Breaking News: Silverwood Lake Polluted

[DarkShadow]

I always fillet and remove skin and fat also, of course some have challenged me on that saying you're wasting fish.

You are!

Ever fried the skin and fat of stripers?

It's like chicharrón, but tastier.

[flyhigh123]

agreed... a reallly hot sear on the skin, amazing

[seal]

I'll keep my skins for you guys, I don't mind contributing to your mercury addictions. Just don't procreate.

[flytyingreloader]

That PETA flick constituted 4-1/2 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Catch & release--PETA Aquatic Aerobics for sportfish.

[Tom]

I think we need a Open season On the Greenies and Environmentalist. How about the third week of every month.
What the heck i guess we should only eat Weeds out of our back yards

For Seal.

[JAG107]

Well I guess everybody better stop fishing at Silverwood! You will die a terrible, terrible death if you eat any of the 8-15" stripers that have been sucking up all the mercury in the lake for the last 6-12 months of their lives.
I'm confused though, how would a DD catfish have less mercury than one of the sardine sized stripers that are caught at the lake? This "recommendation" from the state seems to be lacking many crucial details about their study. Maybe The Wood needs some Quaggas to help suck up some of all those PCBs and mercury so the fish will be safer to eat!

[JAG107]

So the size of the 8 stripers they sampled were roughly 18-23" in length, which right now is quite a bit bigger than the average striper caught by my estimate. Meaning the ones being caught now are younger, and therefore should have noticeably less mercury. I'm not a scientist by any means, this is just what I've put together from this report.

[dkinla]

Well I guess everybody better stop fishing at Silverwood! You will die a terrible, terrible death if you eat any of the 8-15" stripers that have been sucking up all the mercury in the lake for the last 6-12 months of their lives.
I'm confused though, how would a DD catfish have less mercury than one of the sardine sized stripers that are caught at the lake? This "recommendation" from the state seems to be lacking many crucial details about their study. Maybe The Wood needs some Quaggas to help suck up some of all those PCBs and mercury so the fish will be safer to eat!

hello JAG107...

well... I'll try my best to answer your question and maybe it'll clear up some of your confusion I'm no expert either, but I think the following seems reasonable:

First of all, I'm not sure if you read into the actual report a little more, but if not, this is what I think is going on:

Open up the report and go to page 5, Table 2 (Mercury Concentrations in fish from Silverwood)

You'll see that for Channel Catfish, 9 Total catfish were caught, each having a mean (average) length of 580mm = 22.83 inches (I'm not sure how much a 22" catfish would weigh, but at least we have the length of the fish). From these 9 catfish, they only report 3 samples. What?? Well if you look at the small print underneath the table, it says "The number of fish can be greater than the number of samples because some samples are composites consisting of more than one fish [of the same species] for the chemical analysis". And if you read on page 4 directly under CHEMICAL CONCENTRATIONS, it says "composite samples are prepared from EQUAL amounts of tissues from several individual fish, all of the SAME species. Composite sampling is usually done for samples to be analyzed for organics to reduce the cost of analyses. The analytical result from a composite sample represents an average concentration." <-- All this means, is yeah, they caught 9 catfish measuring about 22.83 inches each, and from those 9 catfish, they basically were able to analyze them as 3 separate samples by combining the fillets from the 9 catfish into 3 different samples to SAVE taxpayers some money The means (averages) of mercury were then weighted by the number of fish in each sample.

Now, lets look at the Striped bass back on Table 2. They caught 8 total striped bass having an average length of
543mm = 21.37 inches (roughly the same length as the catfish). From those 8 striped bass they caught and filleted... they were able to analyze them also as 3 separate samples for mercury/PCB analysis.

Make sense so far? Well, at least it does to me...

anyways, now if you look at the mean mercury concentrations they got from the weighted samples of catfish to striped bass... it is 372 ppb mercury catfish to 1002 ppb mercury striped bass... almost 3x the mercury is found in striped bass compared to a similar length of catfish when you fillet them and analyze them.

The one part I am not completely sure of, is whether the mean total length is referring to the average length of the fish caught, or the average length of fillet used in the analysis. Either way, they are pretty close to each other between catfish and striper (22.83 inches versus 21.37 inches).

So back to your question... you asked about a double-digit catfish... I don't think you can compare the two in that way according to the study since the samples were approximately the same size to each other. But... maybe lets compare a 10lb. catfish to a 3lb. striped bass. I don't know if the ratio of mercury to the weight of the fish increases in a LINEAR fashion, but just for the sake of argument, let's say it does... then a 3lb. striped bass could theoretically almost have the same amount of mercury as a 10lb. catfish since the striped bass has almost 3x the mercury as a similar size catfish.

But... it probably doesn't increase in a linear fashion... since it makes a little more sense to me that the bigger the fish... the higher it's concentration of mercury would be in a fashion that is not truly linear, but slightly "logarithmic"??

well... back to the STATE advisory and this Silverwood advisory... I am disappointed by these advisories, since I love to go striper fishing with my dad/wife... I just never thought our reservoirs would have striped bass with these elevated levels of mercury. Anyhow, they are just recommendations... and obviously, one can do whatever the hell they want As anything else in life... eating/drinking the good things in life in moderation probably won't kill ya

hope this helps a little... if you have any further ?s... give'em a call...

**by the way, a 22" striper is pretty freakin huge... I don't think I've ever caught anything close to that from the Castaic dam or at the Pyramid inlet... and like you said, I'm sure the smaller schoolie size stripers are small enough where they haven't had enough time to accumulate a lot of mercury. Does this mean if I ever catch a DD striper that I should let it go??? haha... maybe just a quick photo and release...

[seal]

Anyhow, they are just recommendations... and obviously, one can do whatever the hell they want ...

Why am I thinking that this equals about the same level as trying to outlaw supersized soft drinks? About the same level of concern possibly? That's the boy that cried wolf conundrum, everything is gonna kill us so WTF eat more striper save a largemouth!

[flybynight]

It's all HogWash...I lived close to Silverwood for many years, fished it alot, ate the trout and striped bass from there.
I'm now ancient.