The Fishing Line - November 6th Edition

In This Issue:

• 2020 Salmon River Hatchery Egg Take Complete
• Expanding Fishing Access in Broome County
• 2020 Lake Erie Fish Survey Reveals Some Cool Finds

2020 Salmon River Hatchery Egg Take Complete

Salmon River Hatchery staff completed egg collections for Chinook and Coho Salmon on October 21, 2020, resulting in over 1.6 million Chinook Salmon eggs and 860,000 coho salmon eggs. Chinook and Coho Salmon are stocked in Lake Ontario tributaries every year and provide a world class fishing experience in the open lake and tributaries. Chinook Salmon hatched from eggs collected in 2020 will be held in the hatchery for a relatively short period of time and stocked in April/May 2021. Raised in the hatchery for a longer period, Coho Salmon that are hatched from eggs collected in 2020, will be stocked as yearlings in spring 2022.

You can find more information about Lake Ontario fisheries management and the Salmon River Fish Hatchery on DEC's website.

New Fishing Access in Broome County

DEC Region 7 Operations, with assistance from the Village of Deposit Division of Public Works, recently constructed a new angler parking area on Oquaga Creek (Broome County). The Deposit Midget Baseball program received a State grant to convert the site from a former milk plant into a sports complex and community park. As part of the multi-use plan for the site, the DEC parking area provides a formal designated area for anglers to access Oquaga Creek and the Public Fishing Rights (PDF) easement that extends upstream.

2020 Lake Erie Fish Survey Reveals Some Cool Finds

Every September for the past 40 years, DEC Lake Erie Fisheries Research Unit has set gill nets to assess the warmwater fish community. The primary goal of the survey is to collect abundance and age structure information for Walleye, Yellow Perch, and Smallmouth Bass - the three most targeted fish species by anglers in New York’s portion of Lake Erie. The Walleye and Yellow Perch data also contribute to lake wide assessments that annually determine safe harvest levels of both species. While the focus of the survey is on the more popular sportfish species, the survey also monitors trends in other less-commonly known fish species such as Freshwater Drum and White Perch, along with some truly rare species.

In 2020, one of these rare species – a Stonecat (mini members of the Catfish family) was caught, as well as some extraordinarily large Spottail Shiners - the first of this species ever sampled in the netting survey!

The results from the warmwater assessment are published every March in the Lake Erie Research Unit’s annual report.