IceShanty.com's Ice Fishing Community
Vermont => Ice Fishing Vermont => Topic started by: jbritch on Apr 22, 2023, 02:19 PM
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Sounds like two new cartoon characters but they're not funny.
I checked out under the bridge on Rte.7 over the Rock River this morning and there were several other guys there already. They reported a large party of New Yorkers had been there most of the night looking for White Perch. I was using some worms but I didn't get even a bite but two of the others were hooking Tench and Rudd along with some pumpkin seeds and a baby perch on a simple lead-colored bibbitt.
I had never seen or even heard of Tench and Rudd. I'm guessing we'd call them invasive species as possessing Rudd is a crime in the South. The first Tench was easily two feet long and quite chubby, I'd guess close to 5 lbs. The Rudd wasn't much bigger than that little perch.
Has anyone seen these species? How did they get here? Is it possible they hitched a ride on the bait we buy from down there? Or did someone release their pet gold fish into the lake? Are they eating our Walleyes' eggs? They have a vacuum mouth like a carp. Apparently, they are not good eating; they were all thrown back but I wonder if that is a sound practice???
(https://i.postimg.cc/TyPdYcD8/tench.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/TyPdYcD8)
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Has anyone seen these species? How did they get here? Is it possible they hitched a ride on the bait we buy from down there? Or did someone release their pet gold fish into the lake? Are they eating our Walleyes' eggs? They have a vacuum mouth like a carp. Apparently, they are not good eating; they were all thrown back but I wonder if that is a sound practice???
I've seen tench in a few places in shallow areas of the lake. They're well established now. As for how they got here:
"More recently, Tench were illegally stocked in a pond in Quebec Canada; in 1986 a farmer transported 30 Tench from Germany to stock an aquaculture pond (Marcogliese et al., 2009). By the 1990s Tench had escaped into the Richelieu river and established a reproducing population. Tench are currently known to be established in the St. Lawrence and Humber Rivers in Ontario, Canada as well as Lake Champlain (Avlijaš et al., 2017)"
From: https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/greatlakes/FactSheet.aspx?Species_ID=652&Potential=Y&Type=2 (https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/greatlakes/FactSheet.aspx?Species_ID=652&Potential=Y&Type=2)
Rudd look very similar to golden shiners when they are small. They're an easy one to accidentally transport via the bait bucket if you don't know the differences. https://i1.wp.com/www.wnyprism.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Rudd-Scardinius-erythrophthalmus-comparison-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1 (https://i1.wp.com/www.wnyprism.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Rudd-Scardinius-erythrophthalmus-comparison-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1)
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Thanks for the info. I suspected something like that. What a shame.
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****censored word****in Canadians
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So they’re invasive? Like don’t throw them back? Not that a few fisherman not throwing them back will do much but… strange looking fish