Fishing in the last handful of days on Superior has been
really good: coho 3-6lbs. steelhead averaging seven pounds, Chinook in the 7 to 9lb range. So, I opted to take some time to actually fish. Small craft advisories are posted from midnight to midnight now.
Buddy, thanks for the advice. I liked your canoe comments, they fully invoked your recommendations to me...particularly the tone part. I'm confused why people become dead by simple choosing a specific manufacturer though.
In the ten years I worked as a fishery research biologist with MSU and then with the USFWS, and very briefly with the MDNR Fisheries Research Station, I frequently was told how to manage fishery resources by plumbers, electricians, accountants, doctors, fireman, lawyers, business owners...a lot of business owners, whose sole expertise in fishery science and limnology was holding a valid fishing license. I can wire a simple circuit, but I am not a professional electrician. I have worked and poured cement, and built brick walls, yet, I am not a mason. IF lay people want to guide fishery management, perhaps they should work to understand its principals better, as well as the semantics.
So, now let's fast forward to current 2018 data from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission Lake Committee meetings held in late March.
Jim Dexter appointed Todd Kalish to replace Jay Wesley as Lake Michigan Committee Michigan member, following all the Hullabaloo from the 2012 Decision Analysis Model's findings and recommendations abandonment. Odd, since he was the one who told Jay how to vote and steer the discussion . Todd Kalish vacated the position within six months, despite "being cut from the same cloth", per Jim's statements when he promoted him. Todd became the Assistant Director of Fisheries at the Wisconsin DNR.
I was involved in discussions with a tackle manufacturer and charter fleet owner (five boats that operate out of the southeastern shore ports on Lake Michigan) as he formed a non-profit to support the sport fishery. I opted to agree to disagree on a board seat, since he was adamant that political pressure and simply increasing salmon plants were the best approach to the fishery. The Great Lakes Salmon Initiative formed from these conversations. They are well meaning, but misinformed. They did achieve one thing: bring concerted focus to bear on why the Feds have functioned to engage and fund sea lamprey population control on the Great Lakes and a hatchery system and planting program that has run for nearly 55 years without reaching its goal of lake trout restoration in the lower Great Lakes. Yet, never attempted to cease or impede invasive species introductions via saltwater freighter ballast water dumping within the St. Lawrence Seaway channels of the Great Lakes.
So, here is where we are at:
In 2013, Chinook plants in Lake Michigan were cut 50%. Low water in northwestern Michigan spawning streams where most of the wild-origin fish originate knocked the 2013 wild-origin year class down to 1.7 million smolts, rather than the 3.8-5 million fish average.
Current acoustic and trawl sampling (full recruitment to gear occurs at age-III) catches have ticked back up to 53 kt. of alewife...with spawning age alewife from three year-classes now present in good numbers. Intra-specific competition is so low that some Age-II fish are now sexually mature in alewife stocks. Pretty interesting in a productivity limited system.
So, what happened?
Todd Kalish instructed Wisconsin's Lake Michigan Committee member to decline their lake trout allotment in the 2016 plants, instead opting to go with added Chinook equivalents in their stocking. Chinook equivalents are calculated from current food conversion at length data on species specific basis. This cut lake trout stocking of 10" juveniles by 27 percent and they cut brown trout by 12%. Michigan had cut Fall fingerlings, but has also moved to cut some juvenile lake trout stocking in the southern end of the basin.
The weak 2013 year class of wild-origin fish pulled the Chinook stock down significantly, since the 50% plant reduction was made in spring smolt plants in 2013. Chinook wild-origin stocks have built back over the last five years to begin to approach their 3.8-5million smolts per year average production in Lake Michigan. Lake Huron wild-origin fish still continue to swim over into Lake Michigan, returning each fall to aggregate off natal streams. Over the last two years, Age II and Age III wild-origin fish have not made the trip over to Lake Michigan in high numbers....but fresh wound classification evidence via sea lamprey indicates Lake Huron Chinook are suffering higher sea lamprey wounding rates that lake trout in that basin, so the absence in April-August in Lake Michigan may be driven by a larger mortality component.
Wild origin Chinook in Lake Michigan compose 68-71% of the open lake stock, depending on whose estimates you embrace from CWT data. Lake trout stock proportion that is wild-origin, arrayed by basin segment are: 36% south to 2% north(tribal commercial fishing is the largest mortality component in the north). Basin wide 30% of the lake trout stock is wild. Lake Huron lake trout stocks are declining in several basin sub-sections, but are now 65% wild origin fish.
CORA biologists have made much of the expanding lake herring stock in northeastern Lake Michigan, immediately launching a commercial fishery for them. Dave Warner was able to sample three of these fish with the mid-water trawl that they haul concomitantly with the sonar array to ground-truth their echo signals from sample targets...after thirty-some transects in both Traverse Bay and northeastern Lake Michigan. If you listen to the Odowa Band fishery biologist, "these fish will be the savior of the Great Lakes, post alewife stock crash."
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