John Sampson has his "3 Amigos". The RFP's have the "Fearsome Foursome". Bluefin, White Cap, Grey Ghost and Salty. We had a very slow but fun day with good food and good friends. Ended up with 5 lakers with White Cap topping Salty's 6 1/2# laker from Thurs. with a 7#'er today. Bluefin caught a laker that should have been 19 or 20" but was deformed and only measured 17". (Pictures to follow) I want to thank White Cap for his RFP idea. It was a GREAT summer. The big laker was caught at 55' on the downrigger, on an orange with black dot smelt gun at the same spot in Meredith bay that Thursday's big laker was taken.

Salty :0)

Deformed Laker

That is almost exactly how the 11 pounder we won the derby with looked. Maybe not quite so drastic but the same deformity exactly.

fished today from 5:30am to 6:30pm ,great day to be on the water just wished the fish would have cooperated a little better. meet marc thyng through the web site and invited him to join me today . great meeting you marc and hope to do some ice fishing with you . we ended up with 4 lakers 14", 16",16",19" 2 caught on flies early on leadcore 8 colors and 1 on red +white top gun 45 feet on rigger and 1 onmatty gun top gun 45 feet on rigger. also 4 salmon 14",16",18",20", 1 on fly 8 colors leadcore ,1 on blue +purple needlefish 45 fet on rigger ,2 on matty gun top gun 45 feet on rigger . 3 fish before 8:00am then it was scattered throughout the day . once the clouds moved in after 3:00pm switched to dark colors and got some action . hopefully the winter will go by quick . had a great year talking to everyone see everyone at the gathering. "reel it in"

In June, I also caught a laker with this deformity. It was to short to keep, so it was released. About 16" long, with a tail malformation that was as severe as the one pictured. Not a very effective swimmer but well enough to chase and eat my lure!!

nice fish white cap

Salty that boga grip that you use, does it allow you to release the fish unharmed? the reason that i ask is that we release just about all our fish and yesterday i took a chance with one of the salmon we caught (he swam away just fine) because i wanted to get a picture of it. slipnot suggested getting a boga grip so that my son and daughter would hold the fish while i took the picture. do you think it gives them a better chance?

ilucas

The Boga Grip allows one to weigh the catch, take pictures, de-hook the fish with out grabbing the body, while keeping the fish in the rubber net and most important to revive the fish on the side of boat. To revive the fish; I submerge the fish with the facing forward and then perform a smooth out and in movement, like a “S” curve, until the fish indicates that it is ready to go on it’s own. I think, the only fish that has been lost this year is the deformed fish in the previous post.

Tools like the boga grip are not reccomended for holding large or fiesty salmon and trout because all that weight on the lower jaw puts extreme stress on their throats which we all know are VERY THIN.
(just look at some photos with them being held like this their gills are all flared out and that little tiny bit of skin is holding the fish's whole weight, 1 flop and bad news happens). Studies have been done in the great lakes with holding big lakers and salmon like this and they swim away but then die because their throats have been torn up unknowingly and unintentionally. Also it is not wise to hold good size fish by their tails either because you can injure their spines. If you lift up a big fish by it's tail and listen you can hear it popping. Not a pretty sound.

So what's the best way to do it?
Simple answer is carefully as possible.
Use the boga but also support the rear end of the fish with a wet hand so you don't stress the throat.

I know i have killed fish with my Boga when i lift them out of the net with it and they start frieking out you can hear and feel stuff tearing and they die shortly after. No, i'm not saying that this happens with every fish but it is a fact and does happen.

When i am releasing fish the plan is to get it in the rubber net and into the boat as soon as possible, suspend the net in the air and have small needlenose pliers on hand closely,

YOU ONLY HAVE 4-7 SECONDS WITH A SALMON IN THE NET BEFORE HE STARTS FLOPPING HE WILL NOT FLOP AT FIRST IN 98%OF ALL NETTINGS.

If you can get him in, pop the hook gently with pliers (look first, plan your move, and pop, do not grab and shake) and never touch the fish, then pop him right back in the water all without removing him from the rubber net the process takes 7 seconds max and all is well. This takes some practice but leaves the fish in the best possible condition.

I feel terrible every time I look at the picture now.

September was a month to forget as far as Salmon go, but what an memorable August.

We both caught some nice fish this year on our boats, but what you say is true and even better, we all made allot of new fishin buddies.

Can I book a trip with ya now, it's hard to get a seat on the famous "Peggy C" anymore.

I would say the RFP (Retired Fishin Partners) was a supper success this it's first year, great idea White Cap.

I hear there may be an informal Fall get together for all interested fisherman, a Pig Roast maybe, but even if not the RFP could get together for lunch.

Keep in touch, maybe we can fish for some Rainbows this Fall if the weather holds, we can allways call Trav if we get in trouble like we did last year ???

John S.

Regarding those deformed lakers, do you think that might be from whirling disease? Looks similar to some pictures I found on the internet. In any case, its probably a good idea to remove any deformed = potentially diseased fish from the lake.

One link among many: http://www.protectyourwaters.net/hitchhikers/others_whirling_disease.php

Adrien - thanks for the info on your catch and release technique. My handling skills are still pretty limited, so I don't even try and get a weight to reduce my handling of the fish. I just use the rubber net, get the fish in the "basket" and it will often spit the hook itself, otherwise I dehook it in the net, then get the best quick measurement I can with a tape measure. You're dead on about that "4 second" window. Its really true. Now when I know I'm going to release a fish no matter what I find myself racing to get it done, so I've learned to stage everything I need (pliers, dehooker, rubber net) before landing the fish to beat the clock.

On catch and release vs. keeping, I do both -- I'm a selective harvester. I absolutely enjoy nothing more than a meal of salmon or smoked togue that I catch and prepare myself. There are days I'm "full" and return all fish, and generally I don't play games trying to keep just the bigger ones; if I'm "hungry" I'll keep the first "keepers" and return all others afterwards regardless of size... This year this resulted in my releasing the biggest lakers I caught and several of the nicest salmon, hopefully to be found bigger and fatter next year. Interesting point raised by John S. about the 5+ salmon reaching the end of their lives...will factor this in to my harvest vs. release strategy next year.

Thanks to all on the board for sharing their know how. Looking forward to meeting you guys at the next gathering.

Eric

Here is a picture of a whirling diseased fish, looks like PI Eric found the culprit for the deformed fished that we caught, good job. Now we need to be more informed about Whirling Disease.
Another link Whirling Disease

I also caught a laker this summer with the skeletal deformity that your fish had. However, I'm not so sure about the whirling disease as it seems that lake trout are not able to get this infection....See this excerpt from the VT Fish and Game......

Are all fish susceptible to whirling disease? Current information indicates this is a disease that inflicts salmonids only. While all salmonids, with the possible exception of lake trout, are subject to infection, some species are more susceptible than others (presented in order of high to low): rainbow trout, sockeye salmon, golden trout, cutthroat trout, brook trout, steelhead, chinook salmon, Atlantic salmon, brown trout, and coho salmon.

Several other sources on the net describing "whirling disease" state that lake trout are not affected by the paracite that causes this disease. Wonder if John Viar has any information regarding this?? Also, if it does have an infectious cause, we should remove these fish from the lake, but the fish I caught was well under the legal lenght limit. Would this be overlooked if I kept this fish to remove it from the population?? Common sense says yes but???

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...is it a duck?

In my brief on-line research it appears that all salmonids, as well as some other cold-water game fish, are susceptible to the whirling disease parasite. Some species and strains are more resistant to it than others, and the web search I did suggested a couple of salmonid species from western waters are more resistant than most. Even if lakers are supposedly resistant, the pic of that laker posted by YoAdrien certainly looks spot on for whirling disease. If anyone catches fish like this in the future make sure to remove / kill the fish and properly dispose of the killed fish. Otherwise, the parasites will ultimately kill the fish anyway and then tons more parasites will be released into the lake...

The web link I provided a couple posts ago has a lot of information including a chart of the life cycle of the parasite. Its probably a good idea for us to start tracking / reporting observations of potenital whirling-disease infected fish on the board.

My bad, it was Salty not YoAdrien who posted the pic of the whirling-disease afflicted laker....How many others saw fish like this this season?

Actually it was Gus (Grey Ghost) who posted the picture of the laker that was caught on Salty's boat the Peggy C.
Cal

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Replying to:

My bad, it was Salty not YoAdrien who posted the pic of the whirling-disease afflicted laker....How many others saw fish like this this season?

White Cap -- I guess it was bad enough I got the credits wrong once, let alone twice...but I did. So, my thanks go rightly to Grey Ghost (Gus) for the pics of the sick laker and the follow up on my post on whirling disease.

It would be a good idea to get clarification from John Viar as to how he'd like us to deal with these diseased fish. To minimize the spread of the parasite causing the disease it would definitely be best to remove all diseased fish regardless of size. (Also we may need to learn decontamination procedures in the event we look to release fish after we catch a sick one -- need to read up on this). As others noted, killing small diseased fish puts us up against "the letter" of the law. However, removing all infected fish of any size makes the best sense in terms of fishery management. If we could document this better going forward perhaps John Viar and others can provide a "special directive" recommending that we kill / remove all fish with obvious signs of the whirling disease regardless of size.

Also, if indeed lakers are supposedly resistant to whirling disease, these observations are troubling in that it may indicate the parasite has adapted if not evolved to attack lakers in Winni. Another reason to remove any diseased / deformed fish and get them to a fisheries biologist for examination.

Eric H.

I sent a pic of the laker to John.

Salty

I also sent an e-mail to John Viar to attempt to clarify some of these issues/questions and to alert him to these fish. I will post any reply from him to the board for all of us to learn from.

It look like that lake trout are susceptible, to a much lesser degree, to this disease according to the following articles.

Among species found in Utah, rainbow trout are the most susceptible, followed by kokanee salmon, golden, cutthroat, brook, brown trout and splake. Recent discoveries show whitefish may be infected as well. Lake trout may be infected under laboratory conditions and other game fish species such as bass, bluegill, perch or walleye do not get whirling disease
UTAH


Conversely, Wagner et al. (2002) exposed lake trout to 1,000 tams per fish at 10 weeks of age and sampled at either 5 or 20 weeks. Interestingly, by PCR 100% of the 20 lake trout sampled were either positive or weakly positive at 5 weeks, as were 100% of brook trout. However, at 10 weeks by spore enumeration only 13.6% of 22 lake trout were positive, while 100% of the brook trout remained positive. Blacktail and whirling behavior were not observed for any of the lake trout, however, 9.5% did show cranial deformities. This correlates well with follow-up studies conducted at Leetown using labeled tams. Preliminary results suggest that the tams are able to attach and enter the epithelium of the lake trout but do not progress to infections of cartilage and development of mature myxospores.
USGS