Syracuse.com - Eastern Finger Lakes healthy, but challenges exist -- particularly on Cayuga

[HuntingNY-News]

Some 80 percent of lake trout landed by anglers on Cayuga Lake last summer either had lampreys attached or showed lamprey scars, DEC officials said.

Some 80 percent of lake trout landed by anglers on Cayuga Lake last summer either had lampreys attached or showed lamprey scars, DEC officials said. Mike Greenlar [email protected]  

Cayuga Lake is having one its worst sea lamprey infestations in years and the state Department of Environmental Conservation plans to ask anglers this summer for their opinions on whether walleyes should be stocked again in Owasco Lake.

Those were among the topics covered at Monday evening’s “State of the Eastern Finger Lakes” meeting hosted by the DEC at Bass Pro Shops in the Fingerlakes Mall. An identical meeting was held Wednesday evening at Groton High School.

The meeting featured presentations on the current state of fisheries in Otisco, Skaneateles, Owasco and Cayuga lakes.

Fisheries staff from the DEC’s Cortland office spoke about how they use gill netting, electro-shocking from boats and in tributaries, data from spawning fish and lamprey caught at the Cayuga Inlet Fishway on the Cayuga lake Inlet – along with information passed on by anglers -- to get a handle on how fish are doing in these waterways.

Highlights included:

Cayuga Lake: Cayuga is facing a number of challenges from invasive species, including spiny water fleas (which foul angler’s lines during the warm months), hydrilla (an invasive plant discovered in the lake’s inlet) and sea lamprey, said Emily Zollweg-Horan, a DEC aquatic biologist.

DEC staffers remove lampreys from the water at the Cayuga Inlet Fishway. . Mike Greenlar | [email protected]  

The water fleas are here to say, she said. A multi-agency task force (which the DEC is a part of) is attempting to deal with the hydrilla.

The lamprey situation, though, is the worst it’s been in several decades. Some 80 percent of lake trout landed by anglers last summer on the lake either had lamprey attached or showed lamprey scars, Zollweg-Horan said.

The DEC uses the Cayuga Inlet Fishway each spring to catch and remove spawning lamprey. However, high water conditions in 2007 allowed the spawning lampreys to bypass the fishway. Funding problems and DEC staff cuts that year prevented the DEC from using lampricide (a chemical treatment in the water) to deal with the problem. The result was a bumper crop of lamprey in the lake.

It’s too late to do anything about that, Zolliweg-Horan said. However, another highwater incident in the spring of 2011 resulted in a similar situation. Since the young lamprey take up to four years to migrated back into the lake, a lampricide treatment is planned in 2014 in the inlet, where an estimated 90 percent of the lake’s lamprey spawn each year, Zolliweg-Horan said.

Owasco Lake: During the 1980s, the lake’s brown and rainbow trout population and angler catches on Owasco Lake were noteworthy, according to angler reports. But during the 1990s, the catch rates of these two trout species began to slide. Meanwhile, Owasco’s lake trout population grew steadily and a walleye stocking effort led by the Owasco Lake Association began in 1996.

Huge brown trout caught by Gary Rule on Owasco Lake last Memorial Day.  

“The stocking of walleye were not solely responsible for the drop in brown and rainbow trout,” said Dan Bishop, regional natural resources supervisor, but he added that it appeared they were a substantial contributing factor. The DEC, which picked up the stocking of the fish in 2001, discontinued walleye stocking in 2006. In addition, the DEC cut back on the stocking of lake trout in Owasco.

Should the DEC resume walleye stocking or should its emphasis continue to be on improving the lake’s trout and salmon fishery? Currently, the DEC’s emphasis is on the trout and landlocked salmon, and no change is planned. Nevertheless, Bishop said, the DEC is conducting an angler survey at the end of this summer to see what anglers want.

Skaneateles Lake: One of the deepest and clearest of the Finger Lakes, Skaneateles suffered problems in 2006-07 with VHS, a fish killing disease, which took out sizeable numbers of rock and smallmouth bass. The disease might have also been a factor in the scarcity of cisco and whitefish, two long-time, deep- dwelling fish in the lake that failed to turn up in the results of a 2012 gill-netting survey.

Chris Stahl, of Marcellus, holds up a 21-inch smallmouth bass he caught and released on Skaneateles Lake.  

Topics discussed included a nagging beaver dam problem on state-owned property on Grout Brook; that the lake is stocked with two types of rainbow trout and that there’s a transition underway to introduce a new strain on landlocked salmon (the Segbago strain from the state of Maine) into the lake -- and that the lake’s smallmouth bass population has improved in recent years to the point that 3- 4-pound smallmouth are commonly caught by anglers.

Bob Werner, a spokesman and treasurer for the Skaneateles Lake Association, said after the meeting that the milfoil eradication effort by his group has been successful and that “95 percent” of it had been removed from the lake’s bottom. His group’s efforts are now in the “maintenance phase” of removing new patches as they arise.

Tom Boise's muskie, caught during an ice fishing derby on Otisco Lake (Feb. 14-15, 2009), broke the world record for a tiger muskie caught through the ice. It weighed 27 pounds, 5 ounces.  

Otisco Lake: The DEC this fall increased the size limit for anglers to keep a tiger muskies from 30 top 36 inches, a change which it says will increase the potential for more trophy-sized fish from the lake. One one angler at the meeting questioned whether that would negatively impact the fishery and noted that ice fishing derbies are being affected by the lack of “keeper” tigers. Dave Lemon, the DEC’s regional fisheries manager said letting the tigers grow more would not negatively affect the fishery and asked that anglers “be patient,”noting that in a year or two there will be more larger fish to catch.

Other topics discussed included a proposed DEC-run boat launch at the county park on Turtle Bay (it’s still at the talking stage); the presence of water chestnuts (an invasive species) in Turtle Bay and how the lake’s shallowness and low oxygen levels on the bottom during warm weather makes it difficult for stocked brown trout to survive each year. The later was an impetus by the DEC last fall to reduce the minimum size limit for anglers from 15 to 12 inches.

Following each presentation, DEC staff emphasized participants in its Angler Diary program for the Eastern Finger Lakes, which the department relies on for important data, has dropped in recent years. To learn more about the program, check out the DEC website at www.dec.ny.gov, or contact the Region 7 Fisheries office at (607) 753-3095 ext. 213.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog