Next seasons forecast?

[SEAN LEARY]

Taking a look at the ice forecast for Lake Erie.
Don't know how much freezing we'll get this year. As I remember from last year, quick ice out- then a cold spring so water temps were very low in spring.
In the clubs experience, how does a mild winter affect the Musky fishery? Does it all come down to the temps during spawn?
I know last years bass population had to be a near low; what a difference from the year prior.
Always curious as to what patterns people have seen with the weather and the fish.

[John Jarosz]

Sean...interesting question but I don't have the answer as far as the musky fishery. Didn't go out enough. One thing that I did notice was that the perch fishing in Chautauqua was really good. One of the fish biologists that I know theorized that because of the lack of ice last year, there was hardly any ice fishing & so the perch that were normally caught & kept thru the ice weren't caught, resulting in a good catch of larger ones.

Another item the DEC came across was the spread of weeds in areas they were seining. In past years they netted YOY muskies but in 2016 they only got one. Their theory is that the YOY could have been spread out a lot more & so wouldn't have been netted.

I did come across this website that contains the Lake Erie water temp for every day of every month since 1927. When you click on "May", you'll see that on May 1st of 2016, the H2O temp was 43 deg. On May 31st, 2016, it was 65 deg. Just for 2016, that doesn't mean that much but I'm curious as to all the May 1st to 31st deltas for each year from 1927 to 2016.

here's the link:

http://www.weather.gov/buf/LakeTemp

[Tony Scime]

Sean,

There are two ways to look at it, the Harbor effect and the river effect. Spring temperatures are more significant than winter temperatures. If you have a warm spring, water can warm up early no matter how cold the winter was.

As far as the harbor is concerned, a cold spring will delay the spawn and will keep the muskies near-shore for a longer period, making them more accessible to anglers during the opening week or two. A warm spring will do the opposite.

Not as much of an effect in the river, but I think a warmer spring and early spawn are better. By the time the season opens the muskies will have recovered from the spawn, will be more active (think July - historically the highest catch rates for muskellunge), and less susceptible to catch and release mortality (until the temps get too high).

Tony 

[John Jarosz]

I played around last night compiling the L.E. water temp data all the way back to 2000. Here's a pic I snapped of the last half from 2010-2016. The first column of each year is the temp on the 1st of the month, ex: March 1st 2012, column AX, water temp was 35. March 31st, Column AY, temp is 41. The number in bold is the difference, i.e., the rise or drop. The chart on line has it broken down for every day of every month. What's interesting is that for May in the last three years the water temp had an over 20 degrees rise. The biggest drops look to be in Oct.

[John Pensyl]

It's cool to see how almost every Nov starts right at the magic 54 deg Niagara sweet spot. I love Nov.

[SEAN LEARY]

nice data set John! Once there's some more tagging data, it'll be interesting to put the two together. Having a good idea where they are, based on water temp, would be quite the tool for the club!

[John Jarosz]

I'd be curious to see if there is a correlation between how much the temps rise & drop & the C&R data. I only took a pic from 2010 to 2016 to fit it on the screen but I did it all the way back to 2000. If I get some more time to play around with it, I was thinking of breaking down averages, median, etc into two parts; from 2000 - 2009 and 2010 to 2016, mostly for global warming, water clarity issues & lake levels. It might also be interesting to see if there is a difference between the hay-days of the 80's & 90's & now.

All kinds of things can be done, if we had the time. It's all gotta get done before the opener, though!

[John Jarosz]

Sean...you're right about that. what the plan (hopefully) to do with the data is to look at their spawning & over-wintering migrations & then work on another grant to build those habitats. Right now there are a lot of ideas & theories but our data will be hard, scientific data. There has never been any data taken, maybe because of the technology available. If we do our job, the next grant proposal should be three or four years from now to do habitat restoration to perpetuate the fishery.

By that time I could be be in a wheelchair telling fish stories!