Syracuse.com - DEC examining the Cazenova Lake fishery. At first glance, it's a 'very healthy' lake

[HuntingNY-News]

Great number of bass were noted following two electro-shocking outings near a shoreline. In the next couple of weeks, DEC staff will be using gill nets and traps to examine the deeper water in Cazenovia Lake. This spring, state Department of Environmental Conservation staff started taking a closer look at the fish in Cazenovia Lake.“It’s a fishery assessment,” said David Lemon, regional fisheries manager for the DEC’s Region 7. “What we’ve found so far is the lake is very healthy. Among other things, there’s a tremendous abundance of largemouth bass.”It’s been awhile since anything like this has been done on Cazenovia Lake, he said, noting that the assessment is unrelated to a joint Cazenovia village/town project to add chemicals to control milfoil. That project is in its third year, and the third treatment was recently completed.Lemon said the DEC’s fishery assessment was prompted more by increased public access to the lake in recent years. The DEC wanted to evaluate the overall health of the fishery, he said, and see if there’s a need for additional management. For example, some anglers have requested that walleye should again be stocked in the lake. Walleye were stocked decades ago.Lemon said DEC staff conducted a couple of nights of electro-shocking along a certain stretch of shoreline. They ended up capturing and releasing a wide variety of panfish, largemouth bass and two walleyes — one measuring about 10 inches long.One thing that stood out, Lemon said, was the large number and wide range in sizes of the largemouth bass captured. The DEC staff recorded nearly 500 fish in six hours of shocking. The biggest was about 20 inches.Lemon said the chemical treatments for the milfoil will not hurt the lake’s fishery. However, he said, the changes in the lake’s aquatic vegetation will mostly change “the distribution” of the fish throughout the lake.Shortly after the first milfoil treatment in the summer of 2010, there was a significant die-off of largemouth bass and some panfish. The dead fish were sent to Cornell University for analysis and it was determined they died from an “elevated level of external parasites on the fish,” resulting from high water temperatures in the lake that summer.At the time, Paul Bowser, a professor of aquatic animal medicine, said there was no reason to believe the fish were affected by the milfoil defoliant chemicals.In the next couple of weeks, Lemon said, DEC staff will be using gill nets and traps to examine the deeper water in Cazenovia Lake.“That should give us a complete picture,” he said.

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