Syracuse.com - Federal Salmon River project aims to up Atlantic Salmon fishery in Lake Ontario and in the river

[HuntingNY-News]

"Our hope is that you'll see substantial numbers of Atlantics in the river in July and August" so that anglers can take advantage of that, said the director of the Tunison lab in Cortland.

U.S. Geological Survey staff were up at Beaver Dam Brook near Altmar Thursday morning, releasing thousands of fingerling Atlantic salmon into the Salmon River tributary.

It’s all part of a unique research project run by the Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Science in Cortland the past few years. The project aims to develop a successful strain of Atlantics in the Lake Ontario, essentially coming up with a cookbook of sorts that the state can eventually use to raise the fish on its own.

In addition, the project hopes to increase the numbers of Atlantics in the Salmon River during the summer months, which would expand the river’s prime fishing season. That would be good news for anglers and the area’s tourism industry.

The released fish, raised at the Tunison lab, were the last of several stockings into the brook and the main stem of the Salmon River this month. The stockings began Sept. 20. A total of 70,000 fish were released, measuring about five inches and with clipped adipose fins for future identification by researchers, according to Jim Johnson, the lab’s director. The fish were raised from eggs purchased from a Maine hatchery.

The plan is for the fish to make their way into the lake, survive and return annually to the Salmon River to spawn. In two to three years, with the help of the state DEC hatchery in Altmar, a number of surviving Atlantics will be captured. They’ll then be stripped of their eggs, and the hope is that the eggs will then be used to develop a successful “Lake Ontario strain of Atlantic salmon” at the Tunison Lab, Johnson said.

Johnson noted that unlike Pacific salmon (chinook and coho) that are also stocked in the river and Lake Ontario, Atlantic salmon come back each year to spawn in late June, rather than in the fall.

“Our hope is that you’ll see substantial numbers of Atlantics in the river in July and August,” he said, and that anglers can take advantage of that.

The Tunison lab project, which is several years old, is being paid for by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and is a cooperative effort between the USGS, New York state, Canada and Native American tribal officials along the lake.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog