Written By - fishingbuddy.com - 09/27/2007
Link to Original Article here

Below the calm surface of the water floated three nets in Reunion Bay of Lake Sakakawea.

It is just one bay of more than 60 nets in the greater Lake Sakakawea water system, where supervisor Dave Fryda and other North Dakota Game and Fish Department employees pluck fish to count how many are surviving below.

Fryda said the fish in Lake Sakakawea are at an all-time low due to the low water levels.

In Reunion Bay, Fryda picks out fish and counts them with Missouri River biologist Russ Kinzler and fisheries seasonal worker Aaron Slominski.

The fall reproduction surveys are done every year, letting Fryda and others know how the fish spawned this spring.

"When fish are spawned in the spring and they have larvae, it takes until fall when they are big enough to catch in the nets," Fryda said. "This is kind of an index on how everything did."

The cold water component is not included in fall reproduction surveys, which look only at warm water species.

"We're in about the seventh year of drought and the low water is really starting to show on the fish and fishery," Fryda said. "Early in the drought, things held out pretty well, but we see signs now with things like spring rainbow smelt spawning. Our larval surveys, which estimate the number of young smelt, were the lowest we've seen since we've began tracking it."

The smelt spawn appear to have been poor due to low lake elevations, he said.

"We just don't have the good substrate, even though we have stable water; it's just still too low," Fryda said. "The substrate is mostly mud and muck, whereas higher up on the banks, we have better substrate."