Congaree Stripers Extinct?

[Claimer]

If they ran the cooper from feb 10 to april 10 the rockfish would be greatly improved. This would allow the herring to go up the cooper and not the santee. We DO have a population of ocean and lower river striper. How do you think they got in the lake to start with. The rediversion water flow is pulling the herring up and then they cut it off , not just cut it down , I mean off. The herring then go out into the woods because there is flow there and spawn , this kills all the eggs and the adults just go back oceanside. Overfishing can't possibly be the problem. When I was a kid 30 yrs ago there were 20 times the amount of striper fishermen. The tailrace was full of boats all spring. The lakeside was a parking lot all spring and summer. There were herring on the lakeside for months after the spring run. The locks were only cycled when a boat needed through. Just ask the bios why they have to travel all over the state to get brood stock now. Years ago they got all they needed at pinopolis. The problem is the bios and santee cooper and the corps has screwed the rockfish and since they spent sooooooo much money on the fishlift they won't admit defeat. I worked at the fish lift when it was built and we rarly saw a herring or striper. Just gizzard shad and that was when there were tons of fish on the rediversion. All they have to do is swallow some pride and try the spring water flow down the cooper.

[JABIII]

So let's start the Upper Santee Talley...

White Bass- Gone
Ducks- Gone
Rockfish- Gone

[Stripa Swipa]

Originally posted by JABIII:
So let's start the Upper Santee Talley...

White Bass- Gone
Ducks- Gone
Rockfish- Gone

People with such conviction that they are blind to the truth......flourishing.

Claimer. I appreciate those thoughts. An adequate response will take more than the couple of minutes I have now but I'll address those points soon. Thanks.

[jwilliams]

I wonder what Murray is doing w/ the stripers that is so successful that santee cooper isn't? For the past few years I have been catching Anacondas over there....unbelievable how good it has been. I quit calling SC my home lake last year. Now, it is Murray.....

[Moatsy]

Hydrilla... the good times will be over soon. The cormorants have been here for 2 years so that means one more good year of fishing on Murray.

[Claimer]

After reading my post I sounded mad. I'm not mad just sad. I didn't mention that we could go down the river ANY day and find schooling rocks. Under the right conditions of course. The cooper river is the key. Please just try it.

[DRDUCK]

Yea Trapper, what up with the comorants? Didn't use to see um this time of year. Every afternoon we see 100's of them going back down the lake? They use to migrate. [img]graemlins/confused.gif[/img] Also saw some coots yesterday up the Bush. Reckon the lake being up this winter has something to do with it? Maybe they got enough food to keep them here.

[mirroman]

The Comorants are a modern day plague and need to be dealt with accordingly!!!!!

[jwilliams]

The cormorants won't damage murray like they did santee, because of the water depth...the fish have no where to hide on Santee...I do agree though, that fishing will fall off of a cliff at Murray in two more years.
Right now it is a freaking fish hatchin machine.
Too bad they are trying to decimate it like they did santee.

[Stripa Swipa]

Claimer,
Why don't we take this one point at the time. It sounds like you believe increased flows would pull ocean migrating fish up the rivers and better passage would allow the lakes and upper rivers access to those populations? Am I following you correctly?

[BOGSTER]

Originally posted by artdevilish:
The cormorants won't damage murray like they did santee, because of the water depth...the fish have no where to hide on Santee...

Art, comorants have been recorded at depths of 275ft.
Santee's depth just made it easier for the birds to get the fish.
and the lack of grass leaves a clean bottom resulting in NO WHERE for the fish to hide.
Bet your bottom dollar, the birds WILL do the same thing to Murray as they did Santee.
As posted: Comorants NEED to be delt with.
I am by no means saying slaughter the bird's in mass numbers, but 16,000 just on the SNWR, come on, that place is minute compared to the rest of the lake.
Go watch em by the thousands ravage baitfish at marker 47 next winter.

[Claimer]

The flow brings the herring and eels and the striper follow. I think the striper have been studied to death,literally. I know what I see. When the cooper flowed we had more striper and other fish than ever. Now that we rely on the fish lift we have seen a marked decline every year. Does anyone else remember the millions of herring at pinopolis dam every year, They still exist they just don't go up the cooper and they don't get through the fish lift. The lift ,on it's best day, can't handle the surge of migrating fish . If they don't make it when they need to they just spawn where they can and go oceanside. We did a great injustice to the lakes when we counted on an unproven method and now we won't admit defeat. Pride is a sin.

[JABIII]

"I know what I see." [img]graemlins/thumb2.gif[/img]

And I know what I DON'T see.

And I know what the Packs have seen for generations.

What I don't know is what, if anything, is being done about it.

Here we are supposed to bow to the "scientific community" simply because they say so?

The scientific community is also trying to tell us that man is causing global warming.

The best ornithilogists in the scientific community are trying to get us to believe that the Ivory Billed Woodpecker is suddenly not extinct when we know good and well it just isn't fucking so.

Excuse me while I cough and shake my head at the blind faith even as yet another of our natural resources disappears...

[Stripa Swipa]

Originally posted by Claimer:
The flow brings the herring and eels and the striper follow.

OK. The stripers that followed, where did they come from?

[Stripa Swipa]

Originally posted by JABIII:
"I know what I see." [img]graemlins/thumb2.gif[/img]

And I know what I DON'T see.

And I know what the Packs have seen for generations.

What I don't know is what, if anything, is being done about it.

Here we are supposed to bow to the "scientific community" simply because they say so?

The scientific community is also trying to tell us that man is causing global warming.

The best ornithilogists in the scientific community are trying to get us to believe that the Ivory Billed Woodpecker is suddenly not extinct when we know good and well it just isn't fucking so.

Excuse me while I cough and shake my head at the blind faith even as yet another of our natural resources disappears...

That was beneath you. Feel free to take a mulligan and get back in play.

[Claimer]

stripa, they come from the salty side of the river AND from the ocean. Why do you think they outlawed shad netting oceanside. Thier excuse was because it killed tooooo many ocean striper. You can't have it both ways. Either they live in the ocean or they don't. I have personally caught striper on oyster rocks with the current ripping around them. I caught these while Big drum fishing. They wern't anywhere close to a river by the way. By the way has anyone addressed why there aren't the runs of glass eels anymore.

[Claimer]

I forgot. What do you think should be done ?

[Stripa Swipa]

Claimer, thanks for sticking with me. We're going to make something out of this discussion. The history behind shad net regulations I'm not well versed in. I've asked a lot of questions about the impact of shad nets and have been told by several sources within DNR that studies on their impact on riverine striper populations haven't been done in atleast 20 years and therefore their opinions would only be speculation on inadequate information. If you are correct, I agree, that doesn't add up. Just keep in mind, that politicians write the regs and they often don't reflect a local wildlife manager's position. Also, could have been an issue with federal involvement. I'll try to look into this soon.

As for catching striped bass in salty waters, I can give you several accounts that mirror yours. This is where I'll challenge you to look beyond your own experience, though, for a larger and clearer view. There isn't even any debate about the nature of southern striped bass. They, for the most part, migrate up and down their river of birth. It's isn't hard to find volumes of information on this and it isn't all from the "scientific community." Also, using your logic based on fishing experience.....think about beach fishermen from the Outer Banks to Maine. They see and catch the ever lovin snot out of striped bass. If they were truly migrating this far south via the ocean, don't you think they would be more obvious and vulnerable to shore fishermen here? I personally have never heard of any beach catches around here, but like you, know of a few that were darn close. Anomolies are normal, though. I've caught freshwater catfish on my favorite redfish flats just a mile from Charleston Harbor.

The belief that the Santee system was once used by migratory ocean populations and not just a single riverine population provides validity to the theory that rediversion is the root cause of our problem. If you and Pack and many many others can't get beyond that, what I want done and what our fisheries managers are proposing is not worth another keystroke on SCDucks. Nothing personal, but it's about that simple.

On a side note...
I was passing through Jacksonboro this morning and stopped for gas. I noticed a few boys in green pulling a stocking boat and me being me, had to engage them in some Q and A. I figured they must be stocking reds but they informed me they were out to catch some cobia brood fish. Hmmmmmmmmm. I quickly remembered my time on the gulf coast and getting to know Mr. Franks out of U of Southern Mississippi. He started the research on cobia and the aqualculture techniques we are apparently building on here in SC. Listening to his presentations and helping him collect carcuses at tournaments and what not is kind of what got me interested in some of this stuff. At this point, realizing they were marine division guys, I had to ask about the status of the Ashley River Striper project. They were kind of enough to share some good tidbits on how that's going as well. I thanked them for their time and headed back to the car. I did hope they didn't notice my guilty smirk as I walked away, though. Ya know, I just didn't have the heart to tell them that all those fish they released in the Ashley are gonna swim out into the ocean soon, never to return. Oh yeah, and that there was prolly some old boy that has lived on the Broad River all his life and could tell them whatever they needed to know about cobia spawning and migration. Heck, he could prolly save them from screwing up another great SC fishery for that matter.

[jwilliams]

Bogstew...You and I agree on the cormorants...You can go back to over five years ago on this site and see that I am a big proponent of "mass slaughter" of cormorants....I have sat at the rediversion canal and seen them fly in a line that didn't end for hours...I SEE the trees that they destroy. I have called DNR several times over the years Trying to encourage US taking action like OTHER states have...It still won't be as easy for the comorants to blow up the small fry and bait fish like it is in santee and moultrie....I have seen the cormorants herd up small bait fish and frye like cattle and eat them by the bucket fulls until it makes you want to vomit. They are a locust.

[mirroman]

Originally posted by Claimer:
I forgot. What do you think should be done ?

[img]graemlins/confused.gif[/img]