I added a video,,,,,,,,,,, Fish decoy works!

RL--Why the hostility?

Chronic adipose fin disease? Don't smelts have an adipose fin, too?

I confess I eat goldeneyes. I guess this makes me--what, exactly?

I neither fish for nor eat pike. The two peaks for pike fishing here are right after ice out--a miserable time to open water fish, and one that conflicts with my spring trolling for lake trout and landlocked salmon--and ice fishing season, when I mostly target pickerel. (I do love a good pickerel feed.) Tip ups rigged for pickerel will hook pike, but not often land them, and I mostly target small ponds where pike (and other anglers) are rare. If I pike fished, I'd kill and eat them.

I guess I do talk about smelt and their impacts on native coldwater fish in Maine. I talk about it because here in Maine, declines in populations of landlocked Arctic charr, brook trout, and lake whitefish have repeatedly followed introduction of landlocked smelts, a pattern that has been well documented by Maine fisheries biologists for decades.

On the same page where you found Jeremiah Wood's whitefish report, you can find this one on landlocked charr and smelts:
https://www.maine.gov/ifw/docs/Bald Mountain Pond Conservation of Endemic Arctic Charr.pdf


And here is a popular article on a similar pattern on the brook trout pond that was a favorite for my dad and me:
http://newenglandboating.com/maines-thissell-pond-reclaimed-from-invasive-species/

As you note, there are examples where brook trout, charr, and lake whitefish persist after introduction of smelts, and a few where they originally co-existed with them. These tend to be larger and deeper lakes, but not always.

Lake whitefish declines in particular are a complicated situation. If you'd like to discuss your thoughts on Jeremiah Wood's report, you should contact him directly. You can find his contact info on the MDIFW's web page. He's in the Region G office in Ashland.
 
Jeff, it's good that you recognize the fact that rainbow smelt possess an adipose fin, I opted to leave that out since it would likely be construed as snarky.

You did, and continue, to imply that rainbow smelt are the sole culprit in these population declines in lake whitefish stocks in oligotrophic lakes in Maine, which by definition are low productivity systems to begin with, with the intrinsic productivity for each of these lentic systems further impaired (reduced) by two significant co-occurring factors not mentioned or acknowledged by you or the overview status report's author as, at minimum, covariates. What I advanced is that they are not likely the sole "driver" of these declines, given that background productivity in these lakes was far more markedly effected over the interval of decline, for a fish stock that relies on invertebrates as its principal food source. You also left-out any mention of landlocked Atlantic salmon plants as a potential impacting species as well in lake whitefish stock declines. They are piscivores...and do not survive and reproduce solely on sunshine and the love of God.

You now respond by listing a laundry list of salmonines that you advance that rainbow smelt are impacting. How does this have any bearing on the initial thesis that you stated- rainbow smelt are the sole driver of lake whitefish declines in endemic populations in Maine lakes? What absolves them from your scorn?

Based on your past posts reporting proudly tossing esocids when caught, and your disdainful summary statements on pike spearing, I conclude that you are the hostile party.
 
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