ATLANTIC SALMON FISH CREEK CLUB

ANNUAL REPORT - 2003

It has indeed been my pleasure to serve the Atlantic Salmon Fish Creek Club as President for the past year. This has been a year of great accomplishments and activity for the Club that bodes well for the future of our Atlantic Salmon restoration work.

Several accomplishments stand out and are worthy of highlighting:

• The Club's sense of teamwork was especially notable this past year. The members accepted various challenges and came through always with flying colors. Of singular note was the collective effort of the team of members covering the Carpenter's Brook Hatchery project. Although the results were not as hoped, the lack of positive result was in no way related to a lack of effort on the part of all Club members who participated.
• Through the skilled efforts of our Secretary, Gene Carey, electronic communication between members was brought into play. This communication is essential to what we do and having the electronic capability has greatly improved the already great teamwork atmosphere.
• Our web site, recognized for its function and style, continues to grow and is our most important means of communicating with the world outside the Club. Again, through the work of Gene Carey, wearing a second hat as Club web master, we are receiving a small but steady stream of contacts that generate respect and appreciation for what we do. The Atlantic Salmon identification page of our web site is the number one page cited when the key words "Atlantic Salmon identification" are entered into the Google search engine. For this web site accomplishment alone, if for no others, we should feel quite proud.
• During this past Club year, we have been most fortunate in the number of "our" fish that have been caught in the Oneida Lake, the waters around the Fish Creek outlet and in Fish Creek itself. Thanks to the contribution of ESF Prof. Karin Limburg, we have clearly identified earlier fish as ones we have stocked in the Creek. This past year, several fish were taken through the ice in Oneida Lake and following ice-out, fish were caught further up the Creek as the spring and summer progressed.
• The number of public presentations made by various Club officers was significant this year. We continue to receive speaking invitations from such diverse organizations as TU chapters, Rotary Clubs, Oneida Lake watershed groups, private hunting and fishing clubs and others who are interested in hearing of our progress first hand. The reception at each of these presentations is always most positive and they have provided the Club with an opportunity to make new friends and new supporters of our efforts.
• One of our more significant accomplishments was the decision to proceed with the building of Adirondack Guideboats to raffle as a major fund raising project. While the first boat has yet to be built due to unforeseen delays in mold work, a number of our supporters have demonstrated their faith in us and the boat project by purchasing raffle tickets in advance of the actual boat construction.
• This report would not be complete if it did not mention and give credit to Lisa Shaver and her family of the Beaverkill Trout Hatchery. Once again they provided the Club with space and labor to raise this years fry from eyed eggs. We take this opportunity to recognize that without the unwavering help provided to the Club by the BTH it is unlikely that we would have made much progress in restoring Atlantic Salmon to the Fish Creek system.
• Non-member supporters of the Club continue to be an important component of our progress. George Kiskiel who welded our new boat mold cradle, Mike Winkleman who did the labor intensive job of refurbishing the mold, Kevin Kelsey of the Grand Isle (VT) hatchery who, at no cost, provided us with several thousand fry for stocking in addition to those which we raised, Dr. Tom Fallon for his generous donation, Milton Franson for his extremely generous donation of a portion of the proceeds from the sale of prints of his Atlantic Salmon painting, Fran Verdoliva for his ongoing encouragement and others too numerous to mention.

Despite these and other successes, the Club did experience a few set-backs that we also need to report:

1. The Club’s greatest set-back was the extreme mortality of the fish we attempted to raise at the Carpenters Brook Hatchery. Walt Ziele, hatchery manager, has been kind enough for the past two year to provide the Club with space to raise fry in addition to those we raise at the Beaverkill Trout Hatchery. Two years of effort have been expended in an attempt to make Carpenters Brook a means of increasing our output of fry. Unfortunately, for reasons we still cannot determine, the losses in eggs and fry at CBH are unacceptable to the Club and an unfortunate decision was made to cease our efforts at that facility. Barring the discovery and development of another hatchery facility, we are left with no option other than maximizing our capacity at the Beaverkill Hatchery. This would top out at approximately 40,000 eggs per year.
2. While we continue to receive angler reports of our fish being taken in various parts of the Fish Creek system, Club members have not been as successful in finding fish. We were unable to tag any fish this year despite some effort to do so.
3. Fish Creek experienced a number of days of low flow, high water temperatures on the order of 76 degrees F. In addition, the City of Rome DPW dredged silt from behind the Kessinger Dam in late summer depositing it below the dam to wash down stream. The effect on our fish from these events is unknown. Determining how to evaluate the effect and determining how to prevent in-stream mortality from these annual occurrences will be an important topic for the coming year.

In looking toward the coming year and beyond, the Club has a number of exciting challenges:

1. The first of these challenges is increasing the number of fry stocked in the Creek. Kevin Kelsey of the Grand Isle (VT) hatchery has indicated that if he has excess Atlantic Salmon fry available in the spring of 2004 he is willing to give those to us as he did this past spring. It is hoped that these fry will be the Sebago strain that we need for our conditions. Because the fish from the Grand Isle hatchery are excess to their needs, the availability is always tentative, depending on a number of factors out of our control. Clearly, we need additional facilities where we can hatch and raise fry from eggs we purchase ourselves. My personal dream has always been and continues to be the construction of our own Atlantic Salmon fry hatchery. We need to continue having discussions on this topic and to look for places where the right water conditions, with the right winter accessibility can be found for this facility to be built.
2. We have had three years of successful stocking events under our collective belts, we need to continue this record for the coming year and be prepared to plant as many fish as possible in the right places at the right time as always.
3. Everyone agrees that the Adirondack Guideboat project will yield us a sizable source of funds and as soon as the weather permits in the spring, we need to take up this project, get the first boat built as soon as possible to display for raffle ticket sales.
4. The change in DEC administration in the Watertown office has been noted at several of the Club meetings. We have enjoyed an excellent relationship with the previous fisheries manager, Al Schivone and we need to establish and maintain that kind of relationship with the new manager, Frank Flack.
5. Given the gradually increasing number of our fish that are being reported from anglers we can hope for even more fish to be seen in the Fish Creek system for the coming year. Club members will need to devote more of their own angling time to the Creek in the interest of taking scale samples and tagging fish for future documentation.

Finally, as a personal note, I would like express my heartfelt appreciation to each and every member of the Atlantic Salmon Fish Creek Club for your unwavering dedication to a goal that some straggling, unconverted naysayers believe is tilting at windmills. None of our successes, however success is defined, could have been possible without your hard, devoted efforts. Until this year, I never dreamed that I would live long enough to see an Atlantic Salmon return to Fish Creek, regardless from where. Now, that dream is rapidly growing closer to a reality the joy of which we will all be able to share.

Respectfully submitted,

Allen A. Fannin, President
Atlantic Salmon Fish Creek Club