Culling Fish

polliwogg · **Posted:** Thu Dec 27, 2007 1:19 pm

When the salmon fishing was hot in the Wellington area my uncle would walk the shore and pull the hooks out of dead fish to top off the tackle box. I remember him saying there were lots of dead fish some with hooks ,some without.

I broke off a flasher and fly and he had it in his box the next week.

But my point is you aren't going to see the dead fish unless you go looking for them. If someone has 10 fish wash up on their shore they aren't going to go "oh no, I should phone Steve before the coons get them."

steve-hamilton · **Joined:** Fri Apr 25, 2003 7:40 am **Posts:** 1776

spring time my friend.

salmon run the rivers in the fall....but get pounded VERY hard in the spring on the south shore.....

i hear the same thing, dont release them, they'll die....but you dont see piles of dead salmon on the shore....

of course in teh fall you see dead ones, but thats, as you said, mother nature taking its course of action.

GHoroky · **Joined:** Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:48 am **Posts:** 25

Delayed mortality was something discovered during the joint studies done by Ohio SeaGrant. (They didn't invent it or discover it, just observed it in their study.)

The surprising thing about it was it took from 2 days to 6 months for it happen/ against the control sample. Again, this was a long time ago so I'm going with my memory.

I have also been told that in deep water very few fish float to the top, they just become part of the bio-mass at the bottom. That may partially explain why they are not being observed. Shallow river situations tend to show up rather quickly.

The tournaments have had some bad P.R. based on fish kills after tournaments, where hundreds of dead show up on shorelines, these were usually at deep water location during the warmest parts of the year. That problem never came to light for tournaments that were held in early spring and late fall. Either the fish survived or never floated to the top. Without studies, which are extremely expensive and time consuming, we will never know if this is the case at BOQ.

The more I learn about fishing and the biology, the more I realize what I don't know.

Greg Horoky

steve-hamilton · **Joined:** Fri Apr 25, 2003 7:40 am **Posts:** 1776

"I have also been told that in deep water very few fish float to the top, they just become part of the bio-mass at the bottom. That may partially explain why they are not being observed. "

Thanks Greg.

That certainly makes sense. I hope it isn't the case, but you can't argue with science. thanks for taking the time to post here....

Any idea about my blue tailed walleye? :?:

GHoroky · **Joined:** Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:48 am **Posts:** 25

I saw a perch that colour on the Ohio SeaGrant website once, you might want to find that site on your search engine and look it up. I think they gave an explaination of the pigment.
Sorry I could be much more help.
Greg Horoky

martycoo · **Joined:** Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:50 am **Posts:** 1793

Well I found it very fishy after the one weekend tourny that 15 SM bass all around 4-6 #'s were floating on the shore! Common sense says! Took photos to it was a bloody shame, and I think most anglers know if the fish is going to live or not but are forced to put it back due to rules of the tourny! Just my opinion.
Mike

steve-hamilton · **Joined:** Fri Apr 25, 2003 7:40 am **Posts:** 1776

ya, that was a big hit to the fishery marty...i'm pretty sure thats why they, and rightly so, implemented a "no smallie" rule during the first tourney of the season...which i think is fantastic...

martycoo · **Joined:** Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:50 am **Posts:** 1793

It was a great idea but it's going to change year by year I think...... maybe take em out of the first 3 tournys cause that die off came after the first. I just dont see the need to grab big smallies from all the way at main duck and excepect them all to survive! I think main duck should be takin out of the tourny's it's not really the Bay of Quinte!

Mike

steve-hamilton · **Joined:** Fri Apr 25, 2003 7:40 am **Posts:** 1776

marty, the easiest, most effective, and probably most challanging way to fix that is to make the boundaries the ferry....

dont go past it...simple as that.

its a bay of quinte tournament, not lake ontario.

martycoo · **Joined:** Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:50 am **Posts:** 1793

I agree 100%!
Mike

GHoroky · **Joined:** Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:48 am **Posts:** 25

Up until 10 years ago on the Canuck side of Western Erie we could catch over 100 smallmouth a day, pretty well any day. Fools, like myself started to tell the rest of the fishing world about marvelous smallmouth fishery.

16 miles away, on the Detroit River, a number of bass clubs were holding tournaments on the weekends, each and every weekend, sometimes 2 or more clubs.

Soon the Colchester area was filled with bass boats from the tourneys culling and transporting their best 5 or in some cases 10 best fish 16 miles in, more times than not, very rough water, with square livewells, weighing their fish and releasing them at the site.

10 years later, our bass population has gone to pot, finding 6 fish a day is a struggle and no fantastic fishery has developed between the release site and the waters they were caught in.

No studies are planned to measure delayed mortality because bass are not considered an economic value in Ontario, as they aren't commercially fished.

There is no outcry in Michigan, where these tournaments are held, cause no dead bass wash up on shore in a river that is 1. deep 2. fast flowing.

Bass organizations pride themselves on catch and release, but the fact of the matter is, these clubs are killing big fish on a massive scale. That also includes the larger the Bass groups like FLW.

They don't know they are doing it because the don't see the bodies.

So, just because you don't see dead fish doesn't mean we are not killing fish.

The saving grace of BOQ, is that fisherman are barely scratching the total of the Lake Ontario population that filters into the Bay, much like the Lake Erie Huron/Lorain area of Ohio.

Greg Horoky

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Culling Fish

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