Cork Dust

Brian painted several thin-fins and hot n tots for me. They came back perfect! Brian, I am trying to pick up three magnum hot n tots. Can you do mettalics? I am looking for a copper, metallic lavender, and chartruese.

It sure does help to eliminate unproductive water quickly. By experience gained over time, you can determine best speed by downrigger cable angle and set a rod program to dissect the water column vertically with your spread and then wait and see which rods start firing consistently to dial in where the fish are. But, if you are fishing unknown water, or have not been out in a while, my probe, combined with my fish-finder gives me a quicker read on whether I need to play with lures and speed where I am, or move to potentially more productive water.

Remember, Atlantics are a salmon, Salmo salar-deep forked caudal fins, spots are more sporadic and weaker than a brown trout's, sharper angle to the head and jaw, lending a more torpedo-like lateral appearance. You can go the vomer tooth count route, but it is not very easy to do when the fish is long dead.

Two options, actually three; make your own brine solution to toughen and brighten strips in the interval before immediate use, buy Big Weenie brine bags and/or Pautzke colored brine bottled in various shades. Pautzke also makes a product called nectar that colors brine. I perfer Mrs. Stewarts bluing added to Big Weenie's brine, but, that's just my opinion. Take the "B" side strips without tails and brine them as well to use as inerts in Brad's Cut Plugs. Rubber band them into the plug bodies to stick out the tail-end enought to reach as far back as your treble ( I set mine with the eye just at the tail-end of the plug body, so the spinning plug doesn't interfere with the fish's ability to strike and get a good hook-up). I suspect this also masks the treble when a fish hits(watch a go-pro camera setup on a 'rigger ball, note how the fish reacts when he taps a hard bait or hook and it doesn't "stick").

Jay, excellent effort at misdirection. I never said the States wanted a Great Lake with just lake trout. The long term intention of this stocking decision (50% chinook only 2013 plant cut) is a system with lake trout as the dominant predator(whether this is achieved by a self-sustaining stock or heavy hatchery supplementation is moot at this point), with Pacific Salmon relegated to a background exotic, much like what has occurred in Lake Superior. I am one of the folks who tried to get the MDNR to cut chinook plants further than the 50% reduction that occurred in the interval of the alewife stock collapse. I began this conversation with Dave Borgeson,Jr. in late 2007 and continued it with your predecessor in 2008. My chief concern was emigration of these salmon, along with Lake Huron north shore origin wild fish into Lake Michigan to feed on an alewife stock that had been documented to already be under forage stressors (food quality and ration) by Pothoven and Mandenjian. I was repeatedly assured that Lake Huron planted chinooks weren't surviving well and neither of these stocks was likely 'straying' to forage in Lake Michigan(at this time data were available to document that roughly 80% of the Lake Huron chinook stock that remained were wild origin fish). I was also reassured by folks at the Charlevoix lab and your predecessor that the "Doughnut in the Desert" late winter chlorophyll 'a' spike identified by Kerfoot's group in 2000/2001, as well as the more southerly latitude of the principal overwinter refuge for the alewife stock in Lake Michigan would both serve as significant offsets to any significant forage base crash. When Tom Nalepa et al. published their findings in 2010 on proliferation rate and extent of Quagga sp. mussel colonization and energy entrapment in the demersal energy pool,I again became quite concerned about accelerating impacts on diminished ration quantity and quality for alewife, as well as potential adverse impacts on their age at recruitment to the adult spawning stock. I contacted personnel at the USGS Great Lakes Science Center, as well as the MDNR's Charlevoix Research Lab. I was told that they had been both authorized to initiate a broad State of the Lake study, assessing food web relationships as well as age and growth and age at recruitment update studies on the alewife population in Lake Michigan. Obviously, this work occurred since the 2010 forage fish abundance reports (trawl and acoustic studies) were simply presented in tabular form. Yet, no publications or reports have appeared from these efforts. When I received an internal PowerPoint presentation generated by the USGS Great Lakes Science Center folks that had also seen broad circulation within the MDNR, that stated in its conclusion bullet point overview slide: "Signs from both the bottom trawl survey and the acoustic survey of an impending complete collapse of the Lake Michigan alewife population" in Lake Michigan, my faith in what I was told to date was quite shaken. So,here is the overview of the status of all those 'factors' that were deemed to protect the alewife stock and NOT allow Lake Michigan's sport fishery to go the way of Lake Huron's. The late winter plankton gyre in southern Lake Michigan that became known as the "Doughnut in the Desert" was documented by Kerfoot's group at MTU to have disappeared in 2009/2010. Alewife growth rate continues to slow,as does age at sexual maturity for the stock (formerly Age III). Relative standard error (RSE) values in the trawl and acoustic surveys continue to increase, indicating that alewife are distributed in an increasingly patchy array lakewide. I suspect that RSE values are highest in the northern portion of Lake Michigan, but I could not get that question addressed or answered at the Benton Harbor meeting in April (I attended via the remote link and we were only allowed one question). So, when the conscensus survey respondent majority suggests professional fishery managers adopt Option 4, yet they settle on Option 2, I become VERY suspicous of their motives, intent, and overall degree of concern for the sport fishery's well being, particularly as it pertains to the Pacific Salmon stocks. As background for others reading this thread, Dr. Jone's group's Decision Analysis Model predictions yielded the following liklihood outcomes estimates (expressed as percentages) for Option 2 and Option 4, respectively: 1.) Risk of low alewife biomass <100Ktons (12% for Option 2;3% for Option 4) 2.) Risk of low Chinook Wts. of < 13lbs. (20% for Option2; 7% for Option 4) 3.) Risk of <200K Chinook in the sport catch (21% for Option 2; 7% for Option 4) 4.) Risk of < 8 fish/100 angler hours of fishing effort (19% for Option 2; 6% for Option 4). So, I'll echo the kid in the crowd's question as the White Sox players left the courtroom following the reading of the verdict on their efforts to throw the World Series that year, "Say it ain't so, Joe, say it ain't so?"

Jay, with all due respect, when you make a statement that hatchery fish are growing faster and returning "earlier" than wild fish which are returning at three and four years of age, for a fish with a finite life cycle like Chinook salmon, they are dying at a younger age, so there is a difference in survivorship. So, essentially you are saying that hatchery origin fish are returning in highest frequency at age III, which matches well with Wisconsin's Strawberry Weir data and wild origin fish are returning at ages III and IV. My "guess" is that hatchery fish are returning in a tighter temporal window as well. By justifying Michigan's abandonment of the survey respondent consensus lakewide response preference for Option 4, with the statement that several respondent individuals wanted lake trout plants retained (when they already compose nearly fifty-percent of the existing salmonid stock and will Increase as a stock component under the chosen stocking policy to be enacted in Spring of 2013 due to their longer life expectancy) and that Michigan is fully supportive of the lake trout rehabilitation compact and initiative that runs to 2025, you offer,at best, a weak argument and justification for this decision. I wonder, in our litigious society, how the State and USFWS/USGS would react to a lawsuit focused on a management policy the preferentially strives to repopulate the Lake Michigan fish population with a fish that is on the State's own published do not consume list at age of recruitment to the Sport Fishery? Perhaps your agency now practices a different type of fishery biology than I learned in graduate school at MSU? What I see in this is a USFWS/USGS driven absolute disinterest in the pending crash of the Lake Michigan forage base. So when is the background restocking of lake herring going to occur? What you folks fail to acknowledge or accept is that the principal factor that has lead to the restoration of a spawning lake trout stock in Lake Superior is the simple reality that the endemic food web has remained largely intact, when compared to the lower Great Lakes. If you really hope to achieve a self-sustaining stock of lake trout in Lake Michigan, I would encourage your agency, and your Federal partners to focus on efforts that would beneficially restructure the food web and eliminate many, most, all, of the 184 currently identified invasive specie that now populate Lake Michigan. Since the Feds. continue to insist on 'driving the bus' largely via posturing about funding sea lamprey control monies, they could coordinate and direct the USACE, USCGS, USGS, NOAA, EPA efforts via the President's appointed Great Lakes Czar instead of the thirty year failed effort at top down species management and restoration that has been a waste of billions of dollars in Federal tax money. As a starting point, perhaps they could convince the USACE to reword their goal statement regarding Asian Carp from manage their invasion and proliferation to a zero tolerance policy like the USFWS adopted in the emergency response plan for Asian Carp-but, I digress!

Thank you. My interpretation is that the percentage cuts are reductions from the individual State's Chinook plant allotment, with the resulting total lake plant reductions summed to yield the lakewide 50% reduction value. The 2006 plant reductions were enacted in similar fashion, with a lakewide reduction value of twenty-five percent, while Michigan's Chinook plant reduction value was thirty percent. So, essentially, while Michigan streams would see near seventy percent reductions in planted Chinook, there still would be ample smolt "release" rates into the open lake waters in spring, since the yearling Chinook stock has been pegged to consist of 54% wild origin fish, most of them originating from Michigan streams. The unquantified component is how that value increases to nearly 70% for 3+ year old fish in Lake Michigan. The hypotheses being advanced are: 1)Survival of hatchery origin Chinook in a forage depleted environment is lower over time that wild origin stock survivorship. 2.) Emmigration of Chinook from Lake Huron waters contributes to the expansion in wild origin fish in the Lake Michigan Chinook stock.

Where did you ever get the notion that brown trout and steelhead do not feed on alewife? As a fish biologist, I am amazed at much of what you offer as "fact", since not much of it is. There are currently 184 invasive organisms identfied in Lake Michigan. How do you conclude that eliminating alewife as the chief forage organism is going to restore the native species array? Salmon, by virtue of their establishment of a a self-sustaining stock, have quite litterally earned their place in the current ecosystem. Let's compare the current reproductive success rates of chinook salmon to the USFWS/USGS proposed keystone predator, the lake trout (part of the native species array you advocate we resotore). Who is most successful in the current species array environment? Quagga and zebra mussels will likely damp yellow perch and walleye stock expansion, even in the absence of alewife and salmon. About the only species you can reliably predict to expand in the absence of alewife and salmon in Lake Michigan would be emerald shiners.

I ran through the meeting outline notes from the Wisconsin based August Workshops. I could find nothing in this document that indicated that Wisconsin would be directed to take a greater Chinook plant reduction than the previously outlined 38%, as well as no mention of no plant reductions for Illinois, and Indiana. Jim, who was the source of this information?

The Feds have an agreement with fishery managers at the State level on lake trout recovery that runs through 2025. Alewife, particularly adult alewife, are top-notch larval fish predators, feeding on yellow perch, lake trout, burbot, emerald shiner, lake whitefish, and bloater larvae. The deep water refuge reef plants of lake trout that were enacted and expanded at the sea mount-like reefs in northern Lake Michigan were largely a bust. Follow-up data indicate that, as adult alewife stock density has diminished and larval predation has been reduced, burbot stocks have rebounded. The open ocean sea-mount component of the story now comes into play. Elevated stock densities of larval burbot have resulted in increased colonization rates of these open-lake reefs, increasing burbot densities at these sites. Consequently, these more abundant burbot stocks have happily devoured most of the planted lake trout released on these reef sites within a few months of the plant date. Lake trout are quite susceptible to Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS), a thiamine deficiency induced mortality factor driven largely by elevated thiaminase (the enzyme that catalyzes the destruction of thiamine stores) levels in their diets. Alewife and smelt contain larger concentrations of thiaminase than the remainder of the forage stock. My read on the Fed's initiative to expand lake trout plants at record low stock densities of alewife is a desperate attempt to move thirty years of largely failed effort to rehabilitate the lake trout stocks in the lower Great Lakes to achieve elevated or self-sustaining levels of natural reproduction. All for a fish that is recommended the Public not consume at legal size! What the Feds seem unable or unwilling to grasp or concede is that the principal reason that lake trout stocks are self-sustaining in Lake Superior is that the native specie components of the food web remains largely intact in this Great Lakes water body, when compared to those of the lower Great Lakes. The other interesting potential twist in all this "wrangling" by fishery management personnel, is that Michigan sells fish to Illinois and Indiana from its hatcheries. Under this array, Michigan's Dept. of Nat. Res. receives some level of financial offset to its hatchery program component by continuing to sell fish (Chinook,coho, brown trout, steelhead, and lake trout)to these States, while it absorbs the majority of the Chinook stocking reductions (and consequent reductions in Chinook production within the hatchery system) along its Lake Michigan coastline. Chinook used to cost between 13 and 16 cents apiece(prior to escalations in food meal component prices) to raise to size at release. All other fish species have significantly higher rearing costs, with Steelhead pegging-in at over two dollars a fish, from what I remember.

If your concern is a similar collapse of the fishery to that which occurred in Lake Huron, you should also be advocating for a liberalization in creel limits on Chinook along with the stocking reductions to be enacted in 2013. Chinook adults have a preferred temperature range of roughly 40-60F, a near complete overlap with adult alewife. Juvenile alewife and juvenile Chinook tend to array inshore, in warmer water for much of the open water season on the Great Lakes. Adult alewife (read that as spawner alewife) are the size fraction of the forage stock that is most important in maintaining the population's ability to rebound. Growth rates of alewife have slowed further in Lake Michigan over the last handful of years due to Quagga/Zebra sp. mussel impacts on their food base. Three year old alewife are no longer nearly all sexually mature fish. The fifty percent lakewide reduction in Chinook option had the overall least beneficial impact on maintaining the alewife forage stock at a figure north of 100 kilotons in the model that Dr. Jones presented at the Benton Harbor meeting.

http://m.jsonline.com/newswatch/165847156.html Okay, so much for public input. The consensus decision from the Lake Michigan Management Committee meeting is a projected 50% lakewide reduction in Chinook plants initiated in Spring of 2013. No creel limit alterations on Chinook. No additional plant reductions for other species until 2014, other than Wisconsin (tentatively, or, as worded in the meeting notes release-MAYBE) and no presence or public acknowledgement from the USFWS/USGS of the current age structure and diminished forage abundance data's (even though they play a key role in gathering and interpreting these data) potential impact on or by their "proposed" Keystone predator, lake trout. So, despite a consensus opinion among fishery research and management personnel lake wide that salmon abundance is too great for the current forage base to support, adult salmon preferentially consume adult alewife, as well as three years to have these planting cuts significantly impact Chinook numbers in Lake Michigan, the option that was projected to have the lowest probability of significantly increasing the forage base to the modeling study's pre identified biomass goal was chosen. Over the last 5+ years, since instituting the Red Flags (structured to avoid a repeat of the forage base crash that occurred in Lake Huron) analysis matrix to direct management decisions based on key biologic parameters of overall fishery and stock health, with no action taken while age structure, total biomass, and adult biomass of the alewife stock sequentially declined to the most diminished age structure on record, I would expect something that smacked of more decisive action. Why is it that Wisconsin was the only State to opt to cut multiple species plants? Why is it that inshore lake trout plants were not cut, particularly since they constitute around ten percent or less of the sport catch, while currently encompassing fifty percent of the lake wide plant number value. Why is it that a more aggressive plant reduction option was not chosen now that the data indicating that 14-18 million Chinook smolts exit Canadian tributary streams each May in Lake Huron, particularly when these values indicate the adult Chinook that propagated these numbers of yearlings would far exceed the Lake Huron forage base's ability to "grow" them to adulthood (indicating that they likely access Lake Michigan for forage in some significant numbers)? Now I know it is time to sell my Great Lakes boat...

Lake Trout compose 10-12% of the sport catch in Lake Michigan, yet have been nearly half of the total lakewide plant values. At legal size, they remain on the do not consume list. As Ed B states, makes no sense after thirty years of failed efforts to continue in a forage depleted system.

Loss of energy transfer from deep water back upward into the fish community(alewife,yellow perch, lake whitefish,burbot,lake herring, etc.) from the displacement of Diporeia sp. by Dreissend mussels (primarily Quagga sp., but secondarily Zebra mussels inshore), as well as related spawning success and growth declines in the forage fish community are what is driving the majority of problem in Lake Michigan. Steelhead AND brown trout do feed on alewife as well, but not to the level or degree that chinook and coho do, plus they cost a lot more to produce via the hatchery system. Estimates of immigrant Chinook from Lake Huron, as well as wild origin fish from Lake Michigan tributaries peg the Chinook annual input figure (stocked fish plus wild fish) at over 8 million fish per year, a value that exceeds the largest lakewide Chinook plant figure from 1987. Contrast this figure against a forage base that is a third of values recorded in the pre-BKD era on Lake Michigan. One other point to keep in mind, you are actually not recommended to consume the "native" salmonid (lake trout) at legal sizes in Lake Michigan(see fish consumption advisory). From where I sit, this represents nearly forty years of failed effort and wasted dollars to rehabilitate lake trout stocks. largely via Federal bullying of State level fish and game agencies. But then, again, the strain being planted is not native to the Great Lakes, so it is a bit of a stretch to call them a native to begin with. When biologists refer to this as a "top down" (too much foraging pressure on the remaining forage fish base and a "bottom up" (too little nutrient/energy transfer at the lower end of the food web back into the forage fish community, this is what they are referring to. Alewife are a major consumer of larval fish of several species (lake trout, yellow perch, burbot, lake herring, bloater, emerald shiners, etc.). Abundant alewife stocks would likely serve as an initial "check" on Asian Carp expansion, until their numbers reached values where exponential growth of the populaiton would begin to occur.

The MDNR is currently in the final stages of making the switch from Seeforellen strain brown trout, which don't reproduce well anymore, to a new strain in their hatcheries. Browns are likely to ecome more numerous as the stocking of Chinook declines in Lakes Michigan and Huron.

Red light doesn't have as marked an impact on your night vision. I know several folks who like the LED light strips very much.

Both Brook Trout and Lake Trout have 84 total chromosomes. So their eggs and sperm would each also have an identical haploid chromosome count of 42. Most hybrid fish have dissimilar haploid counts and therefore can't reach sexual maturity. Splake may be sterile or fertile depending on the morphology of their total chromosome arrays. This is why fish managers are no longer very keen on planting Splake because they have the potential to breed with wild Coaster Brook Trout and dilute their genetics. Most of the Splake I have seen have the black and white ventral fin border of a Brook Trout and the green-gray vermiculation pattern on the dorsal and lateral surfaces of a Lake Trout. Very difficult to tell without looking at this guy via karyotype techniques at the cell level.

I just bought three rolls of colored vinyl electric tape, since I tape the reel seat retention/tightening nut after mounting my reels, I accomplish the dual task of preventing the nut from loosening by running several wraps on the thread portion of the reel seat as well as identifying my core rods. I use a permanent magic marker to record the core number on the tape and use yellow for 2-3 colors, red for 5-8 and blue for 10 or more so I have some visual reference as I am grabbing rods during set-up or for an inexperienced crew. This way during set-up in the early morning or if I am trying to direct from the helm sation I can just give instructions by tape color instead of debating the merits of placing a 6 or 8 color off that particular inline board or on that clip if we are running everythinf off Otter Boats. Black vinyl on the downrigger rods. Sorry GLF, your near-identical post wasn't there when I started typing this info.

Watched the TV-6 coverage including interviews, gotta love the Wildlife Division's rep's. comments. "We have to be very careful when we attempt verify these sightings..." Let's see, reliable witness who watched the animal for an extended interval, multiple, highly visible tracks on the ground.....detailed description of animal. I know, it was a sabre-toothed cat! Come on Terry, put some effort into the job!

I slid a heat shrink segment on the copper and then fed it through the eye of a SPRO #10 swivel and did eight twists on the copper and sealed it with the shrink wrap. Fishing fool knot on the monofilament or fluorocarbon side of the eye. This keeps twists out of the copper main line no matter whether you run a clean spoon to a flasher fly or meat rig as terminal tackle. I used a Uni to Uni for the backing to mono. segment and a Uni to copper twist with the heat shrink tubing on the copper again. I am on my third year with this set-up. I would keep your leader lenght down to around fifteen to twenty feet. Hope this helps.

Trap nets or gill nets?

A fusiform body shape is the most hydrodynamically efficient form moving through water. The attack submarines marine architects stole their hull structure from the Tuna family. Tuna are a fusiform shaped fish. They litterally sail through the water. I have heard speeds of 50 knots for our attack subs when submerged. I used the Sharks for several years (black vinyl coated). When I went to a speed and temp. at the ball unit, I purchased a heavier set of sharks. Apparently, they moved from a Canadian vendor to an offshore manufacturer. The poor quality control led to air voids in the shark bodies. I ended up with two of the rogues. I ended up cutting the vinyl off and melting them down for decoy weights. I switched to ATOMIK finned 13lb weights, no track issues and substantially diminished blowback. They now have 15 lb weights in the same body style.

About sixty percent of the Asian Carp produced in the US via fish culture operations are exported to the Asian community in the Toronto area. Asians prefer to purchase their fish alive and then prepare them for the table.' Please keep one point in mind, Common Carp are not native to the Americas. They, too, were an imported species. Carp-Asian form or European- are excellent gill net avoiders. Gillnets catch fish by girth, consequently they are not species selective. The by-catch of a gill net set would likely decimate other fish populations at a faster rate because Silver and Big Head Carp are multiple spawners. Their reporductive rates would offset to some degree mortalities induced via a commercial fishery. There is still one aspect of Great Lakes Community fish population structure that may offset Asian Carp proliferation. Alewife are particulate feeders. They eat larval fish as well as zooplankton, Diporeia, and Mysis diluviana. Cisco and Emerald Shiner stocks have recovered significantly in Lake Huron following the collapse of the Alewife population. If Asian Carp larvae have broad niche overlap with Alewife, I garantee you that they will be fed on by all fish larvae predators, including Alewife. Paricularly in a food energy starved system like the current Great Lakes.

Bob, You are likely right. That would go a long way toward explaining how the fish came to be that large from an inland lake. Assuming it was an infertile hybrid, all energy intake would go into body growth and not gamete production. I looked up a couple of studies from aquaculture journals and wild-spawning fish populations. Apparently, first generation hybrids (F1) can be fertile in the wild, back crossing with either maile or female Atlantic Salmon, but not Brown Trout. Non-disjunction during meiosis from broadly miss-matched chromosome counts is probably the mechanism for F1 hybrids X Brown Trout crosses to not produce viable eggs.

Installed an Automatic Charging Relay in the boat to combat my battery eating Verado power.