Anglers cite lampricide for better catches
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The sun sets on Lake Champlain, just off Benson landing on Monday. Larger and healthier fish, including walleye pike, abound this year, according to anglers and officials. Tom Mitchell / Rutland Herald |
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By Tom Mitchell Herald Staff - Published: January 27, 2009
BENSON — Anglers are reporting catches of distinctly bigger, healthier salmon, lake trout, walleye pike and northern pike, many apparently with fewer wounds from sea lampreys, in parts of Lake Champlain from last summer through early January.
At Benson Landing at the south end of the lake, and much further north around Champlain Bridge near the town of Addison, fishing has started to improve as far as the larger sizes and health of the game fish that fishermen caught in that area, according to some anglers and Fish & Wildlife officials.
During this year's first, long cold snap, Gary Muzzy of Fair Haven tasted firsthand what may be a real revival of walleye in southern Lake Champlain, off of Benson Landing through the ice.
"I caught the biggest walleye I ever caught in my life, just over 10 pounds," Muzzy said.
Before landing the fish on Jan. 18, Muzzy said it had been 10 years since he'd caught any walleye in Champlain.
Muzzy, who is planning to mount his prize, said the fish had no scars from lamprey — a parasite that has been plaguing the stocked lake trout and land-locked Atlantic salmon that live further north, around Champlain Bridge.
The sea lamprey attaches to fish, particularly the lake trout and salmon, and sucks out their fluids, weakening them and reducing their size. In recent years, the lamprey has hurt fishing in many parts of the lake, state Fish & Wildlife officials have reported.
In southern parts of the lake, the lamprey also go after pike and other game fish, according to Robert Sterling, a Rutland County game warden.
"I know (fishermen) are catching northern pike and walleye" off Benson Landing, Sterling said last week, in an area north of Benson Landing. Walleye had not been seen or caught there for a number of years, Sterling and a number of fishermen said.
While out checking fishing licenses on Martin Luther King Day, Sterling talked to a fisherman who caught an 11-pound walleye off Benson Landing. "All of a sudden, the walleyes are really hitting," Sterling said.
Fisherman Randy Colomb of Middlebury said, "These fish are real specimens with small heads and full bodies, unlike the skinny lamprey-hit fish we had been catching."
Colomb fishes large areas of the main lake south of Ferrisburg with a group known as the Frostbite Fleet.
Colomb is among the Lake Champlain fishermen who have been increasingly worried about a decline in the quality of their catch due to attacks by sea lamprey.
In the past, the lamprey have gotten so bad, they've attached to the bottom of his boat. Colomb has used a hedge trimmer to cut them off, he said. Fish & Wildlife officials seemed to getting the numbers of lamprey under control again, Colomb said.
Fishing from a boat on the lake, right through the first week of January, Colomb reported landing many fish.
His trout and salmon catches have included "very pleasing sizes with a lot of fight," said Colomb, who uses homemade flies to troll for salmon and lake trout until the lake gets iced over.
Brian Chipman, a state Fish & Wildlife biologist, said that fall surveys showed wounding rates to salmonids were down, he said. "(There was) some of the best salmon fishing this past fall, (better) than they had in years."
Ice fishing on the lake started the past two weeks, he said.
Joseph Bruno of Castleton, who expects to be gearing up to use larger bait to catch northern pike in southern Lake Champlain, said he has heard about the return of the walleye to the north of Benson Landing.
Bruno said it seems to him that lampricide treatments (including one done in Poultney River in West Haven in 2007) may have helped the quality of fishing in Champlain. However, it may have been a more obvious boost for the lake trout than the northern pike he enjoys, Bruno said.
The woundings to some fish like northern pike had been prevalent, said Sterling, who declined to offer an opinion on whether the improved fishing in the south could be linked to treatments of tributaries like the Poultney River with lampricides.
Meanwhile, as far as the colder weather seen so far this year, the long January cold snap should help the prospects for fishing, Sterling said. Due to the recent cold weather, better ice is forming than has been seen in the past five years or so. "It builds more confidence for going out," he said.
"There is no question, more people are going out there (and) are catching more fish." As a result, more anglers seem to be happier than they were with their catches before, he said.
While ice cover is good this year, Champlain is one lake where the ice can be tricky (particularly when it warms up) and people need to be careful, he said.
The number of lamprey bites on the game fish are down, Sterling said. "I have not seen a mark (from lamprey) on a good fish this winter," Sterling said.
As far as prospects for more solid fishing this winter, the test will come as ice-fishing derbies get under way in coming weeks, Sterling said. Referring to areas off Benson Landing, "It will soon become a shanty village," Sterling said.
Contact Tom Mitchell at tom.mitchell@rutlandherald.com.
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