There’s a new “live” report up on Facebook from researchers at Carleton University, reporting on survey of showing a bass on a nest, and talking about ideal temperatures for bass spawning from May 2025. Hook wounds are a real indication of angling pressures.
Layer by layer, sediment cores reveal centuries of biological and chemical change in lake-bottom sediment. This study looked back more than 200 years — far enough to capture the disruption of canal construction beginning in 1828 — but the most striking finding concerns the past 25 to 30 years. Despite significant improvements in phosphorus levels since the 1970s, the lakes…
I am writing on behalf of the Rideau Lakes Environmental Foundation (RLEF) to ask for your support…
If so, please complete this survey for Dr. Steven J. Cooke, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Canadian Centre for Evidence-Informed Conservation Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Your knowledge of the state of bass populations in key lakes/rivers and perspectives on bass management will supplement traditional fisheries sampling conducted by MNR. Survey results will build an undertanding of current angler attitudes towards existing…
Help us preserve a very special place on Big Rideau Lake …
Did you know that even with “Catch and Release” taking a bass off his nest will likely result in the death of his brood? Bass spawning sanctuaries have proven successful in ensuring the survival of young by preventing all fishing in sensitive areas while fish are spawning. The Fisheries Conservation Foundation is exploring Innovative Solutions for Large mouth and Smallmouth…
RLEF President Hansen Downer was interviewed on 88.1 myFM (previously Lake 88.1) about Bass Spawning Sanctuaries. Listen to the recording.
Big Rideau Lake is one of the few lakes in Eastern Ontario deep enough to support a Lake Trout population. There is a concern that the this population is declining, but there is no statistical information to support that theory. Telemetry studies will allow researchers from the Fisheries Conservation Foundation (FCF) to track the movement of Lake Trout, identify…
The expansion of Bass Spawning Sanctuaries (BaSS) will help regenerate the declining bass populations in our lakes. BaSSs are areas of the lake in which all fishing is prohibited but only until the first week of July. Angling in BaSSs is permitted during the rest of the year. The Fisheries Conservation Foundation is leading a local effort to expand BaSSs…
Dr. John Smol addressed the Big Rideau Lake Association (BRLA) on Algae and Aquatic Plant Growth in the Big Rideau Lake, on May 17, 2023. … The PEARL Lab has received support from RLEF’s Small Grants Program.
The Fisheries Conservation Foundation (FCF) has results from their RLEF-funded research into the Large Mouth Bass (LMb) and Small Mouth Bass (SMB) population in local lakes, that included input from both Queen’s University and Carleton University. The study focused on the reproductive ecology of black bass and the impacts of (illegal) fishing during the reproductive period The FCF surveyed 7…
His work revisited six lakes in the Rideau Canal system — Big Rideau, Upper Rideau, Lower Rideau, Indian, Lake Opinicon, and Otter Lake — using sediment cores collected in 2019 and 2020 to update paleolimnological studies conducted on the same lakes roughly 25 to 30 years earlier. The approach relies on diatoms — microscopic, single-celled algae whose silica shells accumulate…