Reports for Harbor River

[Josh Ketry]

Got out a little bit so far since the opener.  It has been great to fish again despite not having a boat anymore.

Got skunked last Tuesday in the river.  We had one nice follow.

The Friday prior we raised a few fish casting the harbor and landed a nice fat 43".  She was pretty marked up from what I am guessing is spawning.  Beautiful boatside strike which is always awesome.

Fished the new moon this morning in the River from 4:30am- 11am (4th of July).   We went 2 for 5 jigging.  Biggest was about 40" and for both fish we just dropped the net and let them swim away without removing them from the water at all. We had some success going a ways down river from the usual haunts. Top of the river was scary clear (could easily see bottom in 21 feet). 

We saw a REALLY nice fish jump for no apparent reason in the river about 25 feet off the stern at 6am.  Looked like an old harbor lady.  Big shovel head.  I hope when they do the telemetry study they find fish like that to track.   The big ones definitely seem to move around.  The divers notice it.  The anglers who fish all the time notice it.   The smaller fish seem like they are always available.

Seize the day!   Go FISH!

Josh Ketry

[John Jarosz]

Josh...I copied your part about the "shovel-head" & sent it to Chris at the DEC who will be doing the implanting of the xmitters.  Good stuff & good info for him to know!  I don't know if he'll be able to do it but at least he knows what you're thinking.  Chris told me once that the hardest part of this project will be capturing the muskies.  No doubt.

Once they get "tagged", they'll be tracked for the next 5 to 6 years without any human involvement. If you see anything else like that or have any ideas of what should be done, please post & I'll make sure he gets it.  Right now, we're shooting for a 50/50 mix of m/f.

BTW, nice releases.  What's the surface water temp?

[Josh Ketry]

Hi John,  Thanks for the reply.  I didn't check the surface temps today.  Slipped my mind.   As for getting the fish - when will the tags be ready and how many fish will be tagged?   If it were up to me I would round up 10-12 of the best anglers in the NMA around November 7-10th and have the tags ready with everyone in radio communication (cell phones) and call in the tags.      Either that or electro shock the last 2 weeks of May.

[John Jarosz]

Josh..here's the low-down.  The DEC prefers electro-fish because it's a lot less stressful than angling.  Once they get shocked, they'll be put under with an anesthetic, the transmitter implanted, sutured up, revived & returned in the same location.  If they're caught with a hook, they might be tired out then put under.  Might have mortality.

If they do it in the spring, it will be at least two weeks after the spawn but before the water gets too warm (narrow window).  The spawn is very stressful & they don't want to disturb the spawning cycle, because it's natural.  Like Chris said once, if the fish are spawning, why would we want to disturb that to tag them? 

If it's in the fall, it will be before the water gets too cold for the fish to heal properly.

We're mailing out the grant proposal Wed, the 6th.  Then we wait for a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Chris helps USFWS with their sturgeon tagging & surgery and just last week did some tagging of paddlefish so he's been around the block a few times doing this stuff.

Hope that helps..

[John Jarosz]

Josh...oops, I forgot to tell you, we're planning on 20 transmitters total & 6 receivers.  The receivers are planned to go at the head of the river, at the entrance to the Black Rock, & the rest somewhere inside the Harbor.  US Fish & Wildlife has dozens of receivers in the lake outside the breakwall which are also capable of picking up musky movement.

The Ohio people use telemetry to track walleye migration & picked up one that traveled from Ohio to Bflo (prob wanted to see our waterfront) so by buying 6 receivers, we get plugged into the whole lake system.  USFWS even tracked one of their sturgeon that went from here to Dunkirk & back.

[Stephen Glassic]

John, Any plans for a receiver or two for the Buffalo River? Or are they better utilized in areas that are potential spawning habitat?

[John Jarosz]

Steve...there are no plans right now, that I know of, but you hit the answer right on.  We want to look at migration to & from the Harbor to Upper mainly to look at spawning habitat.   The harbor has a lot of advantages over the river in that the potential spawning areas are shallow & protected from heavy current & ice scrubbing, so the water gets early ice-melt and warms up faster, causing the YOY to grow quickly.  I know that at the Chaut hatchery, they'll tweak up the water temp a little to get the babies to grow faster.  That first winter is the biggest killer (no body reserves) and the babies need to be as big as they can, going in. 

The receivers are about $2000 a pop & we proposed six to study the best areas for spawning habitat restoration. The Harbor used to be just an incredible self-sustaining musky fishery.  If you haven't yet, read Tony's article in July's newsletter on data dissemination & outreach.  Makes me wish I had fished it big time back then.

[Scott McKee]

Josh Muad'Dib? It's has a nice ring to it. I've fished with Usal, I mean Josh, he may indeed be the Quizack Haderack. He outfished the hell out of me... Dune, for all of you scratching your heads out there.

[Josh Ketry]

I was scratching my head Scott.  Always got the movie references!

Good stuff.  Well hopefully the grants get approved.  Then we can hopefully have some discourse on the tagging.  I helped Kevin Kapuscinski with some of the netting studies in the harbor.  I think we can identify 3 or 4 really good locations to shock up some fish.  Maybe even some big ones.   

The fish in the lower Niagara spawn very close to shore and come in big numbers and are easy to see when they are in.  This year it was the last week of May. Quite a few numbered pairs swimming around by all reports. 

Not sure what timeline you were specifically going to target, but I think that the timelines are a bit skewed.  I have caught fish with eggs spitting out of them as late as July in the upper river.  But like you mentioned, the harbor warms first.

Thanks for all of the cool information.  This is exciting stuff!

Best,

Josh 

[John Jarosz]

Josh..."Exciting" is a good way to describe it.  The more I got into it, the better it got.  The proposal was mailed out last week, so now we wait.  I had the chance to seine with Dr. Kevin K last year & that's what got us pumped about the acoustic telemetry.  If we get the thumbs up, we'll ask Chris of the DEC come over for a meeting & we can talk about your past experiences & what you've seen.  Hopefully you can make that one.  We'd love to hear your stories.  I also have a PowerPoint presentation made on the whole telemetry thing which should answer just about any question that anybody has.  Here's a pic that Chris showed at the Lake Erie Outreach at Woodlawn Beach a few weeks ago.  BTW, the NMA got billing in two different presentations; one for the FAS, another for the musky telemetry project. Hot stuff!!

There's one more project I'd like to work on.  We get that done, I'm retiring!! 

Stay posted!