[Mike]

This is perhaps one more example of the effects of aeresol spary
operation aka Chemtrails.
It is not unlike the thousands of croaker fish that were found all
along the East Coast, bleeding from their gills and found dead and
floating.

Bridget
http://www.syracuse.com/sports/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/sports-
0/113178821719220.xml&coll=1
http://tinyurl.com/cpcx8
Mystery wounds hit bass in Seneca River
Sunday, November 13, 2005
J. MICHAEL KELLY
OUTDOORS WRITER

Some of the hefty smallmouth bass that populate the deep pools in
the Seneca River are sporting ugly wounds, and the Department of
Environmental Conservation wants to know why. State fisheries
biologists are waiting to hear what Cornell University experts
conclude about the subject.

The mystery first unfolded a couple of weeks ago, when local anglers
began to notice open sores on the flanks of some of the bass they
were catching in the river.

Mike Cusano of Clay, the outgoing president of the Salt City
Bassmasters club, emailed DEC Region 7 Fisheries Manager Dan Bishop
after he boated a disconcerting number of smallmouths that had the
unusual wounds.

In a two-day period, Cusano landed 46 smallmouths, 14 of which bore
the reddish, cratered lesions. His first thought was that the sores
looked somewhat like those resulting from sea lamprey attacks.
Cusano attached a couple of photos to his message. When he looked
them over, Bishop was inclined to rule out lampreys. Instead, he
suspected a bacterial infection had caused the nickel- and quarter-
size wounds. Specifically, he was thinking of an organism called
Flavobacterium columnare, which was recently cited in a widespread
outbreak of similar lesions in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna and Little
Juniata rivers.

At Bishop’s request, Cusano kept several of the disfigured bass the
next time he fished, and the DEC in turn forwarded the specimens to
Cornell.

The plot thickened when Cornell fish pathologist Dr. Paul Bowser
examined the samples. He informed Bishop that columnaris bacteria
were present in the wounds, but not in great numbers. Other kinds of
bacteria and parasites common to a riverine environment were also
evident, prompting Bowser to suggest that the bass may have been
vulnerable to a variety of pathogens because they were stressed or
weakened for some unknown reason.

Many of the smallmouths are in the 3- to 4-pound range and all of
them, even the wounded ones, are putting up a characteristically
strong fight on their way to the net.

Stay tuned for the scientists’ ultimate conclusion, but meanwhile
don’t hesitate to try a little fall fishing on the lower Seneca or
connected waters. Cusano is not the only angler who has been
catching and releasing plenty of bronzebacks lately.