Kensico water supply source

[biggamee]

Hey everybody take a look at this..http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/maplevels_wide.shtml
Kensico is getting its water from Askokan?? I wonder how much fish funnel down??

[KenH]

A few fish invariably do get washed down. And they're probably pretty hungry
when they get to Kensico because they haven't been feeding for a few days.
Of course there's no way to prove this, but we have a member who caught a
Rainbow trout in Kensico of a decent size in Spring that I am sure came down the
pipe from Ashokan. That is was a Rainbow was confirmed as it was full of roe and
Rainbows are the only spring spawning trout. If it was smaller I would have considered
the possibility that it was accidentally mixed in with the annual Brown trout stockings.

Ken

[biggamee]

Well what I'd like to be surprised with is a walleye or a rainbow.. I think Askokan has walleyes..One funneled in to Croton falls and weigh in I think 12lbs!!!! Bob's is having the fish at the taxidermist.

[Batroun]

It leads me to contemplate that Kensico could stand a bit more diversity, be that walleye or a program to stock rainbows or Any suggestions? (Wonder if landlocked salmon, for example, would drive out other trout species or if there is room in there for them all without one species eating everything.) I'd like to see the feedback on this topic.

[biggamee]

The lakers dominate..unless the walleyes and or rainbows are introduced as 2-3 year old fish..but then again the lakers are naturally reproducing at this point at Kensico..So we will see in 5 to 10 years from now how the lake maintains..12lb walleye at Croton falls what are the odds on that?? 1 out of billions??? The guy should go play lotto!!!!Any way that's my thought..

[KenH]

I agree that Kensico could take some more diversity. Kensico is literally dominated by two species
Lakers and SMB. I wrote to DEC Region 3 about putting Kensico on their Landlocked Salmon program
but they told me that the abundance and natural reproduction of Lakers pretty much makes that impossible. Rainbows used to be stocked in Kensico but they failed. This year, I think maybe for the first time DEC stocked close to 10,000 Browns and zero lakers. They had been stocking about 1000 mostly
fin clipped for monitoring purposes. I'm pretty much resigned to accepting that I should be happy and grateful if they can improve the Brown population. The SMB are so abundant that I stopped using live (read expesive) bait cause they just keep killing them. And most of us, and I admit to being guiilty most of the time as well, don't do anything to thin out their population since we just throw them back. It would really be nice to see a warm water alternative such as Walleyes put into Kensico. Even panfish is limited to sunfish and yellow perch and Kensico doesn't have the Crappies and White Perch that the reservoirs just above it do.

Ken

[KenH]

Oh as an afterthought - I remembered that New Jersey had done well with
their Hybrid Striped Bass program in their larger lakes and impoundments.
That would also be a fantastic addition to Kensico's warm water fishery.

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/arthybridbass05.htm

They already exist in NY and in fact the NY State record Hybrid Bass was caught
on a sawbelly in Lake Waccabuc, which I belive is not far from Cross River/Titicus
reservoirs. It may be a private lake not open to public fishing though.

http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/7935.html

Ken
 

[biggamee]

Ken,
       So should we all just harvest smb?? To make the ones that don't get harvested to grow?? From what I've heard Kensico was one of the last reservoirs to get sawbellies, thus the schools of them aren't as big as in other reservoirs??? In the 60's and 70's browns were introduced into the Great lakes to reduce the amounts of sawbellies..I think this is how they figure out brown trout stockings to reservoirs ratio??Guys that I've spoken to told me that 15lb to 20lb browns were in Kensico in the 70's..I guess we haven't got to them lately, too elusive to catch..or they are just not growing that big because there competing for food so much??

[KenH]

Perhaps yes. Although I'm sure not setting any good example myself. The DEC sets size and limit regulations  based on a study of the population and includes an assumption that a certain number of the species, within the legal size and up to the maximum number are going to get harvested. The two conditions that would throw the DEC biologist's planning out the windows are; (1) if everyone harvested undersized fish and/or kept more than the legal number with complete disregard to the DEC regulations. And (2) if everyone released every fish they catch with complete disregard for the DEC regulations. In both cases you are eventually going to end up with some kind of population inbalance that wasn't in the DEC's plan. I suggest that with SMB hardly ever being removed that's going to have an effect on the food resources and habitat, and will eventually affect other species.
I've also heard of the monstrous sized Browns that use to come out of Kensio decades ago. From what I understand, the unexptected proliferation of Lakers is what caused the decline in the numbers of Browns, down to what it is today.  The DEC says that stocked browns are prey for the larger Lakers. But clearly the competition for food from a species that naturally reproduces in Kensico would be huge.

Ken   

[jimmy1]

The used to stock Ashokan with walleye but they didn't take. The sawbellies seemingly are the problem. Walleye eggs rise to the surface to hatch. Just fodder for sawbellies.

[Batroun]

I very much like the idea of Hybrid Stripers in Kensico. Now that would be amazing.