook Atlantic salmon, I’d have no need to drive some 1,000 miles east by northeast to find my favorite fly rod fish. (I’m headed back there this summer.) If our state fisheries managers had begun stocking and maintained Atlantic, rather than Pacific, salmon as the high end fish predator in Lake Ontario, the pathetically barbaric “technique” of snagging trout and salmon would never have got started.
My sympathy goes out to all those of you who think Jim Johnson’s world class cutting edge (Lake Ontario is the world’s only watershed where Chinook salmon, Coho salmon, Steelhead, Brown trout, Lake trout, and (I’ve got Jim’s back on this one) Atlantic salmon share the same habitat) is “too technical” or “uninteresting.” You’re thinking that in no way diminishes the fact that it is world class cutting edge fisheries science. And it does impact your fishing, and will do so even more in the near future.
Thank You, Dr. James H. Johnson !!!!!!
DEC schedules March meetings to discuss status of fisheries in four eastern Finger Lakes
http://blog.syracuse.com/outdoors/2013/01/dec_schedules_two_public_meeti.html
The ESF Trout Bums website is active and located at http://www.esf.edu/org/troutbums/ We will place a link to this under the More Resources page.
Anthony, nice bio on Sheldon, looking forward to hearing what he has to tell us.
Hey guys its looking GOOD!!!! Love the pics from Furnace Brook clean up!!!
David Scott,
Sorry to get back to you so late about your question, the site is still in its beginning stages and we are still working on format and content. Please check out some of the other pages as we are just getting more posts with calander infomation and other updates. As for projects we are just starting the search for new places that could benefit from our help, we have several sites to be considered Onondaga Creek, Butternut Creek, Limestone Creek is one we worked on a few years back in the town of Manlius, Mill Run Park section and it still has another phase or two to be completed. Nine Mile is always in need of stream cleanups and we just finished a Earth Day stream cleanup of Furnace Brook on Saturday in the city Elmwood Park section. Our next chapter meeting will be stream side on Nine Mile Creek to review our plantings from last year as well as fish a bit, meeting starts 5:00 at the new parking lot off 174 just past Jakes Fly Shop hope to see you there and discuss some of our other projects.
David F. Seifritz Iroquois Chapter President
Dave,
Congratulations to the Iroquois Chapter and its members on getting your new web site ‘www.iroquoistu.org’ up and running. I look forward to seeing it grow with the latest chapter information, activities and accomplishments. Looks great!
Bob Semian
NYSCTU VP
Region 7
Just wondering what kinds of projects you work on. I saw your sign at 9 mile creek.