  Trout Lake has excellent lake trout habitat yet the angling season for lake trout is closed. Over 100,000 lake trout (fingerlings and one year olds) were stocked in Trout Lake from 1980 to 1990, yet today regulations prohibit angling for lake trout. How come? To understand this we have to turn the clock back in time a little. A few generations ago the Trout Lake area was lumbered for its magnificient pine. In order to feed the men an abundant, easily acquired and inexpensive supply of protein needed to be found. The lake trout inhabiting Trout Lake were targeted. Gill nets were placed on their spawning beds and the resource was plundered . . . well that's the way we tend to look at it today. At the time, they considered nature to be theirs for the taking and boundless. Yesterday they called it survival, today we would call it plunder. How times have changed! In any event, with the great pines went the lake trout population. In the early 1900's, as the area's population grew and lumbering waned, the tourism industry appeared. Many of the inland lakes offered incredible catches of pike, walleye and even muskellunge. With the appearance of the motor car these fabulous resources attracted American anglers and hunters, and profits were to be made harvesting our fish and wildlife. North Bay, with the coming of the railroad, became a staging area for many of these trips, and angling for lake trout remained popular. In 1935, Atlantic Salmon (ouananiche) were added to Trout Lake and they became Ontario's only naturally reproducing population! With much publicity and little enforcement, lake trout and ouananiche continued to be harvested when they were most vulnerable - during their spawning runs. People alive today remember their fathers heading to Four Mile Creek with their spears to harvest the spawning salmon in the river. The lake trout spawning beds near Camp Island fared no better. All of this contributed to depressing lake trout and salmon to artificially low levels. By the 1970's Ontario's lake trout hatchery program was getting into high gear. Lake trout populations had been overharvested across the province and this was to be a quick fix. In 1980 it was decided that Trout Lake, with its execllent, cold, oxygen rich waters, should be able to produce a lot more fish than what anglers seemed to be catching. An aggressive stocking program was therefore undertaken. During the next decade, over 100 000 small lake trout were added to Trout Lake. The stocking program came to an end in 1990 and in 1991 the lake trout season was closed. How come?
In 1988, students from Ecole Secondaire Algonquin's science program started monitoring the lake trout spawning run as part of their extended science program. They were shocked with what they found. So was the Ministry of Natural Resources when they were brought out to the spawning beds to see for themselves. On the spawning beds, only a few very large spawning fish remained. Where were the mid-sized and small spawners? Gone! . . . angled! You see no one had thought to consider that perhaps the lake trout that were being stocked into Trout Lake would not spawn. Not coming from Trout Lake, they were content to compete for available resources and live out their lives without ever spawning. Their presence in the lake attracted anglers by the hundreds. Ice huts peppered the lake like snow fleas on the snow. Each year the lake trout population was overharvested. Native lake trout, the spawners, were disappearing. Stocked lake trout were therefore added yearly to replenish the loss and maintain the harvest at an artificially high level. By 1988, the spawners had almost disappeared and it was anybody's guess whether or not enough native lake trout remained to recover. Given the 25 year or so average lifespan of lake trout, it was obvious that these very old fish were on their last legs and that, when they died, so would end the natural reproduction of lake trout in Trout Lake. After an aggressive public education program to inform the public about the plight of the lake trout, in 1991 the lake trout angling season was closed. It remains closed to this day. The Ministry of Natural Resoures, in conjunction with the Trout Lake Conservation Association and the community has been monitoring the recovery through a dynamic fisheries research program. |
Lake trout spawn in the fall. In Trout Lake, recent lake trout research shows that the spawning run starts in late October and continues to about the second week of November. Various factors influence both the time at which the spawning run starts and the intensity of the spawning activity. Research conducted by brothers Marc-André‚ and Jean-Michel Filion has found that in Trout Lake, spawning starts when the temperature dips below 10 C. Calm moonless nights are periods of high activity. Conversely, wind action and moonlight reduce spawning activity significantly. Finally, in Trout Lake, during the spawning run, some spawning activity takes place all day long with peak acitivity occurring during the night. Nightime activity is split almost equally between the pre-midnight period and the post-midnight time period. Come sunrise, most fish leave the spawning beds. Multi layered rock rubble (5 to 7 cm dia.) appears to be favoured by lake trout. Spawning depths are usually confined to less than 2 meters in Trout Lake. Shoals that are interspersed with large stones seem to fare better than those where the rubble is of one size only. Actual mating takes place in groups with more than one male usually swimming in close contact with the female. Eggs are deposited "on the swim", with the group usually swimming in tight circles around rubble patches of appropriate size. Eggs fall into the rock crevasses where they are forced to overwinter. The eggs are large, measuring some 5 to 6 mm in diameter. Large females can easily deposit 10,000 eggs. Lake trout have a homing extinct and return to the same spawning area year after year. In Trout Lake, the only know lake trout spawning areas are the north and south Camp Island shoals. Historical evidence points to the existence of other spawning areas that are not used today. It is thought that lake trout spawn in "social classes", and Trout Lake has probably lost most of its other social classes through overharvesting. Incubation lasts 4 to 5 months usually, and hatching occurs in the month of March or April. In Trout Lake, ice cover remains in place until the last week of April or the first week of May. After hatching, the larval lake trout possess a very large yolk sac and are too heavy to swim. They remain in the rubble until the second week of May approximately, at which time they swim to the surface, take a breath of air to adjust their bouyancy and then head off to unknown reaches of the lake. Little is known about the biology of lake trout during their first year of life. Lake trout only reach sexual maturity at age 7. In Great Bear lake, sexual maturity is only reached at age 13! Maturing this late makes lake trout quite vulnerable to overharvesting. This, combined with slow growth rates, makes the management of the lake trout population a must in a highly fished environment such as Trout Lake. Rebuilding a lake trout population takes a very long time. In Trout Lake the angling season for lake trout was closed in 1991. The few remaining fish will have laid tens of thousands of eggs, of which only a few will reach sexual maturity, some seven years later! Given that lake trout are indicative of the health of the Trout Lake ecosystem, and given that Trout Lake is the sole water supply for the City of North Bay, it has been decided that Trout Lake will be managed for the natural reproduction of lake trout. Spawning bed rehabilitation work, an end to the stocking program, season closure and strict enforcement are managment tactics presently being used to try and help the native lake trout make a come-back in Trout Lake. |
 |
|
 |