Re: Rainbow Trout

We're reading this article for one of my classes and figured you all might find it interesting and even have something intelligent to say about it: Chasing Rainbows

Excellent article.

I have talked a little bit about this in this thread:
http://yosemitenews.info/forum/read.php?3,28257

I have seen them using gill nets. Always. So the comments w/r to chems after
the article... I don't buy all that in the Sierra.
And they do it such that some fish may possibly remain for fisherpeeps to go after.
For example... they removed the fish from Upper and Middle McCabe but leave
Lower McCabe alone. So the Bridgeport peeps whining about losing .... bogus.
Cmon... the fisherpeeps got Twin Lakes to go nuts on anyway.
Sure SOME will hike to those lakes way out there... but not many...

IMO our environmental policies have always been seriously flawed...
IMO there is no need to "manage" it should be "leave it the heck alone...
let mother take care of it... she knows what is right"
Unfortunately we screwed up so much stuff already we make an attempt to set it right.

Here's Lake Ruth w/ Forsyth in the background... and a gill net in the lower left:


Have a nice day

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Quote
chick-on

For example... they removed the fish from Upper and Middle McCabe but leave
Lower McCabe alone. So the Bridgeport peeps whining about losing .... bogus.
Cmon... the fisherpeeps got Twin Lakes to go nuts on anyway.
Sure SOME will hike to those lakes way out there... but not many...

I see the bellyaching of those in Bridgeport and elsewhere in the Eastern Sierra a symptom that's plaguing this country for the last 20+ years — an unwillingness to compromise and take a more balanced approach on issues like this. I commend the state's department of fish and game for taking a good balanced approach on this issue.

But that some people are whining that fish are being removed from High Sierra lakes that historically have been fish free (and which the fish have caused a noticeably adverse decline of the native amphibian population of the region) just makes my eyes roll.

The Eastern Sierra has so many reservoirs and creeks that will forever be stocked with fish that I find it's a pity that residents of that region don't see the big picture about helping restore the amphibian population of the High Sierra by removing fish from the remote lakes of the region.
.

Without question THE BEST FISH-ON in Yosemite is at my beloved Loch Tablae.
You should see The BIG Suckers I caught there.



Half Dome a Nice Day

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Quote
chick-on
Without question THE BEST FISH-ON in Yosemite is at my beloved Loch Tablae.
You should see The BIG Suckers I caught took there. ( "took" is fishing parlance for "caught" )



Half Dome a Nice Day

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Old Dude



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2012 11:21AM by mrcondron.

Quote
chick-on
Without question THE BEST FISH-ON in Yosemite is at my beloved Loch Tablae.
You should see The BIG Suckers I caught there

yee hee i know's where i'm goin one ce road open

Quote
rroland

Quote
chick-on
Without question THE BEST FISH-ON in Yosemite is at my beloved Loch Tablae.
You should see The BIG Suckers I caught there

yee hee i know's where i'm goin one ce road open

Road?

All Roads Lead to Loch Tablae.

You can check it out any time you like, but you may never leave.

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chick-on
but you may never leave.

Do to being exhausted from the switchbacks?

As someone who loves to fish for trout, I thought the article was pretty straightforward. Trout are NOT native to many of the places in the Sierra, and while I am not in favor of eliminating them all, I certainly understand why these guys want to create some lakes or watersheds which are free of trout.

And when Ted Williams writes about fish, pay attention.

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Check our our website: http://www.backpackthesierra.com/
Or just read a good mystery novel set in the Sierra; https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Falling-Rocks-Paul-Wagner/dp/0984884963

I remember seeing another gill net in one of the unnamed lakes between Flora Lake & Boundary Lake when I went through there back in August of 09. They are definitely out there.

Thanks for the article.

One thing I really find interesting out there is just how ubiquitous the trout are.
(you like dat fancy word? you wanted some intelligent comments)
It's amazing to me where I find them. Not sure what the harsh winter will do to
the little tributaries that hold them. By harsh I mean that with the lack of snow
those little trickles of water that held them may have frozen solid this year.
Here's an example. I was quite amazed to find them in this small creeklet W of
StarrKing (it's just left of that stump):

What it tells me is that that will have water in it year round...
Here's where it is on a map:

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I was coming down from Clouds Rest one night well after dark.
I stopped at the junction with water and camping that's just east of the Half Dome trail junction to fill my water bottles.
I was quite surprised to see a trout fingerling swimming around. As I was get things out, an even bigger trout swam up, not big enough to fry, but decent size. The moment I dropped the pump intake into the water they both disappeared downstream.
There's nothing up stream they would have come from, there's no way they could have made it this far up from the river, too many unsurmountable obstacles. They must have been planted at the stream crossing. Why? Who would fish there? ( I'm not a fisherman, maybe I just don't get it? )

Those fish more than likely came up from Sunrise Creek.
Sunrise Creek also has loads of fish in it.

And on the other side of Clouds towards Sunrise Lakes you cross a
creeklet ... that also has fish in it.

There was talk of Lehamite in another thread. I want to say that I saw
fish in there... that stream also flows year round... but I'm not 100% sure...
And w/o question there are fish in Snow Creek... also has water year round...
And Porcupine Creek..
(I'm mentioning those only b/c they were talked about in another thread)

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Yes--but that's part of the illilouette Creek drainage, andt is it simply crawling with trout. There are way more trout there than the food supply can support, so they are long, thin, and tiny. And they hit anything in the water that looks like it isn't a rock.

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Check our our website: http://www.backpackthesierra.com/
Or just read a good mystery novel set in the Sierra; https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Falling-Rocks-Paul-Wagner/dp/0984884963

Yes, that eventually drains into Ill. Creek. But that wasn't my point.
My point was... you look at that little creeklet on the map and you would
think that it may dry up eventually in October... but it must not entirely
since there are fish in it.

Ottoway is chock full o fish... but the other unnamed lakes W of the Clark Range
and N of Ottoway are fishless... although I do believe there were fish in Grayling.

Anywho. Have fun

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Came across this article in the SF Chronicle that states it wasn't trout, but other frogs killing off the frogs:

Chorus frog carries killer fungus

David Perlman

Tuesday, March 13, 2012



Courtesy Joyce Gross
Barely an inch long, the chorus frog is heavily infected with the killer fungus chytrid, but almost never shows symptoms.



Biologists have discovered the Typhoid Mary of the frog world - a little green hopper that is spreading a deadly fungus disease to other frogs and amphibians in the Sierra while remaining largely immune to the infection itself.

The fungus, known as chytrid, has killed frogs, toads, salamanders and newts in the Sierra and is the same fungus that has wiped out hundreds of frog species throughout the world in what many biologists have termed a "mass extinction."

In California, two San Francisco State University researchers have discovered that the common Pacific chorus frog, an amphibian barely an inch long, appears to be the guilty animal. The chorus frogs are heavily infected with the killer fungus, but almost never show symptoms of the disease, biologist Vance T. Vredenburg and Natalie M.M. Reeder, a recent graduate student in his lab, reported in Monday's online journal PloS One.

Not so for the frog's neighbors, the yellow-legged frogs that also inhabit Sierra lakes are rapidly being infected and dying with a litany of severe symptoms, including "weight loss, lethargy, excessive skin shedding, muscle spasms and loss of reaction to stimuli," the researchers said.

The chorus frog is common to California. Its noisy "ribbit" call can be heard from dawn to dusk around lakes from the Bay Area to the High Sierra, but Vredenburg said in an interview that no studies have been done to determine whether the fungus it carries is affecting Bay Area amphibians.

Population crash

Worldwide, the chytrid fungus has spread to nearly 600 species of frogs, Vredenburg said, and has probably driven more than 200 species to extinction.

"It's the worst population crash of animals in history," he said.

Reeder, a UC Berkeley graduate with a major in integrative biology, backpacked across the Sixty Lakes Basin in the High Sierra east of Fresno to study the chorus frogs and the endangered yellow-legged frogs that inhabit the same lakes. She brought back samples of both species to Vredenburg's lab.

Throughout Sierra lakes, the yellow-legged frogs have been in catastrophic decline for many years, according to Vredenburg. In her backpacking travels, Reeder observed that with their sticky toe pads, the infected chorus frogs are able to move overland from lake to lake, spreading the chytrid fungus.

Back in the lab, Vredenburg said he determined that as the infected chorus frogs swim through water, their skin releases thousands of "zoospores" that disperse the fungus spores and infect the yellow-legged species.

The fungus spores attack the yellow-legged frog's skin, causing it to thicken and preventing the animal from absorbing crucial water and salts like sodium and potassium. In chorus frogs, however, researchers found patches of both normal and infected skin.

"The patches of healthy skin appear to function normally in the chorus frogs," Vredenburg said, "and that's what probably protects them against the infection." The normal skin holds elements of the chorus frog's immune system, he said.

Thwarting the fungus

Vredenburg believes that further analysis may provide a path toward thwarting the chytrid epidemic. The normal skin holds many species of bacteria, and among those bacteria could be some that destroy the chytrid fungus, he said.

The scientists are also studying the chorus frog's genome in search of genes that could be responsible for their immunity to the fungus, he said.

"We've figured out one piece of the puzzle," he said, "and understanding the genome will help us to understand differences between those two species of frog."

Allan P. Pessier, an immunologist at the Wildlife Disease Laboratories of the San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research, is a co-author of the report.

David Perlman is a San Francisco Chronicle science editor. dperlman@sfchronicle.com

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle







Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/12/MNKO1NJKED.DTL#ixzz1pWvvECKn

I'd say leave the frogs alone. The population will crash but the fungus will not kill all of them. A few will survive and be immune. Those will multiply and the population will rise again. That's how evolution works. Things get messed up when we interfer. Don't mess with Mother Nature. She bites back.

Quote
Dave
I'd say leave the frogs alone. The population will crash but the fungus will not kill all of them. A few will survive and be immune. Those will multiply and the population will rise again. That's how evolution works. Things get messed up when we interfer. Don't mess with Mother Nature. She bites back.

At this point, it is hard to say if the frogs will come back and will not become extinct. The study said that almost 600 species have been infected and more than a 1/3 became extinct because of the fungus. Also, has our interference with mother nature caused the fugus to go out of control and spread through other frog species? Maybe it is like what has happened with the bark beetle. They have been around for a very long time but were controlled when there were really cold and long winters that killed most of them off before spring came. Now winters in the Rockies are starting to not be as cold and last as long as they have in the past and the beetles are not being killed off in the same amounts so the problem is spreading. Add in the factor that many trees are suffering from current drought condtions and can not fight off the infestation. Many would say that it is because of global warming.

I don't know if we can be blamed for the frog problem, but we do get the blame for global warming and many other problems.