Why Go To Tahoe? Smallies!

Tahoe, man. The boating, the skiing and now…the bassin’? Not if Cal Fish and Game can help it. Check the excerpts from this article, my comments after that.

> A new invasive species has been identified at Lake Tahoe, and it’s likely to be the most aggressive fish to ply the waters of the mile-high lake. “In our work to remove warmwater fish from Lake Tahoe, we’ve discovered smallmouth bass, a much more ferocious predator than other species known to have invaded the lake,” Sudeep Chandra, limnologist at the University of Nevada, Reno said.

> The removal work is being coordinated by the California Department of Fish and Game…and funded in part by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

> “As of today the California Fish and Game has removed more than 5,000 invasive fish from the nearshore zone around the lake in an effort to eradicate the unwanted fish and make room for natives to flourish,” Chandra said.

> Scientists are especially concerned about [smallmouths] because it uses much more habitat than other warmwater fish. It can survive colder waters than other warmwater species and it uses rocky outcroppings, in abundance at Tahoe, for spawning.

> “The population could explode and put more stress on the native fish population,” Kevin Thomas, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Game, said. “We’ve had reports of smallmouth bass before, but now we’ve 100-percent confirmed its presence in Lake Tahoe.”

> The smallmouth bass, found in the nearshore zone not only consumes food needed by native fish, it would aggressively feed on natives such as redsides, dace, suckers, and chubs.

> In a report to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Chandra and his collaborators already documents a 58 percent decline in native fishes from historical periods. Thus, this fish could significantly reduce native biodiversity and alter the ecological structure of Lake Tahoe.

> “Given the potentially high cost of a full scale warmwater fish invasion any expense to implement these largely preventative measures is money well spent.”

Okay, couple things:

1. Good luck with that eradication thing. Your only options are to kill every fish in the lake and start over or, like it or not, just live with it.

2. I’m definitely going to Tahoe to fish for dace, suckers and chubs. After that I’m going to have tea and toast, then dance the polka with a bowtie on, the whole bit.

Re: smallies getting in there, fess up: Who did it?