The 2003 collapse of alewives () has allowed lake-wide recruitment of wild lake trout () for many consecutive years in the main basin of Lake Huron, but the loss of this major pelagic prey fish also raised concerns about the carrying capacity of the lake for lake trout rehabilitation. In this paper, size-at-age data for individual lake trout from the 2003 and more recent year-classes were analyzed, and the additive effects of age, year-class, and sampling year were estimated and compared using a linear-mixed model. After declines to a very low level following the collapse of alewives, lake trout size-at-age recovered during the late 2000 s and early 2010 s, and then stabilized, although the new level was not as high as that in the pre-2003 time-period with abundant alewives and rainbow smelt (). Lake Trout size-at-age also did not maintain a meaningful difference between northern and southern Lake Huron. Furthermore, the total length and body mass of wild lake trout were smaller at ages 2–4 than that of stocked lake trout. The differences became insignificant at ages 5–6 and negligible at ages 7–19. The direct size-at-age comparisons between stocked and wild lake trout were different from the comparisons of growth parameters based on the von Bertalanffy growth function, suggesting that it is important to analyze actual size-at-age measurements and not to fully rely on the growth-parameter comparisons.

中文翻译：

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休伦湖鳟鱼崩溃后的生长稳定性以及放养和野生湖鳟之间的年龄尺寸直接比较

2003年的红鳟鱼溃决使得休伦湖主流域连续多年全湖范围内补充野生湖鳟鱼，但这种主要中上层猎物鱼类的消失也引发了人们对湖泊承载能力的担忧用于湖鳟鱼的康复。本文分析了 2003 年及最近年份级别的个体湖鳟鱼的年龄尺寸数据，并使用线性混合模型估计和比较了年龄、年份级别和采样年份的相加效应。在红鳟鱼数量锐减之后，湖鳟鱼龄尺寸下降到非常低的水平，之后在 2000 年代末和 2010 年代初恢复，然后稳定下来，尽管新的水平没有 2003 年前那么高。盛产白鲸和彩虹胡瓜鱼的时期 ()。南北休伦湖之间的湖鳟年龄大小也没有保持显着差异。此外，野生湖鳟鱼2-4龄时的总长度和体重均小于放养湖鳟鱼。这种差异在 5-6 岁时变得不显着，在 7-19 岁时则可以忽略不计。放养和野生湖鳟之间的直接年龄尺寸比较不同于基于 von Bertalanffy 生长函数的生长参数比较，这表明分析实际年龄尺寸测量值很重要，而不是完全依赖生长参数比较。