Hello all,

I have been out of touch with this forum as I moved to Colorado in July of 2005, and well, there are no Salmon or Steelhead to fish here.

I have had to resort to learning how to fish for Walleye and Bass to keep spending time on the water. It's not all bad, Walleye fishing is very challenging and I've been having a good time but not much luck.

My questions are that I remember there being a few forum members on here from the Great Lakes areas. Colorado has recently discovered that they have zebra mussels in one of their reservoirs. It seems like the CO Dept. of Wildlife is having a hard time deciding the course of action to take in controlling them. What was done in the GL area when they realized they had an infestation? I know they continued to spread, but can anyone give me an idea of what they tried to stop or control them? Any information on this topic would be appreciated. I frequent a fishing forum here in CO and this has become a hot topic, trouble is, no one knows much about it.

I sure miss the rivers in WA, and my plan is to make a trip home this coming winter for some winterrun fishing. I hope it's a good run, it'll be hard to wait until December to find out.

Elkaholic

"Most scientists believe that zebra mussels cannot be eradicated, "
The rest of the story is at the following link.
http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/Communications/greatlakes/glnetwork/exotics.html

"Hot water has been shown to be an effective treatment for zebra mussels, but it is not always a practical alternative. Chlorine is probably the most popular treatment currently in use, but increased chlorination clearly contradicts the efforts of the Great Lakes community to reduce the amount of chlorine entering the ecosystem. Research has shown potassium, bromine, ozone and ultraviolet light to be possible alternatives to chlorine. To date, more than 30 other compounds have also been studied to determine their potential effectiveness against zebra mussels as well as environmental side-effects.

I think they've been working on using chemicals to induce spawning in Zebra Mussels during poor spawning conditions...something about Zebra Mussels spawning when phytoplankton levels are high so that there is enough food for the larvae, so they are studying releasing the "trigger chemicals" into the lakes to cause spawning during low phytoplankton levels.

I think the plan is that this would cause all the larvae to die before settling in.

Do a Google Search, I'm sure there's a ton of information from the GL's about it.

Fish on...

Todd

The best thing to do is educate people on how these pests are spread. Do your best not to spread them around. I grew up in Michigan and those things get on everything. If you google it you will see some pictures of boats that sit in the water for a long time or power plant outlets covered in those little bastards. They attach to just about anything and the larvae are impossible to see.

I believe it is going to be insanely difficult to gain any control of the zebra muscles. They literally coat everything in certain areas, and being an invasive species they have established themselves really well. They cause a fair amount of trouble, in Milwaukee divers have to go into our intake pipes for the water treatment plant and un-clog the zebra mussels a couple times a year. We frequently snap fish off due to the sharpness of their shells, when fishing off break walls. Another mussel that has been big talk these days are the quagga, which filter out more water, and can survive in deeper colder water than zebras. There are a few professors at school, that are doing research on this controling. I'll see if I can get some info from them.....

Thanks for the information everyone. It appears that the DOW knew about the infestation for some time and did nothing about it. Currently they are setting up inspection stations with washdown equipment to check and clean your boat when leaving. You have to pay for the cleaning. Other than that, they have suspended the use of boats on some of the bodies of water until they figure something out. No-one has much faith in the various agencies involved. It's not just the Department of Wildlife, there are also Municipal Water Districts, and the distribution systems owners. Lots of Chiefs with no experience. I'm sure we're looking at alot of in-fighting ahead. The water situation here in CO is crazy.

JT