Virulent Lamprey

Close encounter with scores of the parasites an eye-opener

By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoors Columnist

Richard Arnold ’s 14-foot boat slowed to troll speed as he and his 15-year-old son Nick were setting out lines to do some Lake Champlain fishing last week off Port Douglas. Earlier, when they put in their small watercraft, they found a dead salmon floating near the launch. That should have been a warning of what was to come. Right after the lines were let out, a large school of sea lampreys appeared on both sides of the boat, swimming to keep pace with the trolling motor. 

"I’ve never seen anything like that," Richard says. "There must have been hundreds of them!" Both Arnolds, figuring any fish in close proximity to the lampreys would be, like that salmon, either dead meat or long since gone, rigged up a gaff using a driftwood stick with a No. 1 hook attached to its base. Almost immediately the younger Arnold began pulling in lampreys. 

"We got 18 of them," the father says, "but we lost about three to four dozen. 

You wouldn’t believe it. Five or six were even attached to the boat." These parasites were not small lampreys, either; they averaged 18-24 inches in length. "We got one that was 2 1/2 inches thick," Richard adds. "I don ’t think people realize just how many lampreys there are in the lake or the damage they are doing." The Arnolds took their 18 lampreys home and hung them near their boat. 

Richard then contacted the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "People come by my welding shop in Peru," he says, "and they can ’t believe the size of some of them."

If all goes as scheduled, the streams to be treated with lampricide in 2002 are Lewis Creek (Vermont), the Salmon, Little Ausable, Ausable Rivers in New York and Putnam Creek. The barrier on the Great Chazy River will also be inspected. 

Would a lamprey attack a person? I know one current Plattsburgh State hockey player who did experience an attack while wading, not in Lake Champlain but in Lake Huron, and he has the scar to prove it