Water Testing/ Fish Sampling.

[Stan Wright]

Tuesday, Feb 26.

I was a little early so I put the boat in the water and went to check my "fish feeder". It's working fine and attracting fish. I had a dozen or so orange feeder fish and a rod..... Three misses and then landed a catfish. Then 2 small peacock bass and 3 more catfish. Then 4 more peacock bass. I tagged the 12 1/2 inch and the 17 inch ones. Not bad for an hours "work".

The health department ladies arrived. We tested the water at 5 different locations on the lake. Down by the dam at 12:30 the peacock bass were busting the huge schools of shad in an area the size of a basketball court. This lasted the whole 10 minutes it took to take the water samples and move on down the lake. (they were just out of casting distance...AAAaaaaaa)

Over by The Quonset Huts the lake is narrow and I could hit the shore with my little Senko. Several nice peacock bass followed it back to the boat before a 16 1/2 incher tagged my lure..... and I tagged it. Time to move up to the waterfall.

Several fishermen around the lake were seeing peacock bass and catching fish, Mostly under 2 pound size.

Water level is dropping. They have the drain tunnel open at night and the level is at 76 feet... down 3 feet below the spillway. ( they want it down 10 feet to the 70 foot level.) Water clarity up stream is a foot or so, but clears to 3 to 4 foot visibility in the main basin. From 10:30 am to 2:00 pm the water temperature rose from 73 to 75 degrees.

Should be some good fishing in the next few days.
Aloha,
Stan

[Boatless]

Hi Stan
This may sound like a dumb question but what are they testing the water for?

[Stan Wright]

There about 25 to 30 something things that show up on their probe....
Oxygen content was interesting. ( below 10 feet there wasn't enough oxygen to support fish) This varries from time to time, depth and temperature. I guess this week we fish near the surface....

Temp., PH, O2, I can't remember all the stuff.

They take samples of the water from different depths. These are sent to the lab to check for polutents... PCB, DDT, and no telling what else.

If something shows up, they can then try to find out where it's comming from.

[Lrry93]

So when are they going to take action on any of this or is it like every other goverment job. They do just enough to justify a paycheck and not enough to fix the problem. How about the obvious first. Clean up the damn place!, Kick out the trashy ass homeless, Look at the way the garbage truck lot causes run off from cleaning there trucks, Add vegetation to the lake to help oxygen levels, Clear out cichlids, and plecos, or even do a fish study on the lake.

I mean do they really need to go around sampling to see the obvious????????????? It just seems like a joke to me. No one is doing anything to make Wilson a fishery. It is just a dump and no one is doing a thing about it.

[skunked]

Agreed. Great post.

[Stan Wright]

Believe me, they are aware of what's going on and where.... the problem is the "politics" of geting anything done about it. That's the reason for all the testing and dotting all the "I"s and crossing all the "T"s.
Stan

[Ca_Bass]

VEGETATION!!!!!!!!! That would do soooooo much for the Lake. I don't think it will ever be possible to clear out the chiclids but it would be nice. I hear from the guys that have been fishing the lake for a long time that there used to be an abundance of crayfish, but once all the chiclids got in there they ate em all up. I'm sure bringing the crayfish population back would help the LM population out. Maybe even reducing the population of tucs in the lake would help LM too. Have some sort of slot limit for em or something, but you'd probably have to pay people to eat anything from Wilson

[skunked]

Great ideas! I remember the crayfish back then. They were some mean and big suckers! The ones sitting on the water's edge would turn toward me and raise their claws up like they wanted to fight instead of running away!
I disagree about people not wanting to eat fish from the lake though. I never have, but have you seen the old Chinese dudes by the boat ramp with their 20 ft. long poles? I have also seen people taking stringers of tilapia and tucs home in the past.

[FishinFrenzy]

I've been out of the loop for a while but I read some of the posts and I agree with a lot of you guys. The state really needs to do something about the lake NOW before it's too late. Unfortunately, I can only see the lake getting much worse in the future. It's such a shame too. When you see the lake from the road it doesn't seem like much but when you actually get out on it, it's such a beautiful place. It's almost like what I picture heaven being like. It's just too bad no one, except us, really cares enough about it to actually take some FIRM action. Everyone should be treasuring it, not trashing it! Vegetation (the right kind), more baitfish (i.e. shad, bluegills, crawdads) and a lot less small tucs/ciclids, less chemicals/trash would really make the lake BOOM! What actually would that take Stan? Any ideas...besides an act of congress?

[Ca_Bass]

I was watching this fishing show the other day and it was saying how polluted Lake Erie used to be, and one of the main factors that helped "clean up" the lake was when zebra mussels where introduced. I guess the mussels filter all kinds of things out of the water which in turn makes the water clear, which enabled grass to grow deeper in the lake, and also made it possible for other life forms to live in deeper water such as crayfish, now Lake Erie is one of the best small mouth fisheries in the country. Earlier in the post Stan said at the time there wasn't enough oxygen in the water deeper than 10 feet to support fish. I wonder if something as simple as zebra muscles could drastically help out Wilson. I know many places fear the introduction of these muscles to local waters because they like to collect near pipes and things of that sort, I guess it's a real issue for lakes that are used as a water supply. I honestly don't know if those kinda of issues would occur at Wilson or not but maybe it's something the D.L.N.R. could look into.

[Lrry93]

I was watching this fishing show the other day and it was saying how polluted Lake Erie used to be, and one of the main factors that helped "clean up" the lake was when zebra mussels where introduced. I guess the mussels filter all kinds of things out of the water which in turn makes the water clear, which enabled grass to grow deeper in the lake, and also made it possible for other life forms to live in deeper water such as crayfish, now Lake Erie is one of the best small mouth fisheries in the country. Earlier in the post Stan said at the time there wasn't enough oxygen in the water deeper than 10 feet to support fish. I wonder if something as simple as zebra muscles could drastically help out Wilson. I know many places fear the introduction of these muscles to local waters because they like to collect near pipes and things of that sort, I guess it's a real issue for lakes that are used as a water supply. I honestly don't know if those kinda of issues would occur at Wilson or not but maybe it's something the D.L.N.R. could look into.

SSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH! Dont bring up mussels. There are some mussels in the lake already but I guess they are some endangered native mussel that could get the dam ripped down.

[FishinFrenzy]

Hey CA...that's pretty interesting about the zebra mussels. That's the first positive thing I've ever heard about them. All I ever heard is how much of a nuisance they are.

[Ken]

I was watching this fishing show the other day and it was saying how polluted Lake Erie used to be, and one of the main factors that helped "clean up" the lake was when zebra mussels where introduced. I guess the mussels filter all kinds of things out of the water which in turn makes the water clear, which enabled grass to grow deeper in the lake, and also made it possible for other life forms to live in deeper water such as crayfish, now Lake Erie is one of the best small mouth fisheries in the country. Earlier in the post Stan said at the time there wasn't enough oxygen in the water deeper than 10 feet to support fish. I wonder if something as simple as zebra muscles could drastically help out Wilson. I know many places fear the introduction of these muscles to local waters because they like to collect near pipes and things of that sort, I guess it's a real issue for lakes that are used as a water supply. I honestly don't know if those kinda of issues would occur at Wilson or not but maybe it's something the D.L.N.R. could look into.

Oh...you don't want to introduce the zebra mussels...trust me...I know...I'm only 2 hours away from Lake Erie Those little nasty buggers will change every lake they get their little shells into.

As much as it was a positive impact the zebra mussels have on the smallmouth bass fishery, it had a negative impact on the walleye fishery. Walleye prefer dark, stained water. When the zebra mussels started to take hold, they feed on the plankton and cleared up the water a lot. Walleye were forced to deeper water. The same is happening in Bay of Quinte where the zebra mussels is clearing the lake. The largemouth and smallmouth fishery is booming, but the walleye is forced to find deeper waters or deeper into the weeds. It's great for the bass fisherman...but it changes the habitat for the walleye. Walleye taste better than bass

I think the booming smallmouth fishery on Erie also has to do with the introduction and population boom of the round goby (which is a predator of the zebra mussels in their native range). Without the goby, I don't think the smallmouth fishery would be as phenomenal as it is today. Smallmouths eat those gobies like candies

You would want to have a predator to control the zebra mussles...or else they mussels will totally clean the lake clear of any plankton...and then your baitfish species (such as shad) will have no feed. If you introduce the round goby, the peacock bass will be in trouble since the little nasty goby will prey on eggs and fry (much like they do with a lot of the game fish here in Ontario...including SM and LM bass). Although...if the peacock develop a taste for gobies...you may have a fishery similar to Erie developing...but in terms of peacocks. But that's not a risk I'd like to take if I were you.

Plus...the foreign goby would likely compete with the already threatened goby species in Hawaii...which I doubt any intelligently resource manager would agree to the introduction.

Not only does the zebra mussels clog pipes...they also chew your line to shreds. You don't want to lose that 8lb peacock to the zebra mussels now, do you?

Zebra mussels as a solution to Lake Wilson, I would say...Don't even think about it!

[Ken]

Oh, since oxygen depletion below 10 feet is the problem, I would say installing wind mill aerator is likely the most effective and least destructive method to improve the lake (and relatively cheap). Once you get oxygen down to those depths, then there would be more habitat for fish. Let the fry feed on plankton to slowly clear up the lake to allow vegetation growth. Once the cycle starts rolling, the lake will take care of itself.

Just put a few of them in the most concerned areas. These aerators will likely double as fish attractant and holding structures

Drastic changes are often poorly evaluated before implementation. These changes often lead to disasters when crucial factors and interactions are overlooked.

Just my $0.02

[OO7:BASSINASSASSIN]

Believe it or not we used to have way more tucs, especially the small ones. Even with the big tuc population, every so often the LM bass would have a big spawn. I think about this time of the year you would start to see choke 1 to 2 inch bass along the shoreline and in the grass.

I think it would be nice to have more reserviors to fish. Of course, land is to expensive here, but we sure could use the water. Maybe on the outer islands.