Calif. Aims to Rid Lake of Northern Pike
Last Edited: Wednesday, 26 Sep 2007, 10:05 PM EDT
Created: Wednesday, 26 Sep 2007, 10:05 PM EDT
By SAMANTHA YOUNG
Associated Press Writer

PORTOLA, Calif. -- State workers on Tuesday began pouring a toxic chemical into a lake nestled in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada as part of California's decade-long effort to exterminate a predatory northern pike.

A fleet of 25 boats set out on Lake Davis near Portola shortly after 7 a.m. PDT in what now amounts to the state's most expensive battle to date against an invasive species.

More than 500 officials with the state Department of Fish and Game are pouring 16,000 gallons of the fish poison Rotenone into the 7-mile-long lake and its tributaries. Several hours after they began Tuesday, dead fish were already washing up on the shore.

"We felt we really want to make sure we got those guys," said Department of Fish and Game spokesman Steve Martarano.

If left alone, biologists say, the toothy northern pike could take over Lake Davis and possibly escape to the Sacramento River system, devouring trout and salmon all the way to San Francisco Bay.

It is the second time the department has poisoned the lake, a nationally known reservoir for trout fly fishing in the Sierra Nevada back country about 150 miles northeast of Sacramento.

California first poisoned Lake Davis in 1997 but pike reappeared 18 months later, either reintroduced illegally by a rogue angler or having survived the first poising attempt.

This time, wildlife officials are using a new formulation of liquid Rotenone, an aquatic insecticide that has successfully killed northern pike in other reservoirs. They also have mapped out the area with global positioning technology, Martarano said.

Department of Fish and Game officials treated 137 miles of streams and tributaries in the area the week of September 10.

Wildlife officials have tried overfishing, nets, electric shocks, traps, even explosions to try to kill off the pike population in the last seven years, which nonetheless has exploded and threatens the lake's trout.

The pike -- which are native to the Midwest and Canada -- typically grow to weigh about 55 pounds. For every pound, the pike spawns 10,000 eggs, according to state wildlife officials.

"We've taken 65,000 pike out and it hasn't made an impact," Martarano said. "Now we just have to hope we get all the pike, which we're pretty confident we will."

The state has spent about $20 million on pike eradication efforts in Plumas County since 1989, when the fish were first discovered and successfully removed from Frenchman Reservoir, east of Lake Davis. This latest effort is expected to cost up to $16 million.

All that matter are the trout, didn't you know that?

Todd

All that matter are the trout, didn't you know that?

Todd

Won't the chemical kill the trout, or at least what the trout are eating, indirectly killing the trout?

The trout should also be eradicated but then once the lake is sterile, they put just the "right" fish (trout) back in the lake. I'm all for the removal of fishes that have been illegally introduced or introduced outside of it's natural but at what cost? I not only mean the monetary consequences but the impact on the 137 miles of stream that should contain wild native fishes. I wonder if they'll place trout native to that area in that lake once the poisoning is done? I wonder if they reserved breeding stock from the 137 miles of natural waters to reintroduce the natural fish among other aquatic critters once complete.

I wonder if they reserved breeding stock from the 137 miles of natural waters to reintroduce the natural fish among other aquatic critters once complete.

Probably not.

how long would it take for the 137 miles of river/stream and the lake to re-populate itself?

I mean if no one did anything to re-stock?

I not only mean the monetary consequences but the impact on the 137 miles of stream that should contain wild native fishes. I wonder if they'll place trout native to that area in that lake once the poisoning is done? I wonder if they reserved breeding stock from the 137 miles of natural waters to reintroduce the natural fish among other aquatic critters once complete.

From what i've researched on rotenone in the past, it degrades rather rapidly in the environment especially in warm waters and areas with lots of organic debris (of course this lake is probably neither). If done right it should have little to no effect on areas downstream of the lake, but all fish in the lake will be toast. You can also use potassium permanganate to neutralize rotenone after it is applied, however permanganate is toxic in high doses and probably effects a greater range of critters than rotenone does. After all that, I bet they stock it full of standard hatchery rainbows. Hopefully they will be replacing the sculpins and native cyprinids, but probably not.

Probably not.

Having worked in the CA Delta dealing with the folks at DFG, DWR as well as the Federal agencies involved I would bet my left...ear that they have a stocking plan in-place already, with native species of fish obtained from the lake. The water systems in CA have been so mucked up, starting with the intentional introduction of stripers to the system, that the DFG is sensitive those issues...although they still use striper population as indicator species. Norhtern pike would flourish in those waters, nice and cold from the mountains in the winter and spring runoff and warm in all the estuaries all, hot, sunny summer long with tasty salmon smolt to chow. Filling in Lake Davis (figuratively speaking) would be a better alternative to any esox species entering the system IMO.

All around tragedy that began in 1966 when the damn thing was built in the first place.

All around tragedy that began in 1966 when the damn thing was built in the first place.

You mean "dam thing" don't you?

I cannot see how they expect to successfully poison a 4,000 acre lake that is over 100 feet deep and has numerous tributaries. The article says that they tried it before, but the pike "re-appeared".

I know, maybe we can introduce an even bigger animal that will eat all the pike! Everything will just work itself out "naturally" from there.

Bull sharks should do the trick.

First we need to do a $2.7M study with recommendations which nobody will follow.

How about a few gator instead of sharks? Take care of the idiot population along with the fish "problem". Two birds with one stone!

Nile Perch oughta do the job!

Could use all three, a triple threat if you will. No pike could survive the bull shark, alligator and Nile perch invasion.

Meanwhile.......The neverending battle goes on......

Original Story URL:
http://www.jsonline.....aspx?id=674400

The pest of the West
Trout native to the Great Lakes are upending the ecosystem of
Yellowstone Lake. Workers will kill 70,000 this year.
By DAN EGAN
degan@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Oct. 13, 2007, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Yellowstone National Park, Wyo - The Great Lakes have suffered
countless insults since 19th-century canal builders opened the world's
largest freshwater system to exotic critters from around the globe,
but this one has to hurt the worst.

While one arm of the federal government is pumping millions of dollars
into a sputtering program to restore the beleaguered lake trout atop
the Lake Michigan food chain, 1,100 miles to the west another arm of
the federal government is, quite literally, pummeling that same fish
over the head and tossing back mangled carcasses into the water by the
tens of thousands.

It is a desperate - and likely endless - fight to protect the delicate
ecology of the world's first national park, home to a rogue colony of
Lake Michigan lake trout that biologists believe was illegally planted
in Yellowstone Lake by self-serving anglers hungry for bigger trout to
fry.

Lake trout belong in Lake Michigan. The big lake gets out of whack
without a top predator to cull its schools of smaller prey fish,
including pesky alewives. But overfishing, pollution and an onslaught
of invasive species combined to wipe out the king of the Lake Michigan
food chain about 50 years ago.

Today, Lake Michigan lake trout are hatchery-raised and, like a dose
of antibiotics, dispensed annually to help keep swarms of prey fish in
check.

But in an absurd twist of ecological irony, it's a different story in
Yellowstone.

In Yellowstone, Lake Michigan lake trout are the disease.
A lake like no other

In the last decade, Yellowstone Lake has exploded with a reproducing
population of lake trout that is genetically linked to a population
that once ruled the waters of northern Lake Michigan.

Federal fishery officials eager to share the Great Lakes' bounty with
visitors to Yellowstone arranged to ship some specimens west in 1890.
Late that summer, federal records show, 42,025 of these "Mackinaw"
were carried into the park on pack horses and planted in two remote,
high mountain lakes - Lewis and Shoshone - on the other side of the
Continental Divide from Yellowstone Lake. Both had historically been
devoid of fish.

But Yellowstone managers made a point at the time to keep lake trout,
a species that can balloon to 50 pounds, away from the prized native
cutthroat trout population in Yellowstone Lake, an icy alpine sea more
than half the size of Lake Winnebago and about 10 times as deep.
Nestled high in the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of nearly 8,000
feet, Yellowstone Lake lies in the shadow of the Continental Divide,
isolated from the rest of the aquatic world by snowcapped peaks above
and a pair of thundering waterfalls below.

At least it was.

It's been 13 years since the first lake trout was pulled from
Yellowstone Lake by a 10-year-old girl on a guided fishing trip. The
group turned the 17-inch lunker over to park fishery experts, who
desperately hoped the catch was an aberration, a fluke, a single fish
dropped in the water from nearby Lewis Lake.

Three more lake trout were landed by that first summer's end, and park
managers now theorize that someone undertook an illicit lake trout
transplant program from Lewis Lake to Yellowstone Lake.

Yellowstone fishery biologist Patricia Bigelow still remembers the day
she heard the news that lake trout had turned up in Yellowstone Lake:
"I cried. I did."

Bigelow cried because, as a native of Vermont where lake trout still
swim in the waters of Lake Champlain, she knows some things about this
famously hungry fish, and what it was about to do to arguably the
wildest lake its size left in the continental U.S.

"They're extremely good at what they do," Bigelow says of lake trout.
"They're just an amazing fish."
A great invasion

Forty-three lake trout were pulled from the lake the next summer.

What lake trout do high in the Rocky Mountains is eat cutthroat trout.

This is a problem for more than just the cutthroat.

There are dozens of species on the lake's shores and in the skies
above that rely on the stream-spawning cutthroat for sustenance,
including grizzly bears, bald eagles, cougars and loons.

Eight hundred and sixty-three lake trout were snagged during the third
summer.

And lake trout aren't just a change on the menu in a harsh land
already thin on nutrients, a place smothered by snow and ice for about
six months a year.

The wolfish fish with teeth sharp as nails can each consume as many as
40 cutthroat a year, but because lake trout spend their entire life
deep in the lake, they don't cycle those calories back to the surface
to sustain the species above.

Seven thousand eight hundred lake trout were pulled from the lake
during the fourth summer.

There is a reason it's called a food chain - pull out a link and the
results can be disastrous.

Yellowstone ornithologist Terry McEneaney says the number of nesting
pairs of osprey near the lake, for example, has plummeted from 59 in
2001 to fewer than 10 today.

McEneaney says the entire lake ecosystem has been crippled by the lake
trout infestation, combined with the recent arrival of a potentially
deadly cutthroat parasite and several years of drought.

"I'm not sure it will ever revert to what it once was," he says. "How
do you catch every lake trout in the lake?"

The situation, park managers say, is desperate. So desperate that in
2001 they had a Great Lakes-style fish tug built and staffed it with a
crew to do its best to replicate what we did here in the last century.

They're trying to fish lake trout to the brink of extinction.

Twenty six thousand seven hundred and seven lake trout were killed by
gill netters in 2004.

"A lot of fishery work these days is repairing what was done years
ago," says Yellowstone's Phil Doepke, whose full-time job is to kill
as many fish as he can.

Seventy thousand lake trout are expected to be pulled from the lake by
the time this year's netting season ends.

Making a killing

There is fishing for sport.

There is fishing for food.

And then there is this.

Five days a week, six months a year, Doepke and his crew chug onto the
steaming lake around dawn. They know the nets they've set on previous
days will be loaded with fish. And they know they are going to come
home at suppertime empty handed.

The goal of this program, which costs the National Park Service about
$400,000 a year, is not to harvest lake trout for their sweet pink
fillets. It's to kill them before they kill cutthroat. Crew members -
some of whom are volunteers working only for room and board -
occasionally keep a fish or two to offset their grocery expenses.

But almost all of the lake trout netted are clubbed or punched in the
head if they're still alive enough to writhe. Then they're plucked
from the nets, measured for record-keeping, sliced open and dumped
back into the lake. The idea is to slaughter the fish but keep the
nutrients within the system.

Money is a big reason the fish don't end up on dinner plates. The
crew, which fishes on a lake that is up to 20 miles long and 15 miles
wide and is plagued by violent storms, can be forced to leave fish
netted in some far-flung areas of the lake for two weeks or longer.
That means some fish come up hold-your-breath rotten, sometimes
decayed to the point that they fall apart as workers try to peel them
from the nets.

Biologist Bigelow said the park has considered hiring commercial crews
to get more boats on the lake to catch the fish fresh, but it's not
practical. Many of the lake trout that the crew targets are juveniles,
too small to be of value to fish buyers.

Another problem is the Yellowstone crew is meticulous about how and
where it sets its nets to minimize the accidental harvest of the
cutthroat that they're trying to protect in the first place. That
means they are often avoiding the places where the commercially
valuable big fish lurk, because that's where the cutthroat will be.

"You couldn't just say, 'Have at it,' " Bigelow says of the marching
instructions to commercial operators.

There is also the expense, red tape and political stickiness of
opening up such a commercial operation in a national park with a
reputation as one of the wildest places left in America.

The Yellowstone crew that fishes to kill is in an endless war; most
biologists concede eradication at this point is impossible. The best
they can hope for is to keep lake trout numbers low enough to allow a
healthy population of cutthroat to survive.

"If we stopped what we were doing, it wouldn't take long for lake
trout numbers to get back up," says Bigelow. "It would be like
everything we did was a waste."

On this particular day in mid-September, the six-person crew that
includes three volunteers pulls 464 lake trout from the depths of the
lake.

Bigelow says the netters are making a difference, but lake trout are
probably still reproducing at about the rate they're being killed.

The cutthroat trout, meanwhile, have evidently taken a huge hit with
the arrival of lake trout.

The population of cutthroat swimming up just one lake tributary to
reproduce has crashed from about 70,000 in the late 1970s to fewer
than 1,000 today, but Bigelow says this year's survey shows the
downward trend appears to have reversed.

An increase in incidental catches of cutthroat in the lake trout nets
is also an encouraging sign to the biologists.

"That was our first strong signal that we're starting to see increased
(survival) in the cutthroat," Bigelow says.
Lake trout vs. salmon

Back in the Great Lakes, biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service have the exact opposite problem.

Every year the government plants about 9 million exotic salmon and
non-native steelhead and brown trout, as well as about 3 million
native lake trout in Lake Michigan. The planting programs have a dual
purpose: to control invasive alewives and to sustain the lake's
recreational fishing industry.

The lake trout, many of which are raised from eggs harvested in
Yellowstone, have no problem growing into adults. But they do have a
problem when it comes to producing offspring that survive.

One theory is that alewives, an Atlantic Ocean native, contain an
enzyme that can produce a deadly thiamine deficiency in lake trout.
Another likely reason, biologists say, is that the 3 million lake
trout planted each year is only a fraction of the 10 million young
lake trout that they estimate Lake Michigan produced back in the days
when it had a self-sustaining population.

But Lake Michigan is so far gone from its natural state that many
people at this point don't even long for the days when it had a
self-sustaining population of its native top predator.

"I'm not a lake trout lover," says Dan Thomas, president of the Great
Lakes Sport Fishing Council. "They're great for eating, but when it
comes to thrills, it's like pulling a limp piece of linguine through
the water."

Not everybody shares that opinion.

Yellowstone's Doepke is a Marquette, Mich., native who grew up fishing
for lake trout on Lake Superior. The 38-year-old still spends
occasional days off with his fishing rod, chasing lake trout on
Yellowstone Lake.

And then he spends his working days destroying them.

"I love lake trout. They are a wonderful fish," he says. "They're just
in the wrong spot."

I feel that the government is very irresponsible in poisoning the lake because if the lake contained a subspecies or a localized population morph of a certain native, and it's not discovered yet... well... now it's gone.

I have no problems if they were to nuke a backyard or golf course pond or something... A natural lake shouldn't be nuked like that.

I feel that the government is very irresponsible in poisoning the lake because if the lake contained a subspecies or a localized population morph of a certain native, and it's not discovered yet... well... now it's gone.

I have no problems if they were to nuke a backyard or golf course pond or something... A natural lake shouldn't be nuked like that.

Indiscriminate nuking of lakes is not done unless there is good reason (like this case) and with a recovery plan. In the past it was different and in fact sometimes specific native endemic species where targeted for eradication (Miller lake lamprey) this is no longer the case..

Indiscriminate nuking of lakes is not done unless there is good reason (like this case) and with a recovery plan. In the past it was different and in fact sometimes specific native endemic species where targeted for eradication (Miller lake lamprey) this is no longer the case..

Yes, I know that they wouldn't do it without extensive planning, but what they don't know might hurt hte fish. for example, Artemia monica is only found in lake mono in california. If they didn't know that it existed, and nuked that lake, the species would be gone forever. If the case is the same with that pond, it might be a bad idea