Dealing With The Perch Issue

[DonAndersen]

Folks,

 

Perch are an issue in many waters that held decent trout. In Central Alberta 6 lakes are now effected. The loss of Cow Lake meant that 10>18 lb. trout are no longer available.

The problem is getting worse not better, More lakes are being stocked all the time. If you care about what you've lost and the Govt actions, read the backgrounder here and fill out the survey.

 

http://www.mywildalberta.com/Fishing/Stock...antedPerch.aspx

 

regards,

 

 

Don

[SilverDoctor]

Folks,

 

Perch are an issue in many waters that held decent trout. In Central Alberta 6 lakes are now effected. The loss of Cow Lake meant that 10>18 lb. trout are no longer available.

The problem is getting worse not better, More lakes are being stocked all the time. If you care about what you've lost and the Govt actions, read the backgrounder here and fill out the survey.

 

http://www.mywildalberta.com/Fishing/Stock...antedPerch.aspx

 

regards,

 

 

Don

 

Thanks for posting this Don.

[Brunsie]

Don

After reading through the backgrounder, it appears that Rotenone is not 100% successful.

Is there a reason for this or just luck of the draw?

BK

[monger]

The problem of incomplete kill probably has more to do with fresh water inflow (springs/creeks) than the effectiveness of rotenone. Another problem could be the nasty little perch bury themselves away in some pocket of vegetation along the shoreline. It only takes 2 to repopulate the lake.

[LlamaLeach]

Don

 

Has there ever been any thought to use CIL wobblers,

 

While it may not remove all, it could reduce the numers if organized.

[bigbowtrout]

Net the lakes and feed the homeless

[wtforward]

Don

 

The more popular lake(read more fisherman) might have a better chance of staying

perch free for a longer time when selecting 'what lakes' although that would not

be the only critera. Too bad about the lakes in your neck of the woods. Would be

great to try and get Cow back to the good old days but there are other seemingly

unsurmountabe problems hindering that happening. Never heard of anyone

caught perch stocking over the years but if anyone is ever caught

they should get a big time fine and it should be publicly advertised. It would be too

much to expect in having one of the 'kill' lake candidates converted and managed as a trophy

trout fishery. That would be blasphemous. Considering the cost of chemicals,

manpower and downtime I would not hold out much hope for any increase in

stillwater trout fishing opportunities in the near foreseeable future.

[DonAndersen]

wtforward,

 

The last lake that was "perched" in this area was Twin Lakes 5 miles NW of Rocky. It's a provincial Rec. Area c/w 20+ camping spots, a herd of users every day spring to fall. The only way it would be busier would be to have more canoeing businesses hogging the boat launch.

 

There has/have/will be more lakes managed as Quality Fisheries all over Alberta. The last one added to the list was Fiesta Lake south of Caroline, Alberta.

 

The lakes selected for Quality Regulations except for Police Outpost are all low 02 lakes where shutting off the aeration system effectively kills the fish. Neat solution to a bunch of jerks that insist on destroying fisheries.

 

The lakes in the Rocky Area are @ the apex of a triangle where there is a million people plus to the NE, a million plus to the SE and another 1/4 million straight east. All within 2 hours. This is not my area - it's all of ours.

 

 

Brunsie,

 

Rotenone is effective only if you pay attention to all the waters that could be effected. The last time Twin Lake was killed, both the north and south lakes of Twin Lake were treated. It's a learning thing.

 

catch ya' all,

 

 

Don

[Smitty]

Thanks for posting Don, I took the survey.

 

In the interim, may I propose a band-aid solution? And I do mean its band-aid, cause it doesn't solve everything.

 

But why not allow an unlimited perch "limit" from these lakes, in the meantime, while the gov't, bios, and the angling community decide what to do? Guys get to take some food home, less perch mean more room for trout.

 

Not the end all to be all, but it could be a start.

 

If there was any concern about this being overdone you could just create a special harvest license - since they already have one set up for walleye.

 

Any thoughts? Am I missing something?

 

Smitty

[Guest tallieho]

thanks don for posting this issue...I personally hate them perch in trout lakes.I do agree they taste good,so catch & kill all that you can catch.They used to net them out of Midnapore lake,every 4 hrs.they would empty them into a garbage pail.They did this for a summer & the buggers are still there.

[DonAndersen]

Smitty,

 

Proposed the same thing to SRD after Cow was "perched". Suggested that the lake limit would be a pickup or boat load and you couldn't go home till they were full.

I'd like to treat perch as rodents - you know like rats - kill 'em all except for lakes with pike populations.

The reason that there will not be a limit on perch after they are illegally stocked was to prevent the person who did it from benefiting from the crime.

 

 

catch ya'

 

 

Don

[TimD]

Smitty,

 

Proposed the same thing to SRD after Cow was "perched". Suggested that the lake limit would be a pickup or boat load and you couldn't go home till they were full.

I'd like to treat perch as rodents - you know like rats - kill 'em all except for lakes with pike populations.

The reason that there will not be a limit on perch after they are illegally stocked was to prevent the person who did it from benefiting from the crime.

 

 

catch ya'

 

 

Don

Don,

 

Thanks for your work on this. I don't think the government really understood the scope of the problem when we brought it up at the roundtable about 6 years ago.

 

The perch get in there by someone actually stocking the lake or by people using live minnows to fish for trout. I think that the proposed fine and recovering the cost of rehabilitation from perpetrators will go a long way towards getting people to think twice. The next thing would be some type of information campaign to get people to understand how why they should not stock and why they should not use live minnows. I know it seems like a no-brainer and that people should know better - but . . . .

 

Regards,

 

Tim

[Castuserraticus]

"Life will find a way." - Jurassic Park

The success history of the use of toxins looks to be abysmal. And I'll bet each time it's used they figured they had the bugs worked out from the last time it was tried. The likely problem is incomplete dispersion of the poison. There is no way this can be modeled without extremely detailed, expensive studies.

 

People mistakenly look at a lake as a static body of water and this is far from the truth. It is merely the miniscule visible aspect of the immense groundwater system that is everywhere in Alberta. And groundwater is always moving - usually very slowly but high permability lenses in the soil can act as conduits (springs).

 

We're blaming physical human transplantation. There are natural forces that could cause the "spontaneous" appearance of species. Nobody ever has to seed a new water body with aquatic vegetation. When a roadside borrow pit is dug, it only takes a few years for a normal aquatic vegetation community to become established. When water fowl are dappling and stirring up the bottom, pretty well anything from the water could cling to their feet or other parts of their body and be transported to it's next resting/feeding place. How many viable perch eggs would it take to populate a lake?

 

Maybe we can create some high quality perch/pike/walleye fisheries - sharks on the fly.

 

If we create a suitable habitat, life will find a way there.

[DonAndersen]

Castuserraticus,

 

You're right only if you consider man part of nature. After all, he's packed rainbows/brown/brooks to Alberta. No - make that all over the place. What we're seeing now is a continuation of man packing stuff. As far as other natural forces packing perch. Gotta wonder about that. About 20,000 years since the last ice age. For about 19,975 years, perch never moved a whole lot. For the past 40 years they started to arrive everywhere. Wonder if perch are taken to hiking?

 

As far as rotenone - the native Indians in south America used it to stun fish so that they could gather and eat them.

 

And here is some info on rotenone.

 

Q. What is rotenone?

A. Rotenone is a naturally occurring substance derived from the roots of tropical plants in the bean family Leguminosae including jewel vine Derris spp. and lacepod Lonchocarpus spp. Rotenone is very insoluble in water, and other materials can be added to disperse it throughout the water column in deep lakes and flowing waters. Rotenone is used either as a powder from ground-up plant roots (e.g., Pro-Noxfish®) or extracted from the roots and formulated as a liquid (e.g., Nusyn-Noxfish® and Noxfish®). The liquid formulations contain dispersants and emulsifiers (primarily naphthalene, methylnaphthalenes, and xylenes) that add little, if any, toxicity but disperse the rotenone throughout the water.

Q. How does rotenone work?

A. Rotenone does not suffocate fish or interfere with the uptake of oxygen in the blood as was long believed. Instead, it inhibits a biochemical process at the cellular level making it impossible for fish to use the oxygen absorbed in the blood and needed in the release of energy during respiration (Oberg 1967a, 1967b).

Q. Why is rotenone used in fish management?

A. Use of rotenone enables fisheries managers to eradicate entire populations and communities of fishes with minimum impact to nontarget wildlife. Following treatment, the desired population of fish is then reestablished n the water body. Although other approaches are useful as control measures, these are only partially effective in eradicating fish. Use of rotenone is the only sampling method that allows for an accurate estimation of standing crop (biomass of a population) of diverse fishes in large water bodies.

Q. Is rotenone a selective pesticide?

A. Although rotenone has some toxicity to all oxygen-breathing animals, it is selective to fish and other gill-breathing organisms at the concentrations used by fish biologists. In general, most common aquatic invertebrates are less sensitive than fish to rotenone. Some of the zooplankton (cladocerans and copepods) are equally sensitive; however, these do have life history stages that can survive the treatment. Snails and clams are quite tolerant.

[rhuseby]

Life doesn't always find a way. There were no fish in Twin Lakes prior to trout being stocked, and there were millenia for fish to naturally occur. The same is true for many other water bodies with fish bearing capability in this province. If there is no existing or previous natural corridor for fish migration, natural populations are unlikely.

 

Perhaps we should look at BCs approach. If illegally intorduced fish are found in stocked water bodies, ALL angling is prohibited till rehabilitation is complete. This may punish the innocent, but it does ensure that the perps have no opportunity to blend with other anglers while catching their imports. Just a thought to provoke some discussion.

[Smitty]

Life doesn't always find a way. There were no fish in Twin Lakes prior to trout being stocked, and there were millenia for fish to naturally occur. The same is true for many other water bodies with fish bearing capability in this province. If there is no existing or previous natural corridor for fish migration, natural populations are unlikely.

 

Perhaps we should look at BCs approach. If illegally introduced fish are found in stocked water bodies, ALL angling is prohibited till rehabilitation is complete. This may punish the innocent, but it does ensure that the perps have no opportunity to blend with other anglers while catching their imports. Just a thought to provoke some discussion.

 

I can understand where BC is coming from, but it wouldn't work in AB, in my opinion, because we have far fewer waterbodies, particularly stocked trout lakes.

 

I mean look at that list on the gov't website; can you imagine if the gov't prohibited angling from those waterbodies. Where would trout fisherman go? Though I suppose that they would not all be closed at the same time if you're rehabbing one to three lakes at a time...

 

Don;

 

Didn't think about that point about rewarding the jackass's who do it by then giving them license to benefit through a unlimited kill. Guess that makes sense, but I wouldn't mind seeing a test-pilot project on a couple of lakes. I think Cow would be suitable, because its so big, and probably a lot of perch could get removed.

 

Smitty

[TimSmith]

Smitty

 

Cow is tempting (and I am sure Don can set it straight) but it was not the perch that

was the demise of Cow it was sustaining an adequate water level for over wintering.

After much debate and if I remember even after some infrastructure work the level required

could not be sustained. I think some spring floods did some berm damage and added to the risk of

winter kills ended trophy trout lake possibility. If those issues are remotely valid and still remain today maybe

perch in Cow is as good as it gets.

 

Don

I know they are our lakes but I don't even get to Swan Lake. It is not a $20.00

round trip anymore and I don't see the cost of fishing getting any cheaper in the

near future. You remember the footballs in Crawling Valley? The point being local pressure

from local residents to there local MLA is probably more effective than say somebody from Southern

Alberta lobbying about a lake in the RMH area and thus the comment 'lakes in your neck

of the woods'. Enuff said. Anyway survey completed.

[DonAndersen]

Guys/Gals,

 

TimSmith mentioned the lake level issue. The lake maintained the same level for some years till a beaver dam @ the lake outlet finally failed. This was prior to or just @ the point when the perch were stocked. SRD plowed money into steel panels and got the lake level stabilized to prior levels.

 

With or w/o level stabilization, Cow Lake was doomed as a trophy lake fishery after the perch arrived. The perch ate everything.

 

Cow Lake is one weird lake. It doesn't perform from the winterkill angle as do a lot of others. Do to the fact it's shallow, the increased sun angle in February causes the plant life to start to grow and the 02 levels to rise. This is contrary to most lake environments. Typically 02 levels drop starting in fall in most lakes and don't rebound till ice off.

 

regards all,

 

 

Don