Whae are chinnies stocked??

[bucktail]

Wondering when chinooks are usually stocked in Lake O

 

Was out today and when clearing lines discovered a 6 inch chinook on my line, let go all healthy. ( pics to follow LOL )

 

That is the smallest salmon I have ever caught, also no fin clips or marks.

 

Could this be a natural reproducing chinook, there is supposed to be a small percentage that are in Lake O???

[craigdritchie]

Chinooks are normally stocked in April as tiny wee things, so the six-incher you caught would have been from this spring's stocking and, in turn, raised from eggs collected last fall.

 

Contrary to popular belief, hatchery chinook are seldom fin clipped or tagged, partly due to the expense, moreso due to the greatly increased risk of injury/mortality from the extra handling (chinook are much smaller than coho or rainbows at the time of stocking). That being the case, you can not tell whether a given fish is wild or not based on it simply having all its fins.

 

There are some naturalized chinook in Lake Ontario. The number of them varies from year to year, and depends on who you ask, since everyone seems to have an opinion on this. You hear people throw around figures of anywhere from 10 percent to 90 percent of the fish being wild, but the truth is, no one really knows. The actual percentage of wild fish is probably more than we think, and likely less than we hope.

[Roy]

Thanks Craig for adding your words of wisdom.

[John Bacon]

Chinooks are normally stocked in April as tiny wee things, so the six-incher you caught would have been from this spring's stocking and, in turn, raised from eggs collected last fall.

 

Contrary to popular belief, hatchery chinook are seldom fin clipped or tagged, partly due to the expense, moreso due to the greatly increased risk of injury/mortality from the extra handling (chinook are much smaller than coho or rainbows at the time of stocking). That being the case, you can not tell whether a given fish is wild or not based on it simply having all its fins.

 

There are some naturalized chinook in Lake Ontario. The number of them varies from year to year, and depends on who you ask, since everyone seems to have an opinion on this. You hear people throw around figures of anywhere from 10 percent to 90 percent of the fish being wild, but the truth is, no one really knows. The actual percentage of wild fish is probably more than we think, and likely less than we hope.

 

Actually, starting with 2008 stocking (from the 2007 egg collection), all chinook salmon stocked in Lake Ontario have their adipose fin clipped. The adipose fin is the small fin located on top of their body slightly in fron of their tail.

 

Most of clipping is done automatically by machine loaned from NY state. Pen reared salmon are hand clipped because they are stocked before the clipping trailer from NY gets here.

[John Bacon]

Wondering when chinooks are usually stocked in Lake O

 

Was out today and when clearing lines discovered a 6 inch chinook on my line, let go all healthy. ( pics to follow LOL )

 

That is the smallest salmon I have ever caught, also no fin clips or marks.

 

Could this be a natural reproducing chinook, there is supposed to be a small percentage that are in Lake O???

 

There are many stocking sites scattered along the Canadian shore line of Lake Ontario. The US also stock them, I am not sure where their stocking sites are. Since all chinooks stocking in the lake in 2008 and 2009 were clipped, I would say that yours was almost cetainly a non-hatchery fish.

[chinookhunter]

probably wild

[siwash]

There are lots of wild chinnies in the lake... they've adapted very well to lake Ontario

 

and from what I;ve heard they can be distinguished from stocked fish via scale samples..and now that the adipose is clipped it ill be even easier...