Tug, the bass were a problem "only" for the smolts. The juveniles are pelagic, which gets them away from the bass but the Smallies did hit the smolts. The currheoat may have had better access to juveniles. It had been thought that the spiny rays clobbered the fry when they entered the lake but the water was too cold for them to be actively feeding when the fry hit.

One intriguing idea was that the southerly winds in late winter/spring blew the surface water north, taking the zooplankton (sockeye food) with it. So, the fry actually starved on lake entry. That was, perhaps, why LW smolts were huge compared to other sockeye runs; there was super abundant food once they got big enough to eat it. May also explain the low productivity of the runs with R/S not much above 1. It took tons of fry to get past that desert at the mouth of the river.

Now, the surface water of the lake and the whole ship canal is too warm in summer when the adults try to pass through. Warm water equals dead fish.