Tim Smith

You may be right about that, JD, especially the first part. The 3 dollar word for this is "facilitation". There are usually plenty of invertebrates in the system but they're hidden down in the substrate. Suckers and large invertebrate predators scare them into the open where the trout can get them. Ever see a trout hanging out downstream from feeding suckers? That's why they do it.

We did a search of the scientific literature back in the 90s to see if there was actually any scientific evidence that sucker compete with trout. We found quite a few studies that looked for negative effects of sucker on trout, but almost none actually had the data to prove competition between suckers and trout hurt trout populations.

Nobody (that's worth knowing) likes killing. But there are times I'll keep fish and times it's economical to do so. For catfish especially, it's probably a bit cleaner to cut the gill arches and let them bleed out. You can also scramble the brains but the synapses lower on the spine will still keep firing for a surprisingly long time after that. If you want be even more humane, 10% clove oil in ethanol will knock them out first as will alka-seltzer.

I think a lot of us are following this issue. From the AFS newsfeed: Pebble panels identify gaps in baseline study Posted 10/15/2012 by - <mailto:mbauman@thecordovatimes.com> Margaret Bauman www.thecordovatimes.com A second week of science panels, aimed at better informing stakeholders about whether a massive mine in Southwest Alaska can co-exist with the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery, is revealing the gaps in research by mine proponents. The research has not answered the question "what fraction of the Bristol Bay resources will be affected," said panelist Hal Geiger (AFS member, '03), a retired biologist and biometrician who spent years with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. "We are lost in the details and we need to have this explained to us in a way that is easier to understand and gives us some confidence." Geiger, who now heads a fisheries research group in Southeast Alaska, is one of more than a dozen panelists from all over the United States participating without pay on panels dealing with a range of topics from geology and geochemistry to fish, wildlife and habitat. Each of four separate panels is being facilitated by The Keystone Center, a Colorado based organization hired by the Pebble Limited Partnership to present the mine proponents' case to the public. The panelists are serving without pay, with their travel and expenses covered, through Keystone, by the Pebble Limited Partnership. They are tackling sections of the 27,000 page environmental baseline study compiled by the PLP. The whole idea behind the panel discussions, spread over a total of six days at the University of Alaska Anchorage campus, is to help stakeholders make better-informed decisions about the critical choices before them, according to Keystone. The majority of residents of the Bristol Bay region are strongly opposed to the mine, which they feel would be destructive to the multi-million dollar commercial, sport and subsistence fisheries. Geiger was part of the panel on fish, wildlife and habitat Oct. 9-10, along with Stanley (Jeep) Rice of the Alaska Fisheries Center Auke Bay Laboratories, Charles (Si) Simenstad (AFS member, '11), a research professor at the University of Washington's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences; and Mike Stone (AFS member, '80) , retired chief of fisheries for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Geiger, who has served as president of the Alaska chapter of the American Fisheries society, began his career with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as a biometrician in 1982, and served as the chief biometrician for the Division of Commercial Fisheries in the late 1990s. Geiger said he was critical of the way Pebble scientists estimated abundance of salmon in the mine study area. "They produced index counts and neither I nor anyone else can explain what the relationship is between those index counts and the true number of salmon in the affected area," he said. "What Pebble needs to do is find a way to estimate the number of salmon who spawn in the affected area. "If Alaskans are going to make tradeoffs between mineral resources and salmon resources, I've tried to focus on the question 'has Pebble really provided the information to understand what those tradeoffs are. I don't think we have the information to understand those tradeoffs," he said. Each of the panel discussions has begun with an overview of the particular area of the baseline study from Pebble scientists. Then the panel of scientists gets into the discussion, asking a lot of questions of Pebble's scientists, and then the public physically present and listening over an Internet connection, are invited to ask questions of the panelists. The last of the panels, on socioeconomic and cultural dimensions, was slated for Oct. 10-11. Among the key critics of Pebble's baseline study is Carol Ann Woody, a prominent Anchorage-based fisheries scientist who has done a great deal of field work in the Bristol Bay watershed, including the area where the Pebble Limited Partnership proposes to build the mine. After assessing the salmon escapement studies in Pebble's document, Woody had several concerns about how salmon spawning and escapement were determined in that report. She questioned the approach, data quality and intended uses of the data. "Total spawning salmon or escapement was determined using intermittent aerial helicopter surveys in main stem rivers and select tributaries; most tributaries were not surveyed," she wrote in her assessment of the document. "Aerial surveys are unreliable methods for estimating total salmon escapement due to bias (undercounting of fish) and low precision (high variation). "Total salmon escapement is not estimated," she said. "No detailed methods, models, assumptions or results are presented for total escapement estimates." Keystone's Todd Bryan, who is overseeing the series of panels in Anchorage, said the panel discussions are identifying places in the baseline studies that need to be improved, and also confirming things about the baseline studies that Pebble consultants have done well. He said he does not think the panel discussions have tipped the balance one way or the other. John Shively, Pebble's chief executive officer, said he expects the panel discussions will have some impact. "We have had a lot of recommendations and we will look at them," he said. "That's why we are doing this. "Sometimes people confuse methodologies to get at the science. Because we are using one methodology and there is another methodology, that doesn't mean we are using the wrong one," he said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which produced its own draft environmental assessment of potential impact of mining on the Bristol Bay watershed, has already held public hearings and had a peer review by an independent panel of scientists. The EPA's final report is anticipated to be complete by year's end.

Good to see you posting here again, Fly Guy. Nice to see some native brookies with size.

We're getting to the point that a lot of fisheries in the US and other countries that manage their fisheries are turning the corner and improving. It's the species that don't stay home and wander into the wild west of the open sea that take the beating. Hopefully this will be another step in the right direction.

Incompetence is over rated.

Yellowfin, but I guess you saw that already. They're extinct so it doesn't really matter for anyone planning their next trip. I like your optimism about greenback trout. Hope they manage to get some of them isolated before fire season next year. One stream is a pretty small basket to carry the eggs for a whole species.

Not so hasty young man. As Ness says, all cutthroats are not equal. There are four sub-species in Colorado. During the greenback cutthroat trout recovery program, western slope cutthroat were unknowingly mixed with greenback cutthroat. That little gaffe just about wiped out all the greenbacks that are left. A recent study found that the only pure blooded greenbacks left are on one stream at Pike's Peak. http://wildlife.stat...ressRelease.pdf Pretty sad stuff. Many of the cutthroat where I live are stocked invaders....and ANY you have in Missouri are invaders... ...but I was speaking from a Midwestern perspective. If we were going to do Colorado invaders that list would be substantially longer. Brook trout, lake trout, kokanee, smallmouth bass, etc., etc.

...autumn olive, earthworms, most of the fruit trees in North America, most of the flowers around your house, Asian clam, zebra mussel, purple loosestrife, about half to a third of the sport fish in your lake including (depending on which reservoir you're fishing) northern pike, muskie, walleye, striped bass, wiper, common carp, silver carp, bighead carp, grass carp, black carp, snakeheads, rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, brown trout, pigeons, starlings, house sparrows, spiny water flea, fire ants, kudzu, garlic mustard, feral hogs, wild boar, gypsy moth, nutria....

The anti-dam removal groups do represent some forms of benefit to society...if pontoon boats and water skiing can be seen in that light. It's a matter of who's values and constituency you chose to support. As for anglers, I don't see where they get the idea that dams are helping fisheries. A few big fish stacked at a dam disappear and they think the fishery is ruined when a dam is removed. If access to that point in the river represents their whole idea of the fishery, we've got other issues of river access and education that need to be addressed.

I would probably agree that retrofitted hydropower could be a good thing. But if they ever happen, get ready for a rough ride with the fisheries in flood control reservoirs. During my days on the government dole, I was the lead grad student on a project determining what controlled availability of forage on a flood control reservoir in Illinois. Spring time water levels turned out to be the critical factor for annual productivity and forage availability. I eventually built a model backed by mountains of data that predicted 89% of annual juvenile gizzard shad density (most of the forage in the lake) based on the height and timing of spring floods. It seemed clear that by manipulating lake levels, forage base levels (and predator fish success) could be managed. But I was told the Corps was already too busy managing floods for about 100 farmers downstream from the dam and handling navigation responsibilities. There was no way they would alter their water management for fisheries. Fortunately, that position softened a bit, and some accommodations seem to have been made. But if you add hydropower to the mix, fisheries will move further to the back of the line and we can expect lake levels and fisheries quality to bounce around even more. Maybe that will be a worthwhile cost in the grander scheme of things but anglers are the ones who are going to pay it.

You mean you can't quite put your finger on it?

There's never any point in crying...at least not over an internet forum. But an un-moderated political forum would degenerate into what you see at the end of very article on MSN or Fox or CNN...and that is just some seriously sad stuff. I'm willing to help however is helpful, but there's no point in a political discussion if you hand it over to the bomb throwers.

Awesome. They'll be fighting soon. Hope I can scrape together some time to go see it.

Heavy stuff, Phil. No pity, but lots of admiration here. You've done an awesome job with this forum and you are appreciated.

So why let the terrorists win. Respectful discourse seems like a pretty clear rule to me.

I had that happen to me on Cross Lake just a hundred miles south of there. I was in a canoe at the time and he managed to pick up quite a bit of mud when he splashed us... ...of course I had just checked the water depth by shoving a canoe paddle solidly down in the middle of his back while he was resting quietly under the boat, so I guess it was only fair.

Jeb, I'm a little surprised at the latitude here as well, but I guess if you look at it from Phil's perspective it's not hard to understand. It's in the interest of the forum to have the freedom to talk about any topic the members want to talk about. It's not in the forum's interest for the members to tear at each other like deranged chimpanzees. There are legal issues around slander and Phil has to keep that under control. I've talked to Phil about this and he has made it clear that the "rule" is to behave in a civil manner. Politics and climate change get special scrutiny because they tend to run toward controversy, but in the interest of free speech Phil would prefer not to delete those threads...IF THEY CAN STAY CIVIL. The tendency toward personal attacks and vitriol makes that difficult here.

Cajuns love gar. Snip down the side with wire cutters and dig in. I was just around Puget Sound and bald eagles are as common as crows there. Osprey and brown pelicans are other species that benefited from the DDT ban. Belize has been using DDT until recently (and probably still is unofficially). They had an anti-malaria program that required families to let the government spray DDT on the insides of their houses. It seemed to work...but man. That's pretty intrusive.

Al is also correct that the environmental angle is probably a big difference...although they don't talk about it much here. Obama is friendlier to the EPA and clean water translates to more and better fish.

No kidding he was thriving. That gator is obese..fat...gordo...rotund. Looks more like a zoo gator than a wild gator. Someone or something has been feeding it exceptionally well.

Well I posted it too so I should probably feel guilty....wait for it....no...no...nope. No guilt. Phil will nuke it it if gets silly.

Well this one is almost certain to buy an "X". I don't see much direct impact of presidents on local fisheries except for funding the agencies that interface with them. Obama's budgets have funded the hatcheries up to now despite widespread cuts and he seems to appreciate the value of science. Probably his biggest mark on fisheries so far was to hire Jane Lubchenko, who has been pushing the catch shares program in offshore fisheries. Stocks are rebounding all over the place and fisheries are in better shape under her than they have been in a very long time...but the commercial anglers are furious at the changes.

Phil, I apologize in advance but this is just too interesting not to post. There is probably zero chance a civil discussion can evolve out of this so maybe just X it at the beginning and let people look at it on their own. http://library.fws.gov/Pubs/natsurvey2011-prelim-state.pdf It's the presidential candidates in their own words about fisheries issues.