returning Atlantics to the Salmon River, NY

[geebee]

this is interesting :

http://m.wrvo.org/?utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.douglastonsalmonrun.com%2FNews.aspx%3FNewsID%3D19#mobile/29766

imagine catching a brown, an atlantic and a steelhead on the same day. just wow !

it would make for some awesome summer fishing too.

 

[trike23]

Canada has been at it for quite some time. More could be done in New york but a lot of politics involved. Check out bringbackthesalmon.ca/ lot of neat information. Personally I would rather see the native Atlantics restored and the ending of the pacific salmon stocking. But you could imagine the riots.

 

[Biggie]

I have caught 3 atlantics in the Oak over the last 3 years. I had a triple crown on the one with a brown, steelhead and the atlantic on the same day. It's a shame that NY has a one per day creel limit on them with a 25" min. length. Most guys catch them and don't even know what kind of fish it is and they just string em up.

 

[hammertime]

The oak was filthy with Atlantics a couple years ago. I didn't see too many last year though.

 

[FGSIII]

Check out Fish Creek Atlantic Salmon Club as well if you are interested in atlantic salmon. They have a very interesting hatchery as well.

I helped stock some of the atlantic salmon in beaver dam brook behind the altmar hatchery. I did it two years in a row and it was pretty cool to see those little salmon with their big sailboat fins.

I've only caught little ones and lost one nice one about 5 years ago. Maybe this year will be the year!!

Frank

 

[Chaz]

Eat the brown and steelhead, release the Atlantic. Yeah, it remains to be seen if the Atlantics will ever be restored anywhere, but I'd love to see it in the Salmon River, it is after all how it got its name.
BTW the sea run Atlantics get quite large, like way bigger then steelhead or browns. I've seen landlocked Atlantics in Maine that were bigger then steelhead and browns.

 

[pcray1231]

I propose a fish ladder over Niagara Falls, so that we can get these things in Erie!

 

[geebee]

Chaz wrote:
Eat the brown and steelhead, release the Atlantic. .

no need to eat the browns bud. they forage in different areas to the Salmon - browns stay in 30ft-60ft of water just offshore whereas the Salmon go far out and very deep, they also spawn in different water.

salmon and trout (sea trout) co-exist all over the upper northern and southern hemispheres, big ones.

i'm not sure if an atlantic run would be truly sustainable alongside steelhead though ?

 

[JeffK]

NYS has been trying to restore the Atlantic runs in the Finger Lakes and the Salmon R since at least the 70's. Much of the salmon research is done in the Tunison Federal Labs in Cortland which most of us pass on the way to the Salmon R. The original strain for Lake Ontario/Finger Lakes was extirpated by 1900 so the NYS landlocked is from stock brought from Maine.

The Atlantics seemed to be more common in the 80's and then they disappeared until about 4 years ago when they made a comeback - along with the runs on the St Marys R from Lake Superior. Odd coincidence that Finger lakes, Lake Superior, and Lake Ontario all had good salmon runs at the same time. In 2010 my record was a 28" fish from Fall Ck on Cayuga Lake and in 2011 I beat it with a 30" Atlantic in the Salmon R. In 2011 the Salmon R was filled with Atlantics all summer. Plenty of guesses why that happened - a population that suits the waters? Better stocking practices? Switch to a diet of introduced gobies? Something else? In 2012 the drought conditions made the runs poor in most places, let's see what happens this year.

Competition between juvenile steelhead and Atlantics is an issue. In many Atlantic streams the limit is nursery water, not necessarily spawning areas. Steelies (or smallies for that matter - Salmon R is loaded with smallies) don't help in the year or two salmon need in the streams.

 

[geebee]

Jeff - success of Atlantics depends often on access to the tributaries. salmon are different to browns in that as fingerlings they will usually move upstream of the redds where they were hatched, and live there until food or water depth is too little.

I understand that some of the Salmon river tribs are cut off ?

 

[bingsbaits]

http://www.fisherie.com/LibraryArticles/History_of_the_Salmon_River_Fishery.aspx

 

[ryguyfi]

Great link bings. Interesting to see the history of the river and how much neglect and restoration it has seen over the years.

 

[gulfgreyhound]

Imo Atlantics are better fighters than Pacific Salmon. I really like to see them returned to previous numbers to the Great Lakes, I doubt that will occur. GG

 

[geebee]

the stream to watch in the East is the penobscot in Maine, by removing the Veazie Dam and two others this summer they reconnected over 200 miles of Salmon spawning tribs with the ocean.

the next 3-4 years could be very interesting or a huge let down like the Connecticut river program.

 

[JeffK]

The dams on the Salmon R cut off about 3 miles of river to an impassable falls. BTW, Salmon R Falls is a cool place to visit if the fishing is slow. I don't think there are any major tribs in that 3 miles. The historic major spawning tribs, like Trout, Orwell, and John O'Hara Brooks are still open to the lake.

I wonder about the success of the Penobscot dam removals. The Gulf of Maine rivers have still been showing declining populations when other areas are recovering. Let's hope it works though.

 

[wsender]

"The Oak"....

Is that a thing now?

 

[Chaz]

pcray1231 wrote:
I propose a fish ladder over Niagara Falls, so that we can get these things in Erie!

Their land locked cousin were in Erie. In that lake they would have been huge.

 

[Chaz]

geebee wrote:

Chaz wrote:
Eat the brown and steelhead, release the Atlantic. .

no need to eat the browns bud. they forage in different areas to the Salmon - browns stay in 30ft-60ft of water just offshore whereas the Salmon go far out and very deep, they also spawn in different water.

salmon and trout (sea trout) co-exist all over the upper northern and southern hemispheres, big ones.

i'm not sure if an atlantic run would be truly sustainable alongside steelhead though ?

Yes they do where they co-evolved, I wouldn't think it is necessarily the same if they're both stocked. I've never heaof them hybridizing though.

 

[PennypackFlyer]

Was up at Pulaski NY(in town) fishing on Friday, Sept 06. Salmon and Steels were running nicely. Watched one gent with a nice steely...man can they jump clear out of the water and with some great heights. Not just a couple of times did that fish launch itself above 10 feet. The Salmon did come up out of the water but not with the same height.

 

[JeffK]

I love the way Atlantics jump, they jump straight up into the air and will do it plenty of times. Steelies sometimes jump the same way, Pacific salmon less so. However, fresh cohoes can go nuts sprinting all over the place and jumping all over the place, but rarely jumping straight up. A lot of it IMHO comes from the temperature. The more the temperature is near the prime temperature, the more spectacular the leaps. As you go hotter or cooler the jumps become less intense.