Hooked for life – by Bruce Kania

Fish Fry Lake may be the best fishing hole in Montana…at least for kids!  The lake is only 6.5 acres, but the water’s invitingly clear and it is extremely easy to catch yellow perch, crappie and bluegills.  Even some Yellowstone Cutthroat trout happen here…which may be their easternmost extension.  Fish grow fast in this lake at Floating Island International’s headquarters 25 miles from Billings, Montana.  Fish Fry Lake is a test site for BioHaven® floating islands as well as other embodiments of BioHaven technology.Last year over forty kids (and a couple adults) caught their very first fish on the lake.  For most of these fisher people it was as simple as attaching a piece of nightcrawler onto a small jig head, then flipping the baited hook into the crystal clear water and watching their line for some indication of a bite.  Typically the line will twitch when a fish picks up the offering, and then it’s a straightforward process.  Lift the rod tip and reel in a scrappy panfish.  Some kids start off with a cane pole, just like I did way back when.  Today there’s even lighter fiberglass extension poles and it’s pretty easy for little guys, and gals, to swing the offering over open water, wait a moment, then pull up a seriously exciting fish!The pond is also home to painted turtles, leopard frogs, bullfrogs, tadpoles, blue herons, mallards, wood ducks, teal, spoonbill, widgeon, yellow and red headed blackbirds, woodpeckers, garter snakes, the occasional bull snake, crawfish, salamanders, Canada geese, osprey and even the occasional Bald Eagle, all of which tend to be of great interest to kids.  As I was growing up there was a similar wetland within walking distance…and kid tracks along the shoreline evidenced fascination with critters and plants, and pretty much everything wild.  Episodes with poison ivy notwithstanding, kids and water and fields and wildlife, they used to go together as naturally as water flows downhill.  Today though, computers seem to have taken over some of that space, some of the territory that used to be reserved for kids and nature to get to know each other. 

We are not against computers!  The advances associated with the huge strides in information transfer technology that we’ve experienced in the last twenty years are life changing, and mostly positive.  But wouldn’t it be ideal if we could retain some connection with nature?  And certainly not just on a computer screen, but in person and up close!  Catching a fish, splashing after a leopard frog, or sneaking up on a big old gander goose is the stuff of childhood, and I don’t think it’s a good thing to miss out on.

I remember a troupe of kids passing by with fishing rods in hand one day last summer, when one of the boys, lagging behind, complained about the sun being “too hot!”  A young gal in the group suggested he “man up”, at which point the young lad was pretty much forced by the amazing power of peer pressure to deal with conditions.  Not sure if those kind of life lessons happen frequently in front of a computer screen.

And kids don’t catch fish automatically.  Not even on Fish Fry.  They must learn the process, think it through, and then connect the dots.  Along the way, with a bit of patience, they are rewarded.  This is good stuff for kids.

There was a young gal that could not handle touching a worm.  When it came to touching a fish, that was at least as bad as the idea of touching a worm.  An hour later she was independently doing both.  Real life lessons, and a new connection with where food comes from.  More good stuff!

Today the majority of fresh water lakes in the U.S. are so nutrient rich that they are at risk of running out of dissolved oxygen, without which fish die.  Fish Fry Lake has turned this condition on its head.  We have learned how to cycle those same nutrients into fish, instead of algae.  Catch rate on Fish Fry is a fish every two minutes on average.  The 6.5 acre lake yielded 5,168 fish last year, which translates to 210 pounds of fish per acre.  And along the way the water in Fish Fry was kept within Cutthroat Trout temperature requirements.  A nearby public lake, with conventional management, yielded about ten pounds of fish per acre.  And those fish were stocked, while Fish Fry’s are wild and naturally reproductive.  In late summer, the bottom half of the public lake is devoid of breathable oxygen.  Trout that were stocked in that lake in the spring have a choice…they can cook in the warm water on top, or suffocate in the stratified cooler water below.  The same conditions repeat themselves in thousands of U.S. waterways every summer.  But it doesn’t have to stay this way.

What if we focussed on our public waterways, especially in cities and villages?  What if we took that water and cycled the nutrients that are already there, into fish?  This is a very real prospect.  We do have the science, and we have the tools.  Dive into our website and keep this vision in mind…of kids catching fish hand over fist.  This is a new vision of abundance, and it’s within reach.  We can concentrate nature’s wetland effect and the result is an upward spiral that leads to both clean water and huge abundance of healthy, vibrant and edible fish.

Following are a few Thank You notes by kids who’ve fished here on Fish Fry:

Dear Ms. Anne and Mr. Bruce.

Thank you for letting us go to Floating Islands.  It was a lot of fun. I loved catching fish.  It was fun.  I like your dogs.  I think the picnic was fun, too.  I think I learned a lot about fishing.  You made my day.  Thank you for everything.

Thank you for letting us fish and play with the dogs.  I caught four fish.  It was awesome!  The floating islands are really cool and I hope to come back again.

I liked….. fishing, seeing the fish.  Thank U.

Thank you for letting us fish for different kinds of fish.  I enjoyed fishing.  I also caught a ton of fish within the small amount of time I spent fishing.  I also enjoyed walking on the floating islands.  I really enjoyed throwing frisbees for the three cute dogs….. I thoroughly enjoyed going to Floating Islands and I hope to come again.  Thank you very much.

– See more at: http://www.floatingislandinternational.com/2013/05/hooked-for-life/#sthash.iT9q5opN.dpuf

Lake on the Brink:

The unexpected consequences of fighting Eurasian Watermilfoil

By Eric Engbretson

In 2012, Greg Matzke, a fisheries biologist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, made a startling discovery on Florence County’s Lake Ellwood. During a comprehensive fish survey which included spring, summer and fall netting and electrofishing surveys, Matzke discovered that all of the lake’s largemouth bass were older than 5 years of age, with approximately 91% of the largemouth bass population being at least seven years old.  The absence of younger fish indicated a recruitment failure for a number of years.  Such failures in largemouth bass recruitment over multiple years are unprecedented in the state of Wisconsin.

“The current largemouth bass population is in serious trouble,” Matzke reported. “It appears that natural reproduction of largemouth bass has not occurred since 2007. As these older/larger fish move through the population, a significant reduction in largemouth bass abundance will take place, with the potential for the complete loss of this species of fish unless the current situation changes.”

Matzke next began looking at the lake’s panfish population.  What he found was stunning. Overall, the lake’s panfish abundance had fallen an estimated 75% in just the last 10 years, with bluegill and rock bass abundance down an estimated 65% and 89% respectively, showing that these populations also appear to be collapsing. Intense sampling throughout 2012 found only a single black crappie under six years of age, showing another alarming recruitment failure in several consecutive years. When Matzke analyzed the ages of Lake Ellwood’s northern pike population, the results were even more disappointing: There were no pike under the age of eight!

Matzke stared at the data he had collected. His department had never seen a mystery like the absolute and complete recruitment failures of native northern pike, black crappie, and largemouth bass (along with significant reductions in recruitment of other panfish populations). He shared his findings with other fisheries professionals across the state and they all said the same thing.  They had never seen a collapse like this in their careers. Matzke and his team scrambled to collect more data and tried to find a cause that could have brought the fish to the brink of extirpation in Lake Ellwood. Surveys from 2002 had shown normal abundance, size structure, growth, and recruitment in all of these species. What had happened in the last ten years that was preventing fish from successfully reproducing?

The only thriving species of game fish in the lake were smallmouth bass. Their abundance and size structure had grown in the last decade and recruitment was high.  This suggested that the problem was targeting specific species of fish. Because Lake Ellwood’s smallmouth bass were doing so well while the other species were collapsing, the focus turned to the lake’s historically sparse but important aquatic plant community. All the species showing recruitment failures are highly dependent on aquatic vegetation for spawning as well as cover and food for their young. Matzke observed that smallmouth bass seem to be different. “The fact that this species was not affected by the reduction in plant life,” he said, “is not a major surprise since as a species smallmouth bass are less dependent on aquatic vegetation.”

The Smoking Gun

Eurasian Water Milfoil was discovered in Lake Ellwood in 2002. Herbicide treatments began in 2003 and increased every year. By 2007 recruitment of northern pike, largemouth bass and black crappie had come to an end. “When I started to analyze the data it was strikingly obvious to me that there are some problems associated with the herbicide”, said Matzke. When he graphed the fish abundance (by year class) over the last decade and overlaid it with a graph showing yearly herbicide treatments, he found what he believed was a critical connection.  Fish numbers fell as the amount of herbicide increased.  Interestingly, in the year following a relatively low application of herbicide, young bluegill (and black crappie to a much smaller degree) began to appear again, but their numbers are still very low and they will likely disappear before they reach age 2.

Year class strength, indexed using age estimation to determine number of individuals of each year class captured during a 2012 comprehensive survey, for northern pike, black crappie, largemouth bass and bluegill plotted against the number of pounds of 2,4-D (not acid equivalent) used to treat aquatic plants in Lake Ellwood, Florence County, 2003-2012.

“We still wonder which stage of reproduction has failed in these species”, says Matzke. “Aquatic vegetation plays a major role in spawning site selection and in the survival of eggs and fry. Plants are also the source of primary production providing food and habitat for young fish and prey items, including invertebrates and minnows. It seems likely that one or all of these important phases of reproduction are dwindling in Lake Ellwood.”

On April 17, 2013 Matzke met with the Lake Ellwood Association to reveal his data and conclusions. He told the group, “The main cause for failed northern pike, largemouth bass and black crappie recruitment (along with the massive reduction in panfish abundance) appears to be the loss of aquatic vegetation.” The 2-4-D herbicide used on Eurasian watermilfoil had been successful in reducing the abundance of this invasive species significantly. Conversely, other native plants were also harmed by years of chemical treatment. Matzke said he has no reason to believe the chemicals have directly caused a failure in reproduction of any species of fish in Lake Ellwood. However, Matzke does believe that the chemicals have indirectly caused recruitment failure by eliminating too many of the aquatic plants young fish need in order to survive.  Matzke has called for a change in the way the Lake Ellwood Association has been managing the lakes aquatic plants.  He recommended that further chemical treatments for milfoil be stopped.

“First and foremost,” says Matzke, “we need to promote and strengthen aquatic vegetation in Lake Ellwood.” He stresses the role of aquatic vegetation in spawning and concludes that the loss of vegetation (including the invasive milfoil) has almost certainly wiped out a great deal of forage for young fish.

It seems that milfoil treatments controlled the invasive plant but also jeopardized the health of the lakes fishery. Today the lake contains a dwindling and rapidly aging population of largemouth bass, black crappie, northern pike, and bluegill. Matzke hopes the plants will come back in time for the remaining old fish to produce at least one year class before they die. If that doesn’t happen, many fish populations will likely be extirpated from Lake Ellwood. New fish can be stocked, of course, but the lake would lose the unique genetic lineage of the fish that have lived there for thousands of years.

The Future

Could chemical herbicide treatments for Eurasian watermilfoil be reducing fish recruitment in other lakes? None of the other lakes that have been receiving chemical treatments have had their fish populations surveyed this intensely. Large scale recruitment problems due to loss of important plant cover could be taking place throughout the region where the invasive plant is now being fought. There is no way to know if this is happening, and frankly, up until now, there has been no reason to find out.  Fisheries experts around the state are only now learning of Matzke’s findings on Lake Ellwood. In the future, they will likely start paying more attention to fish recruitment on lakes treated for Eurasian watermilfoil which would allow the Department of Natural Resources to determine whether this crisis is an isolated instance or a more widespread problem.

In the meantime, it’s a race against time for Lake Ellwood’s native fish. The question remains: Will the plants come back in time to save these fish populations?

Yellow perch study finds correlation between reduced reproduction and increase in impervious surfaces. 

(Dave Harp)

A recent study suggests that land development in some watersheds around the Bay is literally paving over yellow perch habitat.

The study of five watersheds found that yellow perch were less likely to produce viable eggs in those with more roads, roofs, parking lots and other impervious surfaces than in those that retain more undeveloped land.

In places like Maryland’s Severn River, which was once a hot spot for yellow perch reproduction, the fish produce almost no viable eggs. Scientists say the culprit is likely increased development that has altered habitats, as well as toxic contaminants entering waterways from stormwater discharges.

“We can’t really explain it except for some combination of development and toxics, which may be two words for the same thing,” said Fred Pinkney, a toxicologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chesapeake Bay Field Office in Annapolis, and a co-author of the study.

“This study clearly documents the biology of the yellow perch reproduction problems, but we would need a new study to figure out what chemicals may be the cause,” Pinkney said.

While most Bay cleanup efforts have focused on nutrient reduction, the study highlights the increasing concern of some biologists and fishery managers around the Chesapeake that ongoing development and other pollutants — such as chemical contaminants — are continuing to degrade important fish habitats. Unless those issues are dealt with, they say, the Bay’s fish and shellfish populations could continue to suffer even as nutrient pollution is reduced.

The yellow perch study comes on the heels of a federal report released in January that found widespread evidence that chemical contaminants were affecting fish in the Bay and throughout much of its watershed. “We do have biological effects,” said Vicki Blazer, a fish pathologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and a co-author of both the toxics report and the yellow perch study. “We have poor reproduction in some tributaries, we have fish kills, we have intersex, we have tumors. So obviously there are issues.”

Meanwhile, the Bay Program’s Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team, which helps to coordinate Baywide efforts to restore and manage fish populations and is made up of representatives from federal agencies and senior state fishery officials, has increasingly identified development and other land management actions as a major threat to fish populations.

Peyton Robertson, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chesapeake Bay Office and chair of the Fisheries Goal Team, said it was important to make people aware of the issues, and to address them. “Those issues are difficult and deal with complex interactions between people and the places they live,” he added. “That is one of the challenges we face.”

Presentations at recent meetings of the fisheries team have highlighted how everything from hardened shorelines, to the loss of coastal marshes to increased pavement in upstream areas can impact fish health and productivity.

Those findings recently spurred the fisheries team to take the unusual step of writing to the Charles County Board of Commissioners, expressing concern that new development allowed in the county’s proposed new comprehensive plan could harm Mattawoman Creek and threaten its largemouth bass fishery, shellfish communities and anadromous fish spawning habitats. Because Mattawoman Creek serves as a spawning area and nursery for anadromous fish such as striped bass, alewife and blueback herring, the letter warned that further development in its watershed could have regional implications for some fish populations which are reared in the Bay but spend most of their lives migrating along the coast.

The letter said the draft plan “sets a precedent for unsustainable growth and development over conserving healthy habitats and economically important fisheries.”

Robertson said that it is not the team’s intent to interject itself in regional planning decisions throughout the watershed. But, he said, it is trying to identify other high-quality tidal rivers which, like the Mattawoman, may be particularly important for maintaining regional fish and shellfish populations, and to encourage greater protection for them.

“Fishermen have been basically subsidizing development,” said Jim Uphoff, a fisheries biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Development can cause reduced fish production, as has happened with yellow perch in some areas, which results in reduced catch limits to help protect the population, said Uphoff, also a co-author of the new yellow perch study

He was part of a DNR research team that investigated sharply reduced fish production on the Severn River a decade ago. Those studies found that only 10 percent of the eggs produced by yellow perch on the Severn were viable, compared with 90 percent on the Choptank, Nanticoke and Patuxent rivers. It was also significantly less than had been produced in the Severn decades earlier, when it was less developed.

Yellow perch reproduction in the river is so low, Uphoff said, it likely couldn’t produce a sustainable population, even if fishing in the Severn was closed altogether. The DNR allows fishing, but the fish caught are generally those produced in other rivers that have ventured into the Severn.

“When you talk about the type of changes in egg viability that we’ve seen, fisheries harvest management doesn’t have enough leverage to offset the contaminant damage,” Uphoff said. “Essentially, you can’t turn that around by eliminating harvest. So why punish the fishermen for that?”

The new study provides new biological evidence of why the Severn River eggs were not viable by showing that the eggs themselves are deformed — something that strongly suggests chemical contaminants may be contributing to the problem.

The new yellow perch study, conducted from 2007 through 2009, looked at the Severn, the South, the Upper Choptank and the Mattawoman, as well as Allen’s Fresh, a small tributary of the Wicomico River. All had various rates of development: 24.6 percent of the South River watershed was covered by impervious surfaces, compared with 20.7 percent in the Severn; 10.2 percent in the Mattawoman, 4.8 percent in Allen’s Fresh; and 1.7 percent in the Upper Choptank.

In the study, the percentage of egg yolk deformities was significantly higher in the South and the Severn than in the less-developed rivers. The percentage with abnormalities of the zona pellucida, or the envelope that surrounds the eggs, was also highest in those rivers. None of the eggs from Severn females were fully developed at the time of collection in any of the years.

But it is exceedingly difficult to identify what triggered the problem in an area where water flow patterns fluctuate widely and where a witch’s brew of nutrients, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, PCBs, metals and other contaminants enter the water from runoff.

“It probably is not one thing,” Blazer said. “We can’t look at things one chemical at a time anymore, because that is not what organisms are being exposed to. They are being exposed to the whole suite of chemicals. Unfortunately, right now, we have very little information about how they all interact.”

Besides carrying toxic runoff, development has many other impacts, some of which may seem subtle but may be important to aquatic systems. They range from changes in salinity to changes in oxygen concentrations in the water to changes in flow regimes that affect whether food is available to fish larvae when they need it.

And while impacts are seen in fish like yellow perch, scientists say other less heralded species — but ones important to the food web — may be suffering even more. “We aren’t looking at those species because they aren’t commercially or economically important,” Blazer said.

Further, there’s little evidence that stormwater controls — even new practices that promote water infiltration rather than surface runoff — can fully offset the spectrum of impacts from new development on healthy streams. Stormwater projects, Uphoff said, don’t “dissolve all your developmental sins.”

As a rule of thumb, biologists say that aquatic life starts to suffer irreparable harm when more than 10 percent of a watershed is covered by impervious surfaces. Sensitive species can disappear at lower thresholds — in Maryland, brook trout typically disappear when imperviousness hits the 2 percent mark.

Uphoff said the DNR has increasingly been encouraging commercial and recreational fishermen and others to become more engaged in land use issues — particularly in areas that retain particularly valuable habitats — before they get developed. “We tend to think that the best strategy, at least for fisheries, is to work on conserving the places that are still functioning,” Uphoff said.

That is what triggered the fisheries goal team letter concerning the Mattawoman. Its watershed is at the 10 percent impervious mark, which means it could be near a tipping point where more development could impact a variety of fish habitats, including areas used by striped bass, shad and river herring — all of which are Bay Program target species for restoration.

While concerns about habitat degradation caused by development and toxics has worried biologists and fisheries managers, it remains unclear whether those issues will return in a significant way to the Bay Program’s agenda.

Toxics and land use were once key areas of focus for the state-federal Bay Program partnership. But issues related to toxics became overshadowed by nutrient pollution, and efforts to control sprawl development were even less successful — a goal in the Chesapeake 2000 agreement to reduce the rate of harmful sprawl faltered when, after years of debate, the partnership failed to agree on a definition of harmful sprawl.

A 2010 federal Chesapeake Bay restoration strategy called for setting new goals to control toxic pollution this year, but that idea has drawn little enthusiasm from many state officials who are already challenged to meet nutrient reduction goals stemming from the Bay Total Maximum Daily Load.

Nick DiPasquale, director of the EPA’s Bay Program Office, acknowledged that many partners were reluctant to add new commitments. “Dealing with the TMDL is a heavy lift itself,” he said. But he added that it was premature to judge whether the Bay Program could reach agreement on new toxics goals this year. He also noted that even without specific action by the Bay Program, other state and federal programs exist to deal with toxics. More habitat articles at fishiding.com

A summary of the yellow perch study is available on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Chesapeake Bay Field Office website: www.fws.gov/chesapeakebay/.

By Karl Blankenship

Artificial Habitat Benefits Bass Fisheries

Friday, March 8, 2013 at 9:21AM  ActivistAngler.com