Anglers looking to hook a salmon, in any number of Adirondack lakes, have probably been coming home empty-handed more often than they'd like to admit lately.
The fishermen's bad luck isn't because the fish are wise to their tricks.
The type of landlocked salmon the state stocks in local lakes, called the Little Clear, isn't surviving like it should.
So the state has started raising another strain of salmon --the Sebago -- at its Adirondack Fish Hatchery in Saranac Lake. The hope is that the Sebago will prove hardier, and repopulate Adirondack lakes with stocked salmon.
Little Clear troubles
"What we're seeing, not just in places like Lake George, but in lakes across the state, is a declining performance of salmon," said Rich Preall, senior aquatic biologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. "It started in the late '90s and increased through this decade."
The root of the problem, scientists believe, lies in the Little Clear's DNA.
"The story is that, essentially, no new genetics have been added to that (Little Clear) population for 25 years," Preall said. "No new strains have been introduced.
"All the fish stocked in lakes have been either from our pond or the hatchery itself," he continued. "Increasingly, over the years, more fish have been coming from the hatchery than the pond."
The fish raised in the hatchery's runs are less wild than those raised in the hatchery's nearby pond, which is problematic, genetically speaking. Because wildness, as opposed to domesticity, is critical to survival once fish are released into lakes around the state.
"The pond is kind of a wild condition," Preall said. "The fish that live there are stocked, but they're feeding on natural foods -- not being hand-fed like in the hatchery."
The Sebago salmon, which are from Maine, don't have a background of being raised in hand-fed environments generation after generation. And they seem to have higher survival rates than their Little Clear counterparts.
Sebago study
In about 2000, Preall said, the DEC cooperated with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on a study in Lake Champlain in which three different strains of salmon -- Little Clear, Sebago and Memphremagog -- were stocked in equal numbers.
The Sebagos survived best.
"In Lake Champlain, survival up to age 2 of Sebagos is four to one over the other strains," he said.
But in Lake Champlain, Preall pointed out, few salmon live longer than two years.
By age 2, he said, the fish are big enough to become "sea lamprey food."
The sea lamprey is a parasitic animal that attaches itself to, and feeds off, many different kinds of fish.
Despite the trouble with lampreys, the study appears to indicate that Sebago salmon will thrive in a way Little Clear salmon haven't.
"It showed good younger survival, and that's what's needed for lakes like Lake George where there aren't any sea lamprey," Preall said. "The Sebago have better, wilder genes that have not been inbred, and they will have better survival instincts."
Anglers won't see these wilder fish this summer or next summer, however, because rearing and stocking a healthy Sebago population will take time.
Raising Sebago
Preall estimated it will take about five years to shift the state's salmon program from Little Clear to Sebago.
"In 2007, that was the first year we had Sebagos put into the hatchery pond," he said. "About 1,750 Sebagos went in and, at this point, there are about 3,000 in the hatchery."
The majority of the 3,000 Sebagos will get placed in the hatchery's pond, to mingle and mate with the Little Clears that live there.
"The Sebagos stocked in the pond last year, some of them will be ready to spawn as 3-year-olds," Preall said. "So, in two more years, we should have some Sebago males start crossing with Little Clear females.
"All salmon going out to lakes this year are still Little Clear, and that will also be the case next year," he added. "But then, in years after that, there should be more and more Sebago -- either pure or mixes."
Each year, Preall said, the Adirondack Fish Hatchery raises about 600,000 salmon. It's the only hatchery in the state that rears landlocked salmon.
When fishermen finally do start pulling the new strain from their favorite lakes, they probably won't notice a difference.
"Sebago look pretty much the same as Little Clear," said Ed Grant of the Adirondack Fish Hatchery. "To us, they look almost identical."
