Pictured is the author’s nephew, Jack Jablonski, with a Chautauqua Lake walleye. Photo by Steve Jablonski

Chautauqua Lake is one of the most popular inland fishing waters in New York State.

A survey conducted for the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation in 2017 determined that Chautauqua Lake ranked tenth highest of inland waters statewide, based on the estimated total number of anglers (22,189) fishing the Lake annually. It also determined that anglers had a total economic impact valued at about $66,928,818 on the local economy, provided support for 305 jobs, and generated $15,346,545 in State and local tax revenues.

Chautauqua Lake is a very fertile lake, with high amounts of nutrients available for plants and algae at the base of the food web to produce food for all the animals that feed on them. With this abundance of nutrients, the Lake produces a massive amount of fish. To sustain productive fisheries for the Lake’s variety of valuable panfish and game species, the fish need healthy habitats supporting each stage of their lives.

Fish such as walleyes need clean tributary streams and silt-free gravel bars in which to spawn for egg laying and fertilization each April. Muskellunge generally lay their eggs in shallow lake waters of five feet in depth or less amidst new submerged vegetation or emergent vegetation in late April or early May. Smallmouth bass construct nests on sandy, gravel, or rocky bottoms, with vegetation or sheltering rocks nearby later in spring. Largemouth bass also construct nests and generally spawn in shallower, more vegetated warmer bays than smallmouth bass. The males of both species of bass guard their eggs in the nest and guard their young.

Newly hatched fish are classified as young-of-year until the following spring. While a female fish produces thousands of eggs, only a small percentage are successfully fertilized by males and hatch, and most year-of-young never make it to their first birthday. Eggs are eaten by birds, other fish, aquatic insects, etc., and recently hatched fish are food for many animals as well.

Fish need good habitats for the successful deposition and maturation of eggs. Many species rely on submerged or emergent aquatic plants, brush, and/or rocks for recently hatched fish to find shelter from predators. They also rely on aquatic plants to provide a home for a variety of insect larvae, crustacea, worms, etc., as food. Wild shorelines with wetland vegetation and aquatic plants such as pondweeds that grow rapidly in the spring are especially important in providing cover and food for young-of-year fish. Muskellunge young-of-year need shallow, heavily vegetated wetland-type conditions to feed and avoid being eaten during their first spring and summer. In Chautauqua Lake, due to the loss of shallow wetland habitats, less than 25% of adult muskies are fish that grew in the wild their first summer. Most muskies making it to maturity are raised at the State hatchery to a fingerling size of eight inches or more before being released in the fall.

As summer approaches, leaving these plant communities intact as much as possible is important to maintaining healthy panfish and gamefish populations in the lake. If algae blooms, herbicide applications, or other management practices result in the loss of significant percentages of plants in these aquatic communities, both prey fish and young-of-year gamefish can be subject to excessive consumption by larger fish. To protect the abundance of food for the Lake’s fish, all aquatic plant management activities must be carefully planned and managed by the best available scientific research.

The Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to preserve and enhance the quality, scenic beauty, and ecological health of the Chautauqua region’s lands and waters for our community. For more information, visit chautauquawatershed.org and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.