The Post-Standard News
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Post-Standard, The (Syracuse, NY)
March 26, 2004
BIOLOGISTS FIND LOTS OF FISH IN AREA WATERS J. Michael Kelly Staff writer
If this was the opening day of New York's trout season, Finger Lakes tributary anglers would be wading ankle-deep in whoppers.
Since the season doesn't actually begin until Thursday - April Fool's Day - fishermen will just have to hope conditions are as good then as they appear to be now. "The trout were scattered throughout the system," said Dave Kosowski, a senior aquatic biologist with the DEC's Region 8 office in Avon. "There were no big concentrations, but the fish were just everywhere. We found everything from hard, fresh-run females that weren't ready to spawn to fish that had already laid their eggs."
One Catharine rainbow turned up by the state crew, a hook-jawed male, weighed 91/2 pounds. Several other females nudged the 9-pound mark. All were turned loose after biologists had weighed and measured them and held them aloft for onlookers to admire.
Kosowski expected similar results during a Thursday electrofishing survey of Naples Creek, the main spawning tributary of Canandaigua Lake; and an expedition today to Cold Brook, a tributary of Keuka Lake.
"The fish should be there for fishermen on opening day and well into April," he predicted.
The early-season outlook is also promising for rainbow spawning tributaries of the Eastern Finger Lakes and other streams inhabited by brown and brook trout, according to state experts.
Unlike their colleagues in Region 8, biologists in DEC Region 7 do not routinely sample spawning tributaries with electrofishing gear. Instead, they take the pulse of the annual rainbow run by monitoring the trout swimming upstream through a fish passageway on Cayuga Inlet, a tributary of Cayuga Lake in Ithaca.
Some of the fish coming through the passageway contribute their eggs to state hatcheries. Others are merely counted as they migrate to natural spawning grounds.
Dan Bishop, the DEC's Region 7 fisheries manager, said his colleagues began collecting eggs at the Inlet this week.
"The spawning has begun," he said. "Some fish are fresh, some are spawning and some are spent."
The activity at Cayuga Inlet indicates fair numbers of rainbows should be present in other Finger Lakes tributaries, such as Owasco Inlet and Grout Brook, when trout season opens.
Anglers who prefer to try for brown and brook trout in secluded streams instead of squeezing into the first-day crowds of rainbow-seekers should be able to manage some hook-ups, too.
Bishop said last year's abundant rainfall and the recent heavy winter snows left Central New York streams in good shape.
"I'd expect plenty of fish held over from last season to this one," he said.
Until the middle of this week, that water was too cold for trout to have much of an appetite.
Kosowski's thermometer registered 35 degrees Fahrenheit when he dipped it into Catharine Creek Tuesday. Rainbows prefer temperatures in the 40s for spawning, and 'bows, browns and brook trout feed most actively when readings are in the 50s or low 60s.
Until the water is more trout-friendly, hatchery crews will make only modest stockings.
Travis Stanek, who helps stock Onondaga County streams for the Carpenter's Brook hatchery in Elbridge, said he expects to release about 17,000 trout prior to opening day. That's about one-fourth of the hatchery's total allocation for the season. The rest will be distributed among local waters between early April and mid-May.
Nine Mile Creek in Marcellus and Camillus will be seeded with about 5,655 brown and brook trout before Thursday. Another 3,200 hatchery browns will be calling Limestone Creek home by then.
Other pre-season stocking quotas:
Butternut Creek, 1,961 browns; Green Lake, 1,340 rainbows; Fabius Brook, 774 brookies; Chittenango Creek (Manlius section), 595 browns; Carpenter's Brook, 567 browns; Spafford Brook, 500 browns; Spruce Pond, 567 brookies and rainbows; Onondaga Creek, 490 browns; Skaneateles Creek, 362 rainbows; West Branch of Onondaga Creek, 310 browns; Pools Brook, 300 browns; Furnace Brook, 200 browns and brookies; and Tannery Creek, 150 brookies.
Copyright, 2004, The Herald Company |
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