Kokanee Parasites

[wlai]

nah. MY SOURCE says kenimes planted the infested fish himself and when he realized it he panicked and tried to find someone else to shift the blame to. WDFW was the perfect scapegoat; they are vulnerable as no one trusts them anyway. Don't blame kemimes though, it was an honest mistake as he was just trying to help plant the lake. Kenimes is a good guy. He posted 84 posts afterall!

It's the truth. You can believe me; my source saw it go down herself and she really lives on the lake, like forever. She's retired and have nothing better to do so she talks to everyone on the lake and this is THE REAL TRUTH. I alone know it, so sad!

That's all I'll say. I've already said too much and risk exposing my source. I'll be in yuuuge trouble if she is identified! So unfair but the truth is hard to hear sometimes.

p]

[Larry3215]

LOL!!!

[TrackerPro16]

This is why fishing Lake Washington works well. There still is enough pollution that it kills off most of that nasty stuff.

[JoshH]

Thought for a second I stumbled in to the Coast to Coast AM radio blog. *if you don't know what Coast to Coast AM is, Google it *

[Why2Fish]

Comment: Palmer lake is not planted with RBT. Plants of kokanee only from the Omak hatchery. Omak hatchery is a spring fed source and is without the copepod. This is not to say that RBT are (were) not in the lake because they were caught on occasion by those that fished it alot. Any introduction of RBT into Palmer was not through a planting, but possibly by fish moving from the lakes above Palmer downstream to Palmer. Recall that several years back, one of the lakes in the Sinlahekin blew out. Palmer lake is not planted with RBT.

[Sideburns]

I have a feeling that I missed something....

[Hunter757]

Bottom line the parasites are in the lake and there is nothing we can do about it. We can point fingers all we like and offer proof all we like but the bottom line is there in our lake systems and no way to remove them at this point in time. There is no wrong or right answer when you can't fix the problem and laying blame or admitting to it makes no never mind when it comes to copepods. What we do in the future is where the value is when stocking fish in our current systems without these parasites!

[Mike Carey]

To clarify something that I think is being misunderstood. Copepods are a normal part of the ecology of lakes and the saltwater. They occur naturally in most all bodies of water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copepod

If you want to learn the detailed information on this, the most abundant parasite in our waters, read this paper. It will tell you all you want to know about copepods, including that they have been around for over 100 million years and there are over 11,500 types (and counting).

http://www.vims.edu/~jeff/biology/paras ... aceans.pdf

I wasn't able to find a specific cause as to why copepod outbreaks occur. I did find a lot of incidences of outbreaks documented across a wide range of fisheries and, interestingly, it's an issue with aquariums.