December 1, 1995
TO: Wisconsin Federation of Great Lakes Sport Fishing Clubs, Wisconsin Commercial Fisheries, Great Lakes Study Committee, Lake Michigan Commercial Fishing Board, and other interested individuals
FROM: Bill Horns, Great Lakes Specialist
SUBJECT: Fisheries Issues Pertaining to Lake Michigan
This is the second of a series of occasional memos about Lake Michigan fisheries issues. If you have questions about these issues, or about any others, please call me at 608.266.8782, or send me a note.
Good spawning runs. This was an outstanding year for coho returns to spawning weirs in Wisconsin and Michigan. We collected 1.5 million eggs, of which roughly 1.0 million were taken at weirs on the Kewaunee and Root rivers and 500,000 were brought in from Michigan. From those eggs we will produce 100,000 fingerlings for stocking in the fall of 1996 and 398,000 yearlings for stocking in the spring of 1997. Runs were good in both the Kewaunee and Root Rivers. The eggs are being temporarily housed at the Kettle Moraine Springs Hatchery and appear to be in excellent condition. All were water hardened in a thiamine solution to reduce the risk of Early Mortality Syndrome. Bag limit returns to five. The daily bag limit for coho caught in Lake Michigan will return to five for the 1996 season.
Current commercial trawling regulations are designed to allow a commercial harvest of smelt while minimizing the incidental harvest of alewives. Our philosophy is that alewives should be reserved for use as food by salmon and trout. Under our current rules trawling is prohibited in Lake Michigan during summer months and prohibited in Green Bay during hours of daylight. The trawlers have argued that they can trawl efficiently for smelt during the summer in Lake Michigan without unduly harming the alewife population. During 1994 and 1995, Dr. Fred Copes of the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point conducted a study, with support from the Le Clair family of Two Rivers, of summer trawling in Lake Michigan. The study addresses not only the impact of trawling on alewives, but also on chubs. We are now being asked to review our trawling regulations in light of that study. If you have an interest in the issue, please plan to attend a public meeting at 7:00 p.m., December 21 (1995), in the Wisconsin Training Room at Lakeshore Technical College, Cleveland, WI. (take exit #137 off Highway I-43). At this meeting we will present data from the study and invite your comments.
Continued poor reproduction in Lake Michigan. This year was the sixth consecutive year of poor yellow perch reproduction in Lake Michigan. The situation in Green Bay is somewhat brighter; according to Brian Belonger the abundance of young-of-year yellow perch was up a little in 1995, but still below the long-term average. Declining harvests. Restrictive sport and commercial rules promulgated by all four states in 1995, in combination with a diminishing and aging yellow perch population, resulted in substantially lower harvests from Lake Michigan, excluding Green Bay, in 1995 than in 1994. In Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan the sport harvest was approximately 270,000 fish in 1995, up slightly from 1994 but down substantially from the harvest of 844,000 yellow perch in 1992. For pier and shore anglers the catch was down sharply, from 60,000 in 1994 to 23,000 in 1995, but for anglers fishing from boats the harvest jumped from 168,000 to 200,000. The increased harvest by boaters reflects favorable weather conditions, not an increase in yellow perch abundance; assessment netting continues to show a declining population. Between January 1 and October 28, 1995, the reported commercial harvest of yellow perch from Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan was 47% less than the reported harvest for the same period in 1994: 227,321 pounds in 1994 and 121,216 pounds in 1995. No further rule changes planned. Wisconsin Fish Chief, Lee Kernen, met in November with his counterparts from Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. Despite the continuing yellow perch problem in Lake Michigan, the Chiefs agreed to not propose more restrictive sport or commercial harvest limits at this time.
Hopeful news. During 1995 the production of young yellow perch in the St. Louis River (including Duluth/Superior Harbor) was exceptionally high despite the abundant population of ruffe in that area. Cruise reports from the National Biological Service also indicate increasing numbers of older yellow perch in the St. Louis River, and the walleye population is healthy. All of this suggests that yellow perch and walleye may not be as strongly affected by ruffe as had been feared. Now found in Lake Huron. Ruffe were discovered this summer in Lake Huron, near Alpena. It is virtually certain that they were transported there in ballast from Duluth/Superior. Because one of the specimens was substantially larger than the holes in the ballast compartment intake screens, it is thought that ruffe may have been in Lake Huron for two or more years. Ruffe have not yet been found in Lake Michigan. Distribution. Ruffe occupy a wide range of lake and river habitats. Ruffe in lakes occupy deep cold water, as well as warmer water near shore. They have been found at depths exceeding 130 feet in Lake Superior and at depths exceeding 250 feet elsewhere. During spring and early summer lake-dwelling ruffe probably move toward shore to spawn, with some entering river mouths and some remaining in the lake. A realistic control philosophy. A realistic control strategy includes steps to reduce the likelihood of further transport of ruffe in ballast water and to reduce the likelihood that ruffe will be collected in commercial bait harvests and transported out of the Great Lakes into inland waters. It is unrealistic to suppose that the spread of ruffe can be controlled by the application of chemical toxicants; ruffe simply do not cooperate by aggregating where they can be conveniently killed. This view was supported recently by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission's Council of Lake Committees (CLC), representing all state and provincial management jurisdictions on the Great Lakes. The CLC recommended, among other things, that the national Ruffe Control Committee abandon its range reduction action plan, a plan that called for attempting to control the spread of ruffe by eliminating populations in river mouths. The Ruffe Control Committee, which has developed the Ruffe Control Program to slow the spread of ruffe in North America, accepted that recommendation.
All reports say that 1995 was the best year for chinook fishing in a long time. Not only were catch rates up, but the younger chinooks appeared robust. Cohos and steelhead returning to our weirs were in excellent condition as well. The lake has changed a lot in the last 15 years, so don't count on a return to the fishery of the early 1980's, but I think we can be cautiously optimistic for next year.
We have a new Salmon Stamp report/plan in preparation. It should be out early in 1996. It will give you a summary of how Stamp revenues were spent during the 1995 fiscal year and out line how revenues will be spent during the 1996-97 biennium.