Small mouth bass in New York state – 11/14/2005

  • November 22, 2013 at 11:40 pm #1084
    Mike
    Keymaster

    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.

     

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