Lac Saint Anne SRD Walleye Removal

[FiveO]

Anyone else hear that SRD has proposed to take Walleye from Saint Anne and place them in Wabnum?
What a load of bs. The lake (Saint Anne) is closed for any keep opportunities but SRD plans to net and stock another lake, how does that make any sence?
I am no biologist but man I think the boys at SRD should give there heads a shake.

[crazyfish]

:lol:I'm pretty sure the big pike in wabamun would love to have a bunch of skinny small walleye to munch on !:lol::love:

That lake definetly needs some de-populating, but that may not be the best way ! But i'd sure like to see the look on the poor wallys face when he sees a 25# pike staring at him for the first time with hungry eyes !:lol:

[hockey1099]

I talked with some guys from SRD who were netting and counting burbs on lac la nonne two weeks ago and they confirmed that they were putting adult walleye in wabamun in order to establish a breeding population.

They also indicated that the y were going to stop stalking trout in hasse

[Paul C]

I talked with some guys from SRD who were netting and counting burbs on lac la nonne two weeks ago and they confirmed that they were putting adult walleye in wabamun in order to establish a breeding population.

They also indicated that the y were going to stop stalking trout in hasse I am glad they are finally going to take steps to clean up Hasse.
The perch are taking over the lake.

[hockey1099]

I am glad they are finally going to take steps to clean up Hasse.
The perch are taking over the lake.

the steps they indicated were to turn it into a pike perch lake. There are already pike there and all they are doing is feeding them trout. it may turn into a good pike lake in 5 years.

[crazyfish]

There is no river that supplies wabamun with water, its all spring fed, a breeding population would require a stream flow of some sort ? No ? Not a biologist , but sounds like another half -thought out idea ! Wabamun is just getting back to where it was/ should be, why stack the deck against it in another way. They tried stocking the lake before with walleye, they stopped doing it because it didn't work ! I've fished there for 30 years and never caught one, never even seen one caught ! I don't think the baby walleyes have a chance with the big pike in there ! The perch and whites have had a hard go , and both are way down from historical highs. This will be interesting to follow !

I hope this isn't the new plan for all the lakes that have now overpopulated themselves due to having "collapsed" status ! Why not just allow a limited catch like the draw ! Look out pigeon lake, you might be next on the list ! maybe they'll put some of those fish from pigeon into buck lake and gull lake to "improve" those fisheries.

What a mess ! Just like a 12 yr old kid telling a lie ! Then another to cover it up and so on ! This will bite them sooner or later !

[RedFisher]

There is no river that supplies wabamun with water, its all spring fed, a breeding population would require a stream flow of some sort ? No ? Not a biologist , but sounds like another half -thought out idea ! Wabamun is just getting back to where it was/ should be, why stack the deck against it in another way. They tried stocking the lake before with walleye, they stopped doing it because it didn't work ! I've fished there for 30 years and never caught one, never even seen one caught ! I don't think the baby walleyes have a chance with the big pike in there ! The perch and whites have had a hard go , and both are way down from historical highs. This will be interesting to follow !

I hope this isn't the new plan for all the lakes that have now overpopulated themselves due to having "collapsed" status ! Why not just allow a limited catch like the draw ! Look out pigeon lake, you might be next on the list ! maybe they'll put some of those fish from pigeon into buck lake and gull lake to "improve" those fisheries.

What a mess ! Just like a 12 yr old kid telling a lie ! Then another to cover it up and so on ! This will bite them sooner or later !


:confused::confused: Are you sure you have the right lake... wabamun has always had walleye in it and the reason the stoped stocking it was because people were poaching it really hard and killed the population.... ive fished the lake going on 20 yrs now and ive seen and caught lots of eye's throughout the years and actually caught one this year. along with seeing two more on camera... and ive talked with the bio's on the phone this year to confirm my catch and although some might not believe me he confirmed that the area i caught it was a well known spot for them.... i personaly hope they do stock them in there to again have wabamun come back to a great all around fishery.. just my 2 cents

[DuckBrat]

Back when the powerplant was putting full output into the discharge channel you could watch spawning eye's early in spring. 33 inches was not uncommon. I agree with the poaching statement of earlier, guys used to come at night and haul them away in large burlap sacks.

[highwood]

Indeed, I have caught big walleye in the outlet channel with large pencil baits....however this was 15 years ago before all the changes to walleye regulations came about.

[crazyfish]

yup, same lake, we had the last cabin on the end of point allison, right in the area that is open all year. I'm not saying that there aren't any in there, just that i never caught or saw one caught ! Either way 15 years ago there was afar different weed type and structure in thatt part of the lake. There was lots of tall stringy weeds, lots of cover and places to hide for bait and predators. That shallow bay just south of the discharge channel was the spawning area for the pike in spring, and it's now too shallow. There used to be huge schools of perch and whites cruising thru the weedy areas. That whole portion of the lake now has a different weed , it looks like green fake lawn turf. and its matted up a bit,and covers the whole bottom of the lake this leaves almost no place for the pike or the bait to hide. And i don't beleive the poaching would stop if they return the walleyes there either ! (my .02$)

[Coltye]

The thing i don't understand is would'nt it just be easier to stock it with bigger walleye that could maybe stand a chance.Also how much money does it cost to net fish from 1 lake and then take them to another?Who ever is in charge of this bull@#$5 needs to read some of these posts from you guys who know what they are talking about and actually fish this lake.Alberta is so behind the frickin 8-ball it's ******ed already,no wonder there is no fish around,and won't be for my kids to fish, i better stop,(my .03$)

[huntsfurfish]

Coltye

please reread the posts. Sounds like they are stocking adult walleye.

Yes, they should read these posts. It would give them a good laugh over "the guys who know what they are talking about".:lol::lol:

I dont know what any of ya do for a living but fish management/biology is definately not it.

You might not agree with what is done or has been done(yes mistakes are made) but they have done pretty darn good overall.
There is lots more to it than just dumping in a load of fish. Fish management is much more complicated than that.

If they listened to half the people on here or any where else we would have no fish at all.
There now my rant is over:)
my 5 cents

[FiveO]

What I am failing to understand is how you can declare a lake collapsed and not able to support catch and keep, but you can net the threatend species and tranfer them to another lake that historcally hasnt been able to support a Walleye population.

Sounds fishy to me.

[Mike_W]

I agree that wabamun could become a great all around fishery it is a large lake that can support a good fishery. The long term effects of the spill and the powerplants is yet to be determined but I am all for the walleye stocking efforts.....from where they get the fish seems intresteing FiveO Im with ya it seems really stupid to take fish from a so called colapsed lake to populate another. Lac St Anne makes sence in distance and so does Isle. Who did you hear the St anne rummor from there could be a mix up from your source that lac la none could be confised for lac st anne....just a theroy.

[FiveO]

It came from a realiable source not the rumor mill.

[greylynx]

When I used to work for fisheries we stocked millions and millions of walleye in Wabamun.

The walleye fishery was starting to collapse even at that time and nobody was doing anything about it.

[crazyfish]

[QUOTE=huntsfurfish;543173]Coltye



Yes, they should read these posts. It would give them a good laugh over "the guys who know what they are talking about".:lol::lol:

I dont know what any of ya do for a living but fish management/biology is definately not it.


If thats a shot at me,,...I grew up on that lake. I spent 2 months every summer at that lake. And lots of time in winter ice fishing , and open water fishing. Do the math , over 30 yrs i'd say i have a lot more time invested there than most people. No i'm not a biologist, i can't identify every type of aquatic vegetation, but i was just sharing what i've seen and experienced on a lake that i truely love.

Because i never saw or caught a walleye you must think i'm stupid! I've spent hours fishing the very spot where they are supposed to be, watched lots of people fishing minnows and they never caught walleye. One would guess that after 30 yrs i would have at least had some "incidental" catches of walleye. After having cleaned 100's of pike from there(some over 20 #), you would think that i'd would have seen at least a partly digested walleye, it wasn't there . They tried stocking it a long time ago, it didn't turn out great. I would love to see it happen, but not at the expense of the great pike fishery thats starting to come back. The forage base may not be re-established to support this ! The timing may be right with the lake being C+R.

THe large schools of perch, the schools of whites that were into the 100's, those i haven't seen for at least 10 yrs. Thats before the oil spill, that happened right on top of, or drifted right over the spawning beds for all the whites , perch and pike(east end). That lake was on a downward spiral before the spill, thats why the whites went fom limit of 10 to limits of 3 .

As cabin owners transalta used to give out booklets based on scientific studies and conclusions. Did you know that at one time they were going to put asian grass carp in there to try and control the weeds around the plant discharge in order to try and improve the public image ? :huh: Man i'm glad that didn't happen, they were predicting carp as big as 80 #s.

THis lake has some big challenges ahead of it, but it is also a very resillient lake. One of it's advantages of not having a river supply to it. It doesn't get all the phosphates that leech into the rivers from upstream like a lot of other lakes. Wabamun almost never gets an algea bloom like pigeon, lac st anne, lake isle, and just about any other lake i can think of . It's survivied having two large power plants using and recycling water in and out for 45 ? years. Most other lakes would have been "cooked" by this process. THe east end of the lake would have very high summer temps, but the size helped to disappate the heat. This lake will return very well, in my opinion, i'm just surprised that with not hearing of a single public consultation, or even any rumors, that this is already set to go ahead !

I wish them luck, i just hope that it doesn't turn into another fiasco.:rolleyes:

I also question why lac st anne hasn't been opened to angling , that lake is no longer "collapsed". Whether it's open , or on a tag system, that would seem like the logical way to solve a problem. They should at the very least have a lot of public info comming out to support the reasoning around this choice of tactic.

[huntsfurfish]

five o - walleye are not a threatened species.

Removal of some adult walleye will likely not impact said lake. Transport distance of adult fish would be a consideration. Would you rather they take them from an open fishery? Taking away from fish you could keep?

Habitat loss due to warmer waters, runoff from chemicals or fertilizers all have an impact. Just a tip of the ol iceberg though. Spawning areas are lost or changed. Species loss/change....................

Bottom line is any number of reasons for changes in fisheries. Much of the time it is just plain old overfishing. Times have changed in Alberta. This is not 30 or 40 years ago. Population is huge now in comparison while the water bodies have remained largely the same. What it boils down to is we out number the fish(exaggeration;):)) Well not quite, but I think you know what I mean.

Shot was at anyone and everyone:lol: not u in particular. Dont want to play favorites:)

[Coltye]

Crazyfish-- my little rant was not a shot at you at all,the point i was trying to make is that guys like yourself that have fished that lake for many years know and see what is happening to the lake.A person does'nt have to be in biology or whatever to see what the effects of over fishing or certain limits are doing to most of our lakes.

[crazyfish]

no offence take, just defending what i said..... i haven't read the new regs. Is there any info or explanation as to why, and the future goals and if this is to continue?

[spopadyn]

[QUOTE=huntsfurfish;543173]Coltye



Yes, they should read these posts. It would give them a good laugh over "the guys who know what they are talking about".:lol::lol:

I dont know what any of ya do for a living but fish management/biology is definately not it.


If thats a shot at me,,...I grew up on that lake. I spent 2 months every summer at that lake. And lots of time in winter ice fishing , and open water fishing. Do the math , over 30 yrs i'd say i have a lot more time invested there than most people. No i'm not a biologist, i can't identify every type of aquatic vegetation, but i was just sharing what i've seen and experienced on a lake that i truely love.

Because i never saw or caught a walleye you must think i'm stupid! I've spent hours fishing the very spot where they are supposed to be, watched lots of people fishing minnows and they never caught walleye. One would guess that after 30 yrs i would have at least had some "incidental" catches of walleye. After having cleaned 100's of pike from there(some over 20 #), you would think that i'd would have seen at least a partly digested walleye, it wasn't there . They tried stocking it a long time ago, it didn't turn out great. I would love to see it happen, but not at the expense of the great pike fishery thats starting to come back. The forage base may not be re-established to support this ! The timing may be right with the lake being C+R.

THe large schools of perch, the schools of whites that were into the 100's, those i haven't seen for at least 10 yrs. Thats before the oil spill, that happened right on top of, or drifted right over the spawning beds for all the whites , perch and pike(east end). That lake was on a downward spiral before the spill, thats why the whites went fom limit of 10 to limits of 3 .

As cabin owners transalta used to give out booklets based on scientific studies and conclusions. Did you know that at one time they were going to put asian grass carp in there to try and control the weeds around the plant discharge in order to try and improve the public image ? :huh: Man i'm glad that didn't happen, they were predicting carp as big as 80 #s.

THis lake has some big challenges ahead of it, but it is also a very resillient lake. One of it's advantages of not having a river supply to it. It doesn't get all the phosphates that leech into the rivers from upstream like a lot of other lakes. Wabamun almost never gets an algea bloom like pigeon, lac st anne, lake isle, and just about any other lake i can think of . It's survivied having two large power plants using and recycling water in and out for 45 ? years. Most other lakes would have been "cooked" by this process. THe east end of the lake would have very high summer temps, but the size helped to disappate the heat. This lake will return very well, in my opinion, i'm just surprised that with not hearing of a single public consultation, or even any rumors, that this is already set to go ahead !

I wish them luck, i just hope that it doesn't turn into another fiasco.:rolleyes:

I also question why lac st anne hasn't been opened to angling , that lake is no longer "collapsed". Whether it's open , or on a tag system, that would seem like the logical way to solve a problem. They should at the very least have a lot of public info comming out to support the reasoning around this choice of tactic.

crazyfish is correct. I have also fished Wabamun for about 30 years and never once caught a walleye - even after they stocked it. In fact, they posted signs saying walleye were c&r only, but found out what crazyfish said - the lake never bacame a spawing lake for them and they just died off (went away). Lake Isle has always had walleye is is just accross the highway. Here is my take : I think the government will not stock a polluted lake like wabamun. Why spend the money to move fish that will just be full of pcb's in a couple of years. With all the collapsed walleye lakes, why wouldn't they move them there first? I think it is just another rumour....

[huntsfurfish]

Walleye dont need rivers or creeks to spawn in.

and

You guys might have missed redfisher or duckbrats posts.

or are you the only ones that are right?:)

ok now that was a shot.(but not at redfisher or duckbrat)

They(SRD) are trying to make it better are they not?

[crazyfish]

Why fix what aint broke..... the lake is recovering well, there are big pike and numbers as well, and the whites are starting to show some numbers. Let the lake try to settle itself and see what happens.

One of the reasons the lake was always so prolific was due to the hot water, that made for a great invertebrate population, that the bait/forage fish were able to take advantage of and have good numbers, and so on up the chain. With the hot water turned off sometime soon, that cycle changes , and that will have an effect on the fish populations.

[QIsley]

I understand, from asking the Fisheries Bio, Dr. Spencer,

1) Wabamun historically had Walleye,

2) They were over fished and thought to be removed entirely from the lake, (although there are some reported annually)

3) The lake was stocked with Walleye in the past, but they were spawning in the outlet canal in the winter, because of the warm water temps from the plant. Eggs would hatch in the canal, fry would float out into the lake and die because there was no food, Adults got poached.

4) In order to reestablish Walleye after the plant closes down they want to use fish from Lac St. Anne or Isle because they are thought to be the closest genetically to Wabamun Walleye.

5) This is being discussed at this time, not stocking this year.

6) Wabamun is a collapsed lake, there are adult fish but limited successful spawning, (no little fish) and will remain catch and release until there is successful spawning.

I think it is a good thing to bring the Walleye back to the lake, they belong there.

Oh, and Lac St. Anne is collapsed, only one year class of Walleye in that lake, the Walleye are all 9 or 10 years old, there are no other year classes, once they are gone.....

Q

[spopadyn]

Don't ever remember seeing walleye there except when they tried to restock will look it up online to give redfisher and others some info.

[DuckBrat]

How many Wabamun lovers have taken a look at the project on the table at the Wab town office? All that Pike Spawning habitat west of the dock all the way to the channel is about to be buried by sand and condos. Not looking good.

[spopadyn]

Well, crazyfish and I may not know alot but here is from the Ab govt report of 2004.

Walleye
A lack of commercial fishery records and only anecdotal reports suggest that walleye were an
incidental species in Lake Wabamun. Fishery monitoring (both commercial and sport) failed to
record the catch of any walleye during the 1970s and 1980s (Glen Clements, personal
communication). During 1983 to 1986 (inclusive), approximately 12 million walleye fry were
stocked in Lake Wabamun (Berry 1992). Although the stocked walleye did create a minor,
localized fishery (concentrated in the Wabamun Power Plant effluent) for a few years, the fish
failed to reproduce and the fishery collapsed (Watters 1991).


If Redfisher is regularly hauling in walleye, he should let the gov't know - they went over 20 years without finding a single one of them.

[spopadyn]

Walleye dont need rivers or creeks to spawn in.

and

You guys might have missed redfisher or duckbrats posts.

or are you the only ones that are right?:)

ok now that was a shot.(but not at redfisher or duckbrat)

They(SRD) are trying to make it better are they not?

Since you hurt our feelings, how about an apology for being wrong - don't trust every post.

here is the link
http://environment.gov.ab.ca/info/library/6139.pdf

[curtis_rak]

In my personal opinion (biology, spawning etc aside) I think that Wabamun lake is a very special lake and that re-introducing Walleye might mess that up.

When I say its special, I say that because Wabamun offers an unbelieveable catch and release trophy-Pike fishery at the moment. There arent any lakes in central Alberta where you can catch a couple of 20lb Pike on any given day. Its amazing actually. Ive watch the water on a camera a lot at Wabamun and all those small perch and even the whitefish are feeding those monster Pike in that lake. As a dumb fisherman doing the math in my head, id say that a bunch of stocked adult walleye might cause a lot of this food to dissappear over time and we might see a size decrease of these nice Pike.

Like Crazyfish, I have never seen or heard of people catching Walleye in Wabamun in the dozen years I have fished there. Not to say that there hasnt been, Ive just never seen it and I fish there probably 60 days per year.

I do have a question though, I had heard that Walleye were never native to Wabamun and have always been a stocked-fish in that Lake? If it is a native fish, but could not sustain itself why bother spending the money now? If it is non-native, why introduce the fish and potentially have it disrupt the trophy pike fishery?

As for Ste. Anne, could the Walleye draw be implemented? Would that not help deal with the over population?

[spopadyn]

Walleye were at one time a native species. The North Sask. used to connect during high flood times to lake wab. That is where the fish came from. With development etc. this connection to North Sask was lost about 80 years ago. And, the walleye died off. I am never worried about Walleye in a lake where there are as many big Northerns, they will likely just get munched. However, it seems like a waste of money and time.

[hockey1099]

In my personal opinion (biology, spawning etc aside) I think that Wabamun lake is a very special lake and that re-introducing Walleye might mess that up.

When I say its special, I say that because Wabamun offers an unbelieveable catch and release trophy-Pike fishery at the moment. There arent any lakes in central Alberta where you can catch a couple of 20lb Pike on any given day. Its amazing actually. Ive watch the water on a camera a lot at Wabamun and all those small perch and even the whitefish are feeding those monster Pike in that lake. As a dumb fisherman doing the math in my head, id say that a bunch of stocked adult walleye might cause a lot of this food to dissappear over time and we might see a size decrease of these nice Pike.

Like Crazyfish, I have never seen or heard of people catching Walleye in Wabamun in the dozen years I have fished there. Not to say that there hasnt been, Ive just never seen it and I fish there probably 60 days per year.

I do have a question though, I had heard that Walleye were never native to Wabamun and have always been a stocked-fish in that Lake? If it is a native fish, but could not sustain itself why bother spending the money now? If it is non-native, why introduce the fish and potentially have it disrupt the trophy pike fishery?

As for Ste. Anne, could the Walleye draw be implemented? Would that not help deal with the over population?

The Fishery may be a great catch and release lake but it is in trouble. numbers of all fish are down. The SRD guys i spoke with on Lac LA nonne said the number of pike in Wab is way down from previous years and that the oil spill may be a blessing in that the lake is shut down and there are less poachers as many feel the fish are unsafe to eat.

[spopadyn]

Hmm. Everyone's fishing reports sure don't match that. I have never caught as many northerns as I did last summr in that lake. Maybe I am just a far superior fisherman than I used to be!

[hockey1099]

Hmm. Everyone's fishing reports sure don't match that. I have never caught as many northerns as I did last summr in that lake. Maybe I am just a far superior fisherman than I used to be!

That was my reaction as well but according to the SRD guys the #'s are down. I wonder how good that lake will be with a healthy stock of pike.

[huntsfurfish]

Ok who am I apologizing to and why? Kinda looks to me like I was on track.