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Double-crested cormorants have had a detrimental impact on sport fishing in eastern Lake Ontario
L ake Ontario's more than 8,000 nesting pairs of cormorants have been credited by state biologists with eating up to 1.3 million smallmouth bass in a single year. They've ravaged shore-stocked brown trout so efficiently that the Department of Environmental Conservation now use barges to tote hatchery fish to mid-lake areas, miles away from cormorant concentrations.
Although they're only doing what comes naturally, it can't be denied that double-crested cormorants have had a detrimental impact on sport fishing in eastern Lake Ontario.
Now there is solid evidence that the fish-eating birds could become serious competition for hook-and-line anglers on Oneida Lake, and other popular lakes in Central New York State .
Lars Rudstam, the director of Cornell University's Biological Field Station at Shackelton Point, said preliminary research by one of his graduate students indicates about 250 pairs of cormorants nested on Oneida's Wantry and Long islands this spring. Before 1983, there were no cormorant nests on the lake.
Late each summer, the lake's nesting population is swollen by migrating cormorants which stop in Central New York on their way to wintering areas in the south, Rudstam said.
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In mid or late September,when the migration peaks, there are about 2,500 cormorants on Oneida Lake.
Cornell researchers have found 37 different species of fish in the stomach contents of Oneida Lake cormorants. They estimate the nesters and migrants combine to take 40 metric tons of fish a year from the lake.
"That sounds like a lot, but it's not compared to what other fish eat," Rudstam said.
He figures adult walleyes alone glean 207 metric tons of fish annually from beneath Oneida's surface.
In a typical year, yellow perch are the staple forage of both walleyes and cormorants. Fortunately, Rudstam said, walleyes dine mainly on perch fry and fingerlings; while the cormorants seem to prefer larger, year-old perch.
DEC officials have tentatively decided to invite other eastern states to a January strategy session on dealing with cormorant problems. Assembly Majority Leader Michael J. Bragman is planning to convene a meeting on the issue in October in the Henderson Harbor area.
 61 lb Lake trout, potential world record!
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N inety-nine bass got a trip to the Mall of America in Bloomington Minnesota for the
weigh-in of the richest pro-tournament in sport fishing history.
Two days later, 15 tournament-sized largemouth bass were found dead in
Lake Minnetonka's Maxwell Bay, where the tournament fish were released.
The find, along with the deaths of seven fish in transit, is raising
questions about whether the trip was too much of an ordeal for the fish.
And it has Minnesota DNR officials wondering whether they should allow
off-site tournament weigh-ins ever again.
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It's impossible to be certain whether the 15 dead fish were casualties of
the $1 million Forrest Wood Open bass tournament on June 25-28, but Minnesota DNR
officials say it's likely they were.
The DNR made an exception for the Forrest Wood Open to its usual policy of
prohibiting the transport of live fish for off-site weigh-ins.
Off-site weigh-ins typically have higher fish mortality than those
conducted at tournament sites, said Jack Skrypek, the DNR's fisheries
chief.
Assuming that 22 of the 99 fish transported to the mall died, there was a
22 percent mortality rate. By contrast, only 16 bass died of the 1,965
weighed at the lake during the first two days of the tournament.
Browns found Dead in MN streams
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USFWS Press Releases
