Bluebacks and Nantahala Lake?

[smokysteelhead]

Anybody know if herring are in Nantahala Lake or Santeetlah Lake? Thanks

 

[rgarbar]

Bluebacks in Nantahala

Another forum recently reported the discovery of blueback herring in Nantahala Lake. This might help explain the poor Kokanee fishing at Nantahala Lake last season. The kokes I caught were fewer and smaller than in previous years. I have marked large bait balls in the lake. If this is true the Kokanee fishery is destined to collapse like a number of Kokanee lakes In NY and CT.

 

[trollmonkey]

Shad/herring/bluebacks?????

Another forum recently reported the discovery of blueback herring in Nantahala Lake. This might help explain the poor Kokanee fishing at Nantahala Lake last season. The kokes I caught were fewer and smaller than in previous years. I have marked large bait balls in the lake. If this is true the Kokanee fishery is destined to collapse like a number of Kokanee lakes In NY and CT.

Hey Ron ,I dearly hope some idiot hasn't put them in the lake.My friend Terry fishes Nanatahala a lot and goes for a week in the fall,he told me they saw shad in the lake and heard the state put them in. I dropped some fishheads off to Amanda and asked her about it. She said it wasn't them and they would be looking to see if they could verify that shad /herring,etc were present. The state people understand how bad this could be for the kokes. The state did many years ago introduce mysid shrimp in several lakes including Nantahala, thankfully the shrimp did not take. Hopefully if there are herring or whatever in Nanty they will die out and the kokes will recover.

 

[rgarbar]

bluebacks

Mark
I did some research and found some more discouraging news about bluebacks. When established the blueback herring is almost impossible to eliminate in a deep lake like Nantahala. The blueback spawn in the mid to upper 70 degrees. The surface temperatures of Nantahala easily reach those temperatures in the warmer months(unlike Cheoah or Calderwood who's surface temperatures are in the 60's at best in the warmer months). When the bluebacks reach 6 to 7 inches they begin to eat the fry of native fish. The blueback can reach up to 16 inches in size.

 

[Inthebox30lbs]

If they are Bluebacks there easy to catch in the summer, go out at night with a light and a castnet. There not that hard to get
scott

 

[trollmonkey]

They're there

Well some moron did put bluebacks in Nantahala. Heard from Amanda at NCWRC ,she confirmed they are present in the lake. Wonder how many other Koke fisheries have had this happen and how it worked out. I have high hopes since our kokes have held on for over 50 years.

 

[rgarbar]

Kokanee RIP

Sorry to hear that. It looks like the premier kokanee lake in the east is doomed as the herring will compete with the kokanee for the lakes plankton. The bluebacks will have a negative effect on the walleye and yellow perch as well. Every thing now fits into place. Last years smaller and fewer kokes, large bait balls, bigger brown trout and smaller walleye.

 

[Dr. Oc]

Terrible news. Hope the kokes can survive. It would be a real shame to lose NC's most unique fishery. Let me know what you see this spring and summer. Our family will be back up there in mid-June. (never been so early before). Hope to y'all up there at some point.

 

[smokysteelhead]

Sad to hear this.

Only so much food.

 

[rgarbar]

Reply from NC fish and wildlife/blueback herring

Well here is the response we have been waiting for from NC fish and wildlife

Mr. Lillie,

We are very concerned about how blueback herring may affect the Kokanee Salmon population. It seems likely that they will be detrimental to the salmon, but we’re not sure yet.

At the current moment, we’re working on a plan to keep an eye on the salmon population. This may involve the use of gillnetting to collect Kokanees and using a sophisticated sonar unit to count the salmon as they run up the Nantahala on their fall spawning run.

We’ve been in contact with other states about Kokanee management, unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve found a similar instance of an Alosid (Blueback Herring, Alewife, and other similar species) invading a konanee reservoir.

The Kokanee Fishery is important to us and we’ve discussed a few options, but at this point, our first objective is to get our fingers firmly on the pulse of how that fishery may be changing and then we’ll use that information to guide our decision making.

Thanks for your e-mail and please stay in touch,

Powell

 

[Dr. Oc]

The herring are definitely there. We just finished our week up on the lake. We marked a few schools here and there in all sections of the lake, the fewest in the Choga arm. Most were suspended 15-40ft down but we did catch a dozen or so in the cast net from a school that was hanging around the dock. Don't know if the herring had any effect on our success but we had the poorest fishing on the lake we've ever had. Tropical Storm Cindy didn't help matters as it rained 5 of our 7 days and we had more wind than usual. Surface water temp. fell 4.5 degrees during the week as well. We failed to catch a single salmon in 4 attempts nor did I mark anything that I thought was one. This is the 1st time that I've ever gotten skunked. Our previous low was 3. We broke the lake into 4 sections and fished each one separately and thoroughly in an attempt to locate them. Tried 3 scents, 5 colors and at least 5 different dodger/lure setups. Fished from 30 to 75 ft and varied speeds from 1.2-1.9mph. In short, we tried everything. Caught 4 walleye and a rainbow but no kokes. Very disappointed to say the least. Even the perch & smallmouth fishing was the poorest we've ever experienced. This lake has always been a challenge but never terrible. To break the monotony we fished 2 other lakes ( Hiawasee & Fontana) and caught lots of smallmouths and spotted bass. Caught 2 brookies, 2 browns & 1 rainbow in less than an hr. in the Nantahala R. as well so we know the storm didn't shut things off in the other bodies of water nearby.

 

[Inthebox30lbs]

Well that's about as discouraging as my last trip. As a matter of fact I just cancelled reservations to stay at nantahala in Andrews no. We're heading to watauga instead for two days. I hope the weather stabilizes and the bite picks up on nantahala