The number of fishing trips on Lake Ontario was low again this year, which might be just as well if a recent evaluation of the bait fish population is accurate. A major gap has been identified in the age composition of the alewife population with very few spawners picked up in trawl surveys this year, officials with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and New York Sea Grant said. Most of the alewives in Lake Ontario are 2 and 6 years old.
Alewives are the main forage fish for salmon and lake trout.
The younger fish are not effective spawners and the older fish are the senior citizens of the population, MacNeill said. It doesn't bode particularly well. The makeup of the alewife population is indicative of poor reproduction in 1997, and data from the U.S. Geological Survey suggest that the alewife situation has worsened, said MacNeill. The state made deep cuts in its salmon and trout program in Lake Ontario in 1993 in an attempt to restore the predator-prey balance. But stocking cuts to prop up the forage fish population caused a precipitous decline in fishing turnout.