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Posts: 3480
Location: Elk River, Minnesota | Started thinking a bit here, and, hashing over many discussions, one aspect I could not find is anything on pH. In your honest opinion, is pH something we should consider looking into more? After all, fish do have a certain tolerance for less than ideal conditions, but if we can find the ideal conditions would we find more active fish consistently? Or...will muskies, due to predator prey relationships go just where the prey is, regardless of pH level?
given any body of water, does pH really change all that much depending on stratification, location etc?
Just digging here...
Steve | |
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Posts: 364
Location: in the white boat | I'm no biologist, I just play one on the internet, but I don't believe that any lakes big enough to hold muskies have much PH fluctuation throughout the course of a season.
The only time fish are affected by PH or General Hardness variations is when the conditions change drastically, and very quickly, i.e. in the aquarium environment.
Aneyone else have any more than an opinion on this? | |
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Posts: 105
Location: Kawartha Lakes, Ontario | I don't think that pH in a lake or river could fluctuate enough to affect any fish species. It is usually a pretty stable water quality parameter. Industrial wastewater or stormwater drainage is the only circumstance that I can think of that would drastically change pH. Even then, it would only be localized to the immediate area of input and would even out to the waterbody's normal pH as it mixed (time and amount of "normalizing" would depend upon the alkalinity of the waterbody). In any case, I wouldn't worry about it. Water temperature, D.O.(dissolved oxygen), and turbidity are some other factors that would have more effect on the fish.
Just my thoughts. Keep your hooks sharp. | |
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Posts: 906
Location: Warroad, Mn | I personally think that PH has quite a bit to do with fish activity. PH effects the bloods ability to transport oxygen to the muscles, which in fish must certainly be influnced by the PH of the water. The PH of water is effected each day by photosynthesis, and does change quite a bit from morning to evening, and from area to area in a large lake like the LOTWs (I even had a PH meter at one time). The problem with trying to figure out what PH does is that there aren't any good records to tell us what's good and what's bad. I suspect that rapid changes in PH are not good. I suspect that changes in things like PH (which we mostly know little about) helps explain why some days fishing is good, and some days fishing stinks.
There are a number of good links on the web that explore how PH changes in water, and how it effects fish, try a google search of PH of water if you are interested.
I suspect that Dr Loren Hill (the PH meter/color selector guy) knows a lot more about this than I do. The problem is that we as fishermen haven't been able to figure out how to make any sence of all this, and probably never will. It's probably different for every lake, and maybe even for every fish.
Doug Johnson | |
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Posts: 3480
Location: Elk River, Minnesota | I did a little websurfing and came up with this website that explains some of the changes that can take affect during a normal day on the water.
http://www.lakeaccess.org/russ/temperature.htm
Basically stated, in waters where there is a low amount of buffers(nutrients that help to stabilize major fluctuations in water chemistry), the pH can change quite radically in either direction. In most cases where buffering is low, pH will increase throughout the day due to photsynthesis, and decrease though the night, when photosynthesis cannot occur. With lake clarity and stratification, it is quite possible that pH is higher in the lower levels of the lake below the thermocline, where photosynthesis cannot take place, and fairly significant flucutations can take place above the thermocline.
I would assume in most lakes, that flucutations are not that extreme, but could this also be linked to why we see more active fish at dusk in some waters, but not in others? could the combination of dissovled oxygen and pH be major factors in fish activity, than what we have considered? After all, location is the number one thing we have control over when fishing. If pH can fluctuate across the water column, and possibly in different sections of a body of water, could we better pinpoint where fish might be? Could this lead to a new "spot on the spot" technique?
Steve
Edited by VMS 2/12/2003 1:00 PM
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Posts: 714
Location: Rhinelander, WI | Doug, I was waiting for you to respond to this. I remembered you talking about ph in the past. You said ph effects the bloods ability to transport oxygen to the muscles, do you know which way it works. Is a higher ph better for oxygen transfer or is a lower ph better. Just that info might help a little.
Nail a Pig!
Mike | |
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Posts: 3480
Location: Elk River, Minnesota | Found this website with pH affect on fish: http://www.fishdoc.co.uk/water/pH.htm
The higher the acid level in the water, the more damage it does to the fish in terms of it's ability to recieve oxygen from the water itself. The gills, skin, etc become hard. There is more that the webisite talks about in terms of what pH does to minerals in the water as well.
Interesting reading...
Steve | |
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Posts: 906
Location: Warroad, Mn | The site that VMS posted talks about some of the bad effects on fish that high PH causes. I would guess that the effects that acid rain has on some lakes is proof that high PH is not a good thing, and also that in some lakes PH can change to the point that they won't support fish life. As VMS pointed out different lakes have different buffers that help control PH levels, but PH levels can change quite dramatically from morning to night in certain situations. I know that for the two years that I had a PH meter I would see PH variations from around 7 to as high as almost 9 when there was a big algae bloom. Keeping in mind that the PH scale is logrimitic, and every whole number is times 10. However, I don't think that I ever caught a fish because I knew what the PH was!!!
When it gets to blood PH about the only things I know have been gleened from one of my Doctor clients. At times things are slow (happens even on the LOTWs) and we get to talking about why the fish aren't biting. He's an Anesthesiologist (Harvard yet!) and seems to know a quite a bit about blood PH, and the effects of it's change. He talks about what is called the "Bohr shift", which says something like this as blood PH becomes more acidic the hemoglobin starts to loose it's ability to hold Oxygen (he even knew why, if you can believe that). In mammals this is usually a reaction to exercise which increases CO2 production, which creates carbonic acid and a lowering of the blood PH. This causes a release of more Oxygen to the cells (the Bohr shift) to make up for the increased O2 consumption causes by the increased activity. Fish blood also uses hemoglobin to transport Oxygen to the cells. Exactly what effect increased water PH will have on fish is unknown to me (I suppose someone knows somewhere), but I'll bet that some of the things that we say are caused by weather are somehow effecting the fishes well being, and that's the reason that they don't allways bite. There is a lot of stuff about this on the web.
At one time (20 years ago or so) there was a lot of talk about PH (Doug Stange was a big boster when I fished with him at that time). It slowly seemed to subside as I don't think anyone could actually figure out what was good and what was bad.
If I where a young fisheries grad student this would be a great masters or PHD thesis, and maybe would help explain why sometimes the damn things just won't bite.
Doug Johnson
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Posts: 1937
Location: Black Creek, WI | Hey DougJ.... its never too late to go back to college!! Good luck with your thesis (haha).
Some very interesting stuff being exchanged here.
jlong | |
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Posts: 3480
Location: Elk River, Minnesota | Well..
being that if fish transport oxygen in the same manner that mammals do, would it be a safe assumption that the same process will happen with exertion?
Under high stress (not necessarily activity) our body works harder to maintain optimum oxygen flow and chemical balance. In fish, the heart is not designed the same, thus under any form of stress due to water quality, exertion, etc. it would seem that the same occurrences would happen (i.e. lactic acid build-up and a change in blood pH to not so optimum levels). So...if conditions are not optimum at one level, I would tend to feel that finding the best quality of water would be a characteristic all fish would follow to reduce the amount of stress on the fish, just by water quality.
So..the next question I have, would the thermocline be considered optimum?
What all do we know about the thermocline in terms of water quality?
How does this relate to predator/prey would be interesting to explore, since different species of fish have different tolerances.
Steve
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Posts: 906
Location: Warroad, Mn | Well...
A couple of year ago Ralph Manns did an article in the In-Fisherman about things like this, it's a little fuzzy, but I think it's the August issue of 2000. It had to do with bass in particular, but it probably applies to muskies (and most fish) as well. There was a study done by a university who did a study about bass seaking optimum conditions. I don't remember the unversity, or the exact techiniques used in the experiments, but when I read it I thought it sounded pretty sound. As I recall the results where something like this.
The bass did not seek optimum conditions, but where pretty happy as long as conditions allowed them to survive, and not die. This meant that if they where able to survive at a PH of 8.5, they would not seek a PH of 7.2 even though this was in their perfered PH range. This also applied to O2 content and temperatures of the water. If they where able to survive at 5PPM they would not seak 7PPM even though this was better for them, the same for temperatures. The article went on the say that none of the bass where able to figure out where optimum conditions existed. In other words if they where in a spot that there was survival conditions thay did not know how to to find or seek optimum conditions.
I would guess that in the wild and the fish where swimming into conditions that where getting worse they would sooner or later turn around and swim the other way. However, they apprently don't know which way to go until they have been there and don't actively seek better conditions as long as they can survive where they are.
It would seem that once a fish happens to swim into an area that is optimum it would have a tendency to stay there, particularly if there is food available. But I'll bet that even if things like PH, temperatures, and O2 where optimum and there wasn't much food the fish would leave the area and head into areas that have less than optimum PH, temperatures, and O2 concentrations as long as they where able to survive. I'll bet that food is the most important element. If there isn't food they won't spend a whole lot of time in the area regardless of the other conditions.
I wish that I could figure some of these things out, as I'm pretty sure these are some of the things that cause fish to relocate, and at times not bite.
Doug Johnson
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Location: Bucharest | pH,O2,temp.,structure,prey and light are basic factors for fish to rich enviromental optim. pH may change with rain and snow. In the other hand, pH is afected by photosintezis (lowering) and it means that early in the morning water is more acidic than in the midday. Under powerfull sunlight and clear water muskie and pike may avoid areas with dense weeds (there pH is high or basic). Also underwater spring holes may change pH (spring water has low level O2). Decay has its efect : low pH - acidic (near bottom), CO2 and H2SO4. And don't forget : the type of water makes the rules. | |
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Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Doug touched on a very important point; the fish in any given area on any given body of water do not seek optimum conditions in water chemistry or temperature, both clearly important factors in the fish's ability to respond to stimuli. The reason for that? There is no way for them to know or for that matter make a 'decision' to move to where conditions may be better in another area of the lake. If the area the fish is in has the basics for survival, usually they stay somewhat stationary other than seasonal movements, and drastic/rapid changes. As we seek the one fish that will eat, my very humble opinion is one might be better off to try to locate the areas of the lake with classic structure, good forage, and the variables that support activity. I had a PH meter for a few years. I tried to use it as a location/activity level tool. I never once was able to prove anything either way, and decided without a heck of alot more understanding about the overall matrix, I was being phoolish.  | |
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How about pH?