King stocking cuts

[SteveO]

Was at the Green Bay meeting for cutting the stocking of Kings by 60+ %.
Was there with all 32 people .. 6 I knew personally

32 people

It's not to late to add your comment to this .. Go to the web page and read up if you care to, then at the bottom of the page there is a email address to send comments ..

dnr.wi.gov/topic/fishing/lakemichigan/LakeMichiganSalmonandTroutMeetings.html

[saugeye]

32 people is all??? With so much at stake I thought it would be packed. Typical sportsmen. Talk tough on the Internet. When it comes down to doing something they are a no show

[saugeye]

Just gave my 2 cents via email. If I didn't live so far away I would have been at the meeting.

[anchorman]

Tough for a lot of guys to make it when it's right in the middle of prime fishing season. Think they did that on purpose....
Also, I think the earlier meeting on Monday was much better attended.

[getchasome]

I thought the meeting went as well as it could. Hopefully they actually use some of our comment/suggestions to provide a quality fishey for years to come. Do you think people want lake trout reduced SteveO??😀

[saugeye]

I think that the committee that handles Lake Michigan fisheries should at least wait until this years assessment of alewife abundance is complete.

[saugeye]

Strange how one very small tribe can control the future of the lake

[BFG]

There is a very good thread on Michigansportsman.com in the General Discussion forum of Big Lake Fishing that discusses the 2017 proposed Chinook cuts. A MDNR fisheries biologist is responding to questions (and taking a helluva lot of heat) from members. If you guys remember "Thirsty Whaler" from GLA...he goes by "Cork Dust" on that site. He is once again trying to show that he predicted all of this years ago while working for the MDNR yet nobody would listen. In his opinion, the only hope of having any type of Chinook fishery into the future is to stop stocking Chinooks NOW...for several years. Jay Wesley is the MDNR biologist who is posting...and he provides a lot of good background as to why things are being done the way they are for now.

Along with that discussion, there is a lot of "fish envy" on the part of the Michigan guys because they all believe that their released fish (and those naturally reproduced) end up on the Wisconsin side of the lake. Now...I remember last season pretty much sucking for anyone that fished Port Washington, so IMO these things will probably cycle that way for awhile. Fishing has been poor on that side this year, just like it was on the WI side last year.

My take on it is that if the DNR does nothing, we will end up with what happened in Lake Huron, which is basically no kings of which to speak. Their solution back in the early 2000's was to continue to stock kings...and the fishery completely crashed.

The naturals are obviously doing well, given as many as are being caught. The lake trout stocking is a completely different animal, and IMO from what I have read there isn't a whole lot that can and/or will be done until the Consent Decree is re-evaluated in 2020. Lakers are apparently reproducing in the southern part of the lake, but at the same time are decimating the round goby population. Funny how this is all working because the goby is an invasive, just like the alewive.

I know some on here have said that coho and steelhead plants should also be reduced, but the cohos at least are in the system for less time than are kings and they eat less than kings (they don't get as big, nor require as much food) so their impact on the biomass is less significant. I feel for the charters and businesses along the lake...kings are what draw people to the lake.

Cutting king stocking may not be the popular choice, but what are other viable solutions? Cut cohos? Cut rainbows? Cut browns? Cutting kings has the fastest and most dramatic impact since they eat so much every day.

As mentioned, they can't stop the lakers from being stocked....so keep that in mind. We can complain and bark all we want about that, but unless some huge political action is taken, those lakers are going to continue to be dumped into the lake on an annual basis. If the lakers eat all the gobies, then they will undoubtedly turn to alewives.

Honestly speaking, I believe that Chinooks will be in the lake forever, but only at a carrying capacity that is determined by Mother Nature, not some fisheries biologist or salmon club. Some years will be better than others, as the fishery will become totally dependent upon the returns from the spawn in the MI and Canadian rivers from 2-4 years prior.

The mussels caused this problem, along with (and people hate to admit this) the Clean Water Act. This is yet another reason that I had a replica done of Hunter's fish, and will get one done of mine from last year as well. The king fishery will become a thing of the past, for the most part and there isn't a damn thing the DNR or a fishing club can do about it.

It sucks....it truly does suck.

[saugeye]

That's why I mentioned the Lake Michigan sportsmen need to get going on this at the federal level. Try to work with the tribe to get lake trout stocking reduced at least for the mean time. The state level has no say in the lake trout mass stocking. And for the record, most lake trout that I have cleaned over the years were stuffed with alewives

[BFG]

Doing more reading it seems that what lakers have in them depends on a couple things: 1. Age and 2. location

The older the laker, the more alewives they eat. A lake trout that lives in the southern portion of the lake is more likely to have a diet heavy on round gobies as opposed to alewives. The further north you go, the more alewives you see in lake trout. Information from Jay...in that thread.

What would happen if all stocking was ceased for 2-3 years? That's what another group is saying....quit planting fish altogether. Let the lake determine whether or not alewives and gobies will remain. Of course, that doesn't meet the needs of the lake economies...they would for sure take a devastating hit, just like those along Lake Huron did in 2003.

And from what I can gather, it's the Feds...not the Tribes, that are over-stocking the lake trout. The Tribes have a catch quota each year, and they use some sort of formula to determine the amount of fish they need to stock to replace the number of fish taken (quota is in # of fish).

Cork Dust brings up another interesting point in that he mentions a University of *ichigan doctoral study that looked at the predation rates of Chinook salmon in MI rivers by smallmouth bass, northern pike, and walleye....interesting indeed. Perhaps we will see a spike in walleye/pike stocking in a few select (i.e. Pere Marquette, Manistee, St. Joe, Grand) *ichigan rivers in the near future? Why? Hmm...let's think about that...

Ah well, conspiracies be damned...good luck fishing boys.