Salmon fishing meets reality TV...

[Just Jack]

This is my hometown...

 

TV mini-series highlighting annual salmon run in Pulaski premieres Tuesday

 

http://blog.syracuse...04/post_46.html

[ExiledInIllinois]

Interesting Jack! Thanks! Do they say: Pull ask key or Pull ask sky? (I would say "key") I used to do hydro survey up there @ Port Ontario, Henderson and Sackets... I remember Pulaski well, blew the head gasket on my car up there in the early 1990's!

 

Anway... At least Lake Ontario is the ONLY lake that salmon (Atlantic) belong in and are not an invasive species! The rest of the lakes above the Falls, they don't belong in and have to be stocked!

Edited April 27, 2013 by ExiledInIllinois

[Just Jack]

Interesting Jack! Thanks! Do they say: Pull ask key or Pull ask sky? (I would say "key") I used to do hydro survey up there @ Port Ontario, Henderson and Sackets... I remember Pulaski well, blew the head gasket on my car up there in the early 1990's!

 

"Pull as sky" is how we pronounce it, though the correct way is "Pull as ski" after General Casimir Pulaski of Poland. I'm not sure why it changed, just that it's been like that as far back as people can remember.

[birdog1960]

we have a pulaski in virginia - it's pugh - la-skee and no fish. interesting topic. never was around when salmon fishing got big in lake ontario. looks like it was a very successful experiment. steelhead trout have done pretty well too i've heard. my uncle claimed they'd run up ditches on his farm.

 

have been combat fishing for walleye and steelhead in other spawning rivers. great times (and many people looked just like the guys in the pic), just don't snag someone else's line or someone else's fish. don't know why you'd need a guide to wade, though. just head to a dam or where everyone is shoulder to shoulder and watch the ice build up on your reel and hopefully later get it ripped off by a monster. will check out the show.

[ExiledInIllinois]

we have a pulaski in virginia - it's pugh - la-skee and no fish. interesting topic. never was around when salmon fishing got big in lake ontario. looks like it was a very successful experiment. steelhead trout have done pretty well too i've heard. my uncle claimed they'd run up ditches on his farm.

 

have been combat fishing for walleye and steelhead in other spawning rivers. great times (and many people looked just like the guys in the pic), just don't snag someone else's line or someone else's fish. don't know why you'd need a guide to wade, though. just head to a dam or where everyone is shoulder to shoulder and watch the ice build up on your reel and hopefully later get it ripped off by a monster. will check out the show.

 

Sorry, I could not keep my thoughts away. Please no offense.

 

In the middle lakes (Michigan/Huron) they introduced coho and chinook around the late 1960's or so to combat the invasive alewife. The alewives were so bad during this period, especially in Lake Michigan The thing is as long as they keep protecting the salmon... IMO, of course outside of the Atlantic salmon in Lake Ontario, they will continue to leave the door wide open for other invasive species like Asian carp. Alewives eat what the Asian carp do, that is they are top filter feeders (vac up their food) and eat zooplankton. Salmon will only eat the alewives, they are very picky eaters AND spawn once. They (gov't) are managing the Grerat Lakes fishery all wrong, IMO. They need to eliminate the artificial industry that was established when they began introducing salmon from the Pacific region (coho and chinook). Emphasis on stocking more native (if that is even possible to call them that since everything in the Great Lakes is really "invasive") species like perch and walleye (pikes) will slam the door on the current invasive problem. Pikes and perch will eat the small invasives (they will also eat the small stocked salmon), not just alewives like the picky salmon. Yeah, try telling that to the salmon charters and other tourist industries that sprang up all along the lakes starting in the late 1960's. Again, right now... Protecting the chinook and coho salmon is leaving the door wide open for other invasives! The only salmon that belong in the Great Lakes is the Atlantic salmon that would historically enter Lake Ontario through the St. Lawrence river. Niagara Falls has always been the natural barrier (and for obvious reasons) to the middle lakes. Why the heck are chinook and coho coming from the northwest/pacific? They have to be continually restocked becuase populations can't sustain themselves. See the problem? This is big for the government agencies like the DNR's and what not... Salmon stamps, fishing licenses, etc... They are totally screwing up the fishery while leaving the door wide open for other problems. In the end, small towns like Pulaski are totally dependant on this gov't intervention... Which way do you think the small towns along the Great Lakes will break? Small towns that have absolutely NOTHING left economically but this artificially created fishing industry... Of course they will break towards subsidized gov't intervention to keep them afloat.

 

Just my 2 cents... Not intended to get political. Do I sound consevative? Well I am on this issue! Do the research. Chinook and coho do NOT belong in any of the lakes.

Edited April 27, 2013 by ExiledInIllinois

[Jim in Anchorage]

What about the other non native fish like rainbows and Browns?

[birdog1960]

Sorry, I could not keep my thoughts away. Please no offense.

 

In the middle lakes (Michigan/Huron) they introduced coho and chinook around the late 1960's or so to combat the invasive alewife. The alewives were so bad during this period, especially in Lake Michigan The thing is as long as they keep protecting the salmon... IMO, of course outside of the Atlantic salmon in Lake Ontario, they will continue to leave the door wide open for other invasive species like Asian carp. Alewives eat what the Asian carp do, that is they are top filter feeders (vac up their food) and eat zooplankton. Salmon will only eat the alewives, they are very picky eaters AND spawn once. They (gov't) are managing the Grerat Lakes fishery all wrong, IMO. They need to eliminate the artificial industry that was established when they began introducing salmon from the Pacific region (coho and chinook). Emphasis on stocking more native (if that is even possible to call them that since everything in the Great Lakes is really "invasive") species like perch and walleye (pikes) will slam the door on the current invasive problem. Pikes and perch will eat the small invasives (they will also eat the small stocked salmon), not just alewives like the picky salmon. Yeah, try telling that to the salmon charters and other tourist industries that sprang up all along the lakes starting in the late 1960's. Again, right now... Protecting the chinook and coho salmon is leaving the door wide open for other invasives! The only salmon that belong in the Great Lakes is the Atlantic salmon that would historically enter Lake Ontario through the St. Lawrence river. Niagara Falls has always been the natural barrier (and for obvious reasons) to the middle lakes. Why the heck are chinook and coho coming from the northwest/pacific? They have to be continually restocked becuase populations can't sustain themselves. See the problem? This is big for the government agencies like the DNR's and what not... Salmon stamps, fishing licenses, etc... They are totally screwing up the fishery while leaving the door wide open for other problems. In the end, small towns like Pulaski are totally dependant on this gov't intervention... Which way do you think the small towns along the Great Lakes will break? Small towns that have absolutely NOTHING left economically but this artificially created fishing industry... Of course they will break towards subsidized gov't intervention to keep them afloat.

 

Just my 2 cents... Not intended to get political. Do I sound consevative? Well I am on this issue! Do the research. Chinook and coho do NOT belong in any of the lakes.

i don't know much about the biology. obviously, you do. but people like catching big fish. rainbows (steelhead) are native to the great lakes aren't they? (i'm asking, not preaching). walleyes have thrived in lake erie once they cleaned it up. the maumee in toledo is so full of spawning walleye that they have guys with telescopes watching for snaggers from bridges. is that opening up the carp problem? i don't know...i wasn't aware that was a problem there. in general, i think it's a bad thing to try to engineer nature ( a local example is stocking rattle snakes - who in the hell thought of that one)? but sport fishing is big business and damn fun. do the benefits outweigh the costs? i think if done right, they do. in the case of salmon, i honestlydon't know if that's

the case. what's the worst case scenario? sounds like it's asian carp taking over. that would be very bad. how likely is it?

[Jim in Anchorage]

rainbows are native only west of the Mississippi. Anything in lake Ontario is pure sport, the fish are inedible due to high levels of PCP and dioxin.

[Just Jack]

don't know why you'd need a guide to wade, though. just head to a dam or where everyone is shoulder to shoulder and watch the ice build up on your reel and hopefully later get it ripped off by a monster. will check out the show.

 

Well, you don't, there are plenty of places to fish from, but guides will know all the little pools to check for salmon, and also what's private property.

 

Oh, and here's a local boy, Todd Frank, that I used to work with, who made it as a professional fisherman.

[ExiledInIllinois]

rainbows are native only west of the Mississippi. Anything in lake Ontario is pure sport, the fish are inedible due to high levels of PCP and dioxin.

 

True. Mercury (Hg) too. BUT, the high toxin levels are found in fishes that eat eat other fishes. The filter feeders have very low levels of toxins. Not going to get on the whole Asian carp thing. Their name is a misnomer, because they do not feed on the bottom of the water like common carp They filter near the top (bighead and silver). They are much safer to eat than salmon who eat the alewives (that filter feed). Actually, in studies, toxin levels are almost non-existant due to the way they feed. They also contain 75% more omega-3 than the next closest fish, salmon. At least grind them up for protein and fertilizer or omega-3 fish oil. Could have a huge impact on getting products to markets cheaply and collapse the stranglehold that the coasts have on the fishing industry.

 

Again, IMO, as long as they protect the salmon, they are leaving the door wide open for other problems!

 

i don't know much about the biology. obviously, you do. but people like catching big fish. rainbows (steelhead) are native to the great lakes aren't they? (i'm asking, not preaching). walleyes have thrived in lake erie once they cleaned it up. the maumee in toledo is so full of spawning walleye that they have guys with telescopes watching for snaggers from bridges. is that opening up the carp problem? i don't know...i wasn't aware that was a problem there. in general, i think it's a bad thing to try to engineer nature ( a local example is stocking rattle snakes - who in the hell thought of that one)? but sport fishing is big business and damn fun. do the benefits outweigh the costs? i think if done right, they do. in the case of salmon, i honestlydon't know if that's

the case. what's the worst case scenario? sounds like it's asian carp taking over. that would be very bad. how likely is it?

 

No not @ all. Excuse the pun BUT the alewife problem spawned the salmon industry. We took one invasive and combated it with another invasive! Even pickier invasive. The perch and pike will not be picky. As long as we protect the salmon, the door is wide open for the carp. And it is not just through the shipping canals... What about bait bucket transfer, etc...

[ExiledInIllinois]

Here is a interesting explanation going all the back to 1998:

 

http://www.inhs.illinois.edu/inhsreports/nov-dec98/lakes.html

 

"There are so many introduced species in the Great Lakes that some biologists argue that it is now a man-made aquaculture system. For example, sport fisheries in the Great Lakes depend on salmon and trout (Family Salmonidae) that are not native to the lakes but are artificially propagated in hatcheries (coho, Oncorhynchus kisutch; chinook, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha; rainbow or steelhead, Oncorhynchus mykiss; brown trout, Salmo trutta). The salmonids were introduced originally to control alewives (Alosa pseudoharengus), which entered the Great Lakes after the Welland Canal was completed in 1829. The canal circumvented Niagara Falls, a natural barrier to migration of fishes from the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario into the other four Great Lakes. The alewives did not become a problem until the 1960s, when populations exploded, then died in huge numbers, fouling swimming beaches and clogging water intakes. Previously, alewives apparently were kept in check by a predator native to the Great Lakes, the lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush), and perhaps by nine species of native whitefishes (genus Coregonus) that competed with alewives for food (zooplankton)."