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Grey County Forest Advisory
: Blake Smith
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Grey County Forest Stewartship:
John Ford
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North Grey/Sauble C.A. Forest
Advisory: Blake Smith
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North Grey/Sauble C.A. Arboretum:
Blake Smith
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Rankin Resource Group: John
Ford, Blake Smith
The Committee agreed
to two projects, approved by the Executive January 17th:
1/ Planting/Maintenance
on the Demonstration Management Area, the Kelly Mothersell Tract and the
Walker Property. Doug Murdoch and I will divide this up. Gord Maher and
the Juniors will look after the Praire plantings.
2/ Planting the Reid Tract
will be looked after by John Bittorf. this is a new project and is designed
to a/ provide Wildlife cover/nurse crop and b/ make a small intermittent
feeder stream to the Sydenham River run year round.
The Club Executive elected
Doug Murdoch and myself to Co-chair the Committee. If you have any questions
about the Committee, ask Doug. Jim Weir retains the position of Recording
Secretary.
The Wildlife Committee, through
Club Executive approval, has changed its name to formally recognize its
expanded duties. It will now be known as the Forestry and Wildlife Advisory
Committee (FWAC). Also, the Committee did away with the standing committee
on Big Game and absorbed it into the FWAC. This merely recognizes what
we have been doing all along.
For those who maybe interested,
there will be two Wild Turkey Seminars in Owen Sound on March 16 and 17th.
Specific locations have not yet been announced.
The next FWAC meeting: March
3rd, 1:00 PM at the Wildlife Centre.
Blake Smith, Co-chair
Forestry and Wildlife Advisory Committee
The SSA fisheries
members continue with their efforts to have our permits to take water and
treat water renewed with the Ministry of the Environment. Most recently,
on Jan. 10th., Coy Currie and I met with MOE staff and Henderson, Paddon
& Associates to get the process finalized. MOE strongly suggested that
we have a consultant represent the SSA hence Henderson, Paddon personnel
at the meeting.
Without delay the SSA must
come up with an interim plan and submit it to MOE. Therefore, immediately
starting on Jan. 21, sampling will be performed biweekly by a representative
of Henderson Paddon, not SSA members, to determine effluent quality upstream
and downstream of the SSA hatchery. These samples will be sent to Areco
Canada Inc. laboratories for analysis. Additionally, flow rates through
the facilities will be measured each time sampling is performed so calculations
on total effluent flows from each portion of our hatchery can be determined.
Also efforts will be made to measure the total stream flow of Weaver's
Creek at our intake dam. Finally, samples and depth of the sludge in the
two existing septic tanks and the kidney pond will be collected for solids
and nutrient content.
Following this and by May
1st., 2002, the SSA must come up with a long term plan to improve effluent
treatment at our hatchery site. Amazingly we started this renewal of permits
for the SSA hatchery back in 1995. It sat rather dormant until 1999-2000,
then after much letter writing back and forth and renewed permit applications
being applied for, and payments of several hundreds of dollars, we're at
this point. Hopefully in the coming year we will be able to comply to their
requests and have our permits issued. There is one area of our existing
hatchery system that MOE has stated that must be changed as part of our
long range improvement plan, and that is to make our three discharge points
into Weaver's Creek into one discharge point.
In the next few weeks the
SSA fisheries advisory committee will be formed for 2002. Old committee
members will be asked if they wish to volunteer again, and any new members
from the SSA membership are most welcome. This year Terry Faulkner is joining
the FAC as co-chair. In the future months ahead Terry will be working on
SSA fisheries tasks, giving fisheries reports to you the SSA members, and
reporting to the SSA executive. I'll still be much involved with the FAC
but more as a back-up role. I'm really looking forward to working with
Terry as we attempt to provide guidance for the wide variety of SSA fisheries
tasks in the coming year. Coy Currie has agreed to again be SSA hatchery
chairman for 2002.
If any SSA members have an
idea for a fisheries project or wish to help out with the FAC, give me
a call at 376-2369, or Terry at 372-9498, or for the SSA hatchery, Coy
at 376-2942.
Many of our SSA members ice
fish on Lake Simcoe each winter, so I'd like to share some research the
Lake Simcoe Fisheries Assessment Unit did on lake trout and whitefish in
2001. They completed a bottom trawling and gillnetting study last year
to assess the available forage and observe stomach contents in lakers and
whitefish. The bottom trawling at six sites resulted in 26 rainbow smelt,
1368 spoonhead sculpin and 2 unidentified young of the year. Large mesh
gillnetting resulted in 47 lake trout and 16 whitefish. Small mesh gillnets
caught 249 rainbow smelt, 1 yellow perch, 1 lake herring, 1 whitefish,
and 5 adult lake trout caught by their teeth.
The Lake Simcoe lake trout
stomach contents showed that 37 had contents and 15 were empty. In terms
of mean numbers per stomach, these lakers contained .8 rainbow smelt, .3
were sculpin, and .3 were various invertebrates, 1.5 was unidentified fish
matter which 18 out of the 54 unidentified fish had the appearance of smelt
and 6 appeared to be sculpin.
The mean number per stomach
contents of the Lake Simcoe whitefish showed 5.2 were zebra mussels, 20.7
were clams, 2.8 were chiromomid larva, and .2 was unidentified fish.
In addition to making conclusions
as to what kind of bait you'll end up trying this year on Lake Simcoe,
some other important observations can be made from this study. One is that
the rainbow smelt and lake herring populations have again declined considerably
since the mid 1990's, and secondly, spoonhead sculpin populations have
mushroomed, considering they were first recorded in Lake Simcoe in 1991.
This study also suggests that lake trout are now beginning to consume sculpin,
but it is unknown to what extent sculpin can replace rainbow smelt and
lake herring as their food source.
For the Lake Simcoe lake
whitefish, you will notice that their diet consists mainly of molluscs,
invertebrates and fish, but now also they are eating good numbers of zebra
mussels. I'm not sure how I'm going to put these nasty buggers on a hook,
and I can't help but wonder how much food value the whitefish are getting
from all the clam and zebra mussel shells!
Fred Geberdt, Co-chair
Fisheries Advisory Committee
