WLF commission meeting
 

Attachment 98515


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will anybody go to this and speak up? will it be worth it? what does everybody think about this meeting? are they just blowing smoke?

and why in the hell have it at noon? so not many people will go?!?!

I was thinking this too. Seems kinda pointless to me


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R u going?

Yeah, why not just have it at 10 am in Baton Rouge? I'm sure a lot of people will show up to that one.

Are you kidding me? They would probably get more people at noon than at 930 or 10 am, which is the normal time of meetings here in BR.

I'm shocked they are even having it there. Must be glutton for punishment or something, because all they will get is an ear full in SWLA. Hope Larry isn't going to be there with all the bone heads across south Louisiana blaming him for the season opening early.

If people don't show up, when the commission will be right there, then they have no room to complain when seasons are set. Everyone that is responsible for the early seasons and the new zones will be right there. I understand some people have work schedules that prevent them from attending, but you can't please everyone. Hell, the commission could have just stayed in BR and said "Come on over if you want to speak". They chose to go to the people. Good for them.

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lol I agree 100%, some people won't be happy if you **** them with a gold dildo.

I can assure you, that wouldn't make me happy regardless of what it was made of.


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Have no worries, the commission has our best interests at heart. They have no ulterior motives. No hidden agendas. These aren't the droids you're looking for.....

My cousin in Carlyss says the "salinity control" is to keep the grass back in the duck marshes of wealthy landowners around the lake and to push out the trout in Big Lake. The commissioners hate fishing guides and oystermen and want to keep their numbers down. Making the lake freshwater will accomplish this

15 Catfish or bust!!!

Your cousin is an intelligent man.

25 trout or bust

Nah, I ain't going. I saw what they did with all that expensive data they compiled recently. I'll be cleaning the birds I slaughtered that morning while they sit around and listen to everyone's grievances. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice...ain't hannennin

Just give me the official dates and bag limits and I'll be out there, struggling for my 2 teal, 2 greys, 1 scaup and 1 spallard hybrid. Rain or shine.

The weir management plan is reasonable and based on sound science. Since they took over management of the weirs in 2012, CPRA has done a very good job managing the weirs according to the management plan. CPRA has been kind enough to share detailed weir opening data with us that has allowed us to compute correlations between the condition of finfish in the lake (specks, redfish, drum, and gafftops) with the weir openings.

The most consistent and strongest correlations between our data on fish condition and any environmental factor we've considered are the NEGATIVE correlations between weir openings and fish condition. In other words, the more the weirs are opened, the thinner the fish are. The attached graph completely disproves the hypothesis that weir closures somehow negatively impact fish condition. The asterisks denote statistical significance at the p < 0.05 level.

Our working hypothesis to explain the NEGATIVE correlations between weir openings and fish condition is based on an analogy with rotating pastures to maximize the forage available for cattle. If the gates between pastures are open all the time, cattle graze all the pastures continuously which results in less production than limiting the pastures that can be grazed and opening the gates occasionally. As applied to the weirs, the idea is that the marsh behind the weirs produces more forage if more separation is allowed to reduce feeding pressure from the finfish until the crop of forage has achieved a larger biomass.

In any event, there is no scientific basis to complain about CPRA's management of the weirs. The biggest issue relating to Big Lake that is within regulatory control is the overharvesting of oysters.

i highly doubt i will be able to make it due to my work schedule right now.

but, my question to you people is this.... is it worth it? last time they gathered data and held meetings and heard everyone's thoughts and concerns, they went and voted the exact opposite!

i understand now is the time to go and make your voice heard, but that voice can only be heard in numbers and how many people will actually go and speak up?

here is another question: how is your season's harvest numbers compared to years past?

but hey, at least we opened the season early.

This makes zero sense. You can't sit at calcasieu point and do a creel survey from fishermen and assume that all fish are affected by the weirs Those "thin" fish may have been caught miles away from the weirs at black lake or prien lake. They may have not even swam within miles of the weirs.

Overanalyzing it

The average body condition of fish in the lake is most probably impacted by the total forage availability in the lake. Fish and forage both move throughout the system in any 90 day span that most strongly impacts the body condition. Further, our study samples fish from multiple locations and includes as many or more fish from the southern end of the estuary as from the northern end, so it either ignorant or dishonest (or both) to characterize our creel surveys as limited to Calcasieu Point. However, as expected, the fish condition does not depend on where in the estuary they are sampled from.

Does increased oil production in the mid-east impact oil prices and availability in the US? Sure it does.

This year harvest is down, started to drop off after the 3rd week. Water is way too high, needs to drop about a ft.

Get out of statistics and numbers mode and go into common sense mode. I have never fished the weirs but I would bet that the majority of fish that are caught there are fat. That's why they are there to fatten up on the abundance of baitfish.


In what way possible would weirs being open (which provides an abundance of forage) cause fish to be thinner?

All that cardio from the flowing water.

I should make a burn handle.

Guys.. If U can NOT make it?? Not a problem... Every commission member has a contact email.. U can email everyone of them ur thoughts and opinions.. Just go to WL&F home page.

EVERY OPINION COUNTS. Get INVOLVED....

Don't know that I agree there. Plenty of people e-mailed their thoughts and opinions to the commission, and plenty more spoke out through the surveys. Yet, a vocal minority that showed up at the meeting was able to sway the commissioners to change the season dates proposed by Mr. Reynolds.

Sure you can. People here do it all the time.

So, the marsh can be the lifeblood of the estuary, but it can't affect fish all over the estuary? Isn't the marsh a foundation of the estuary? A nursery ground for the nekton that live in the entire estuary?

Come on, DB. You want to call MG out for not using common sense. Well, you need to do it yourself. Go read up on estuary ecology again. Pretty sure there is a good read on this website somewhere that talks about the trout move throughout the estuary.

On what planet does it make sense that a weir being open ("lifeblood of the estuary") make fish skinnier? It deoesnt. I would bet the fish that are caught at the weirs are significantly fatter than fish caught elsewhere in the estuary Those weirs affect one very small portion of the entire estuary that is Big Lake. There is a large portion of marsh on the west side as well

I aint complaining one bit so far my blind has killed 367 ducks. I am 18 behind from last year but I had serveral days which I had 3 people instead of 2 but hey yall can have your late season hunting

That is not the point I was making, try to keep up. You said:

"Those "thin" fish may have been caught miles away from the weirs at black lake or prien lake. They may have not even swam within miles of the weirs."

I'm not arguing whether the weirs make the fish skinnier or not. Hell, there is only one person in this thread that has anything to back up that argument, so you argue that until you are blue in the face and it won't make a difference. No data equals no foundation.


So do you believe that the west side of the lake affects a majority of the lake, considering the east marsh only affects "one very small portion of the entire estuary that is Big Lake"? What is your basis? That whole marsh on the west side is not feeding into Calcasieu Lake, mind you, considering Sabine Lake is to the west.

For what its worth, I will agree with you on the effect of the weirs on the entire lake. You are doing a fantastic job of arguing a point I've long made here--that those weirs don't have near the effect on the lake as some on this forum would lead people to believe. Hell, even the negative correlation in MG's study does that. I could look at that opposite of the way you are. To me it says those weirs being open doesn't do a damn thing for the fish.

"The more he weirs are open the skinnier the fish are" is what MG said. That is laughable. On what planet does it make sense that when there is more food (weirs open) that fish would be skinnier? It doesn't. He tries to overanalyze things. In any organism, the more food available = healthier (fatter) organism whether it a fish, bird, earthworm, etc

They can only gain weight if they are consuming more calories than they are burning. Imagine all the calories they are burning while swimming in that current and eating all that food. That's a lot of tail movement and jaw movement in unison, burning the candle from both ends.

amiright amiright?

Fishing success probably drops off too when the weirs are open. All those fish getting that lock jaw after eating that much.

In the limit that the coupling between the marsh and lake were zero, you are right.

But think of the analogy with pasture rotation of cattle. Restricting access part of the time leads to more beef per acre than allowing complete access all the time.

Could it be that reducing the feeding pressure of finfish on the bait for part of the time allows the system to produce a larger total quantity of forage and the finfish get fatter because the bait has a chance to grow up before getting eaten?

Which goes back to the original point. How can you say a fish brought into heberts or call point has ever swam in the current at the weirs?


And do you think the fish caught at the weirs are skinnier or fatter than a fish caught anywhere else in the lake? They are fatter because of te buffet of good coming out of them


Unless the fish are bulimic

You are overthinking this. If you want to produce bigger deer, bigger fish, bigger pigs, you feed them more. It's that simple.

So data that shows "fatter" fish with less openings is just all wrong? Where is your data to support that, huh? You want to discredit someone else's work with nothing but "common sense" to back it up.

Not saying science is always right, but you can't just go around discrediting stuff because it goes against "common sense". The earth as the center of the universe was once "common sense".

You are also assuming that there are more food sources in the lake when the weirs are open, which is not necessarily true either. The weirs are opened for ingress and egress. If the bait population is traveling into the marsh, there would inevitably be less in the lake, correct?

You've never been to the weirs, but yet know, without a doubt, that those fish must be fatter because of the "buffet coming out of them"?

How else would you explain low BMI then? Take away the weirs?

The fact that you want to argue that MG's stats are wrong because there is no way the weirs could be making the rest of the lake skinnier, but then you argue that them being open would make the entire lake fatter is asinine. Correlation does not indicate causation anywhere in this. That estuary is very complex, and no one factor can be pointed to as the cause for any one thing, because very few relationships in that estuary are linear.

By the way, what about that "west side of the lake" theory you threw around? Care to elaborate on that?

You know its not that simple. Genetics, nutrients, environmental all play a role. More food also equals more competition, which can decrease fitness as well.

The weirs are a buffet of everything. Throw a castnet by one and see. If you eat at a buffet everyday you get fatter than someone who eats a Subway sandwich everyday😄

Thought you've never fished at the weirs? How would you know this?

I guess the lake gets choked off when the weirs are "closed" huh? No input of food whatsoever?

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There is no good science in his dataset. Sitting at a ramp collecting data only does so much because you are only getting a sample of fish (fish that are susceptible to being caught) which is simply a creel survey. A true survey of what is actually there is done by shocking and gillnetting it's a creel survey only. You can only infer so much with a creel survey

I've been to plenty of weirs and you catch a variety of everything in a castnet. I guarantee you hthe fishing is better beside a weir that is open than weir that is closed I know they aren't completely closed Some bait gets through.

This is true. No argument from me, but that doesn't change the fact that he at least has some data, while you have none. You are essentially no better than any other person who has ever questioned the validity of scientific data while holding none themselves.

You have no proof to argue what you have, yet do so with authority.

"There is no way that fish caught while the weirs are open could be thinner than those caught while they are closed."

Where is your data? While his may be a creel survey, it is a sampling method. While not as intensive as shocking, it is an acceptable method. Shocking would still only be a sample, and it would take a considerable amount of time and money. What if the data still showed the same thing? Would you discount it then?

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Inferring anything based on a handful of structures doesn't make sense when the lifeform is affected by so many variables. This isn't grass we are talking about, which is affected by a handful of variables that can be quantified or qualified and manipulated quite easily. This is a highly mobile population that is affected by competition, predation, salinity, tides, moon phase, prey abundance, weather, etc. Unless you can eliminate or control all other variables, it is impossible to say that one factor alone contributes to the BMI of a species.

You can control the weirs, but can you control prey abundance, predator abundance, moon, sun, weather, tides, salinity, competition? No. So how do you know that the weirs are responsible, even partly, for the condition of the fish.

My thesis was heavy on statistics, so I know all about what they can and can't tell you. The difference is, I could quantify or qualify ever variable I dealt with. You can't do that here. You miss half the picture because of that. It's not a linear relationship, and will never be a linear relationship.

Weir openings alone do not equal thin fish or thick fish. They may correlate, but again, correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

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I have been feeding deer at my lease all year round for the last 4 years and now that I think about it, they have gotten skinnier. I am going to stop feeding them now so they will get back fatter again. You guys are saving me some money

If someone tells you they did a study and found out that the moon is made out of cheese, do you really need to do a study on it yourself? Or are you just going to discredit that person?

EXACTLY! That is why I am discrediting his entire hypothesis which was"The more the weirs are open the skinnier the fish are". Its silly to think a weir is the only driving force. There are many many

This was complete sarcasm but I'm glad that it was brought in to the debacle. True sportsmanship.

Except that you pointed numerous times to fish at the weirs likely being fatter because the weirs are open. Your argument this whole time has centered around his hypothesis not being true because you would bet that "fish at the weirs are fatter because of all the baitfish". that implies that the weirs are the reason for the fish being fatter because they concentrate the baitfish.

MG,

Thanks for posting the information from your study. Is it possible, and has consideration been given to the idea that the difference in condition of the fish during open and closed periods may be due to a change in WHAT they are feeding on? If for example open weirs provided easy pickings on shrimp so the fish avail themselve of it, but when the weirs are closed they feed more on menhaden and finfish, it could be a matter of the fish being thinner when the weirs are open becasue they are taking advantage of easy prey that is lower in nutrients verses eating more nutrient dense food.

That could be. But note that our correlations are not between fish condition and whether the weirs were open the day a fish was caught, but rather our correlations are between fish condition and the average weir openings over the 90 day period immediately before each fish was caught.

But thanks for the idea, we need to give more consideration to whether weir closures forces the fish to feed on more nutritional forage.

[QUOTE=MathGeek;780718]That could be. But note that our correlations

How much influence do you think the seasonality of the opening/closing of the weirs have to do with it. For example, the weirs are more likely to be closed in July - August than in April/May. Obviously there are some seasons where fish will weigh more or less Did you compare same season openings/closures?

[quote=redchaserron;780724]All of our studies are in the same period each year (late May/early June). Seasonality can affect fish body weight, but we are comparing with the long term Louisiana average weights from the same time of year for each species.

The weir openings are more governed by salinity than season. For example, the average 30 day weir openings over our study period (same time each year) has varied from a low of the weirs only being open 15% of their maximum possible to a high of about 70%.

Weir openings and closures in July-Aug do not impact our study at all, because all our fish are measured in late May/early June and we only consider the weir openings in 30, 60, and 90 day windows before each fish was weighed and measured.

[quote=MathGeek;780737]Ah, I see now, I thought it was an "all year" study. My saying the weirs are more likely to be open in spring than August July, is simply an observation that we tend to get a lot more rain/lower salinity in spring than mid/late summer.

How are the whooping cranes doing

WC's
 

Doing great, had some WC's show up on my buddies lease in Sweetlake. LDWF found out they arrived, then banned my buddy from hunting his lease until the WC's left the area. :pissed: