The Biology of Bonaparte

[dab...@lightlink.com]

What lives in Lake Bonaprte's waters other than invading
Eurasian Millfoil, and foreign mercinary Beetles?
I have watched the changes to the Lake itself and in its underwater
populations for about sixty years now, and, where as there certainly
are more camps and people now than fifty years ago, the underwater
population of the lake has changed a whole lot more than the shore
line. This was true before Euirasian Millfoil which gets so much
attention. I am sure many of the changes are natural cycling, like I
see happening in ponds I have established. I am also convinced that
the lake, because of us, is a lot more fertile than it was sixty years
ago, and that has made the most difference.
But I am mostly just interested in knowing what is there , and in
information and sources which others might contribute.
for instance: I noticed in the Lake Bonaparte Conservation
Club Newsletter that Enviro people did an electeroshocking study of
the lake. I have done electro shocking myself for the N.Y., DEC, in a
lake where Pickerl are more common than sunfish, and were great fun to
catch, because they are so fast they leap ahead of the shock wave and
you can net them in the air.....
I certainly have done no shocking in Bonaparte and do little
more but fish the surface with flies now days, but I am still am
deeply interested in the fish population and how it has changed. At
home in Cayuga County, I run a system of small , dug ponds, which I
circulate through wetland and made brook., Largemouth bass and fathead
minnows are the only fish I have introduced. I have lots of "native"
water weed, and a small amount of accidental millfoil I watch. I had
an early environmental disaster when I introduced crayfish and they
quickly reproduced and wiped out all the vegetation in my ponds. So
I brought in the bass (from a pond where I had stocked them to control
a goldfish population) and the bass wiped out the crayfish. Once you
start playing god, your job is never done.
My grandrfather Herbert Failing was the person most commonly
credited with, or criticised for, introuducing rock bass and sunfish
(brought from Redfield Lake) to lake Bonaparte. I notice that
the electro shocking report suggest there may be too many panfish
( but I think not more than there was sixty years ago). The
difference is that the bluegils predominate.
I did not starf catching blue gills in the lake (fishing the
northern shores) until a few years ago. It was the more colorful,
and spunkier, pumpkinseed sunfish that my Grandfather put in and
which were neck and neck with rock bass, he probably also put there,
for the most plentiful fish for many years. When I was young, the
large mouths were just appearing in Bonaparte, and my folks called the
"Oswego bass" A D.E,C introuduction, I presume.
.For my great grandfather Charles Dury, who had a camp on the
South shore, this was a lake trout and small mouth bass lake.
Introduced perch may have wiped them out. Walleyes, which are just a
big perch, became the game fish here of my grandfather's generation,
then Large Mouth bass began to appear here and became the fish I
would mostly persue. My grandfather used to bait with corn and then
net whitefish off the Birch Island Shoal. The only whitefish I ever
picked up here was floating out in the middle of the lake in the late
fifties. Ditto with the Ling cod, a fresh water cod my grandfather
and others occasionally caught, and called "Lawyer." I am very
intersted in the water quality and fish population questions in the
lake, as I am in the little system I control. I wonder what others
know of these changing populations.