Club elections, pizza and discussion of your Lake Michigan fishery are
on tap for Wednesday's (Nov. 11) Hoosier Coho Club meeting at Skwiat
American Legion Post, 121 Skwiat American Legion Ave., Michigan City.
Your current board of directors has accomplished a lot in the last few
years including starting a successful youth program (Smolts Division),
continuing great tournaments and building up the treasury. However. your
club needs help (· · · – – – · · ·). Please get involved.
Dan Messina (dmessina@adsnet) has volunteered to be the election chairman.
Contact him pronto or be at Wednesday's meeting. There are openings for
President, vice president, secretary, treasurer and a trio of three-year
trustees.
Call it a collapse, crash or temporary setback (hopefully), but it is time
to close the coffin on the 2015 Lake Michigan chinook fishery. The worst
returns on record were not just an Indiana problem but a lake-wide
phenomenon.
Skamania steelhead returns were not much better than the chinook.
In addition to terrible fishing during the steelhead and salmon "returns,"
the Indiana DNR had to scramble to get eggs (pun intended) and brood
stock.
Indiana has a goal of securiing 600 Skamania steelhead for brood stock
each year. During June, July, August and September they were unable to
collect the quota on Trail Creek and the St. Joseph River combined,
although they believe a sufficient number were obtained.
On Oct. 1, biologist Ben Dickinson e-mailed; "We did not reach 600. Cut
off brood stock collection to avoid contaminating with winter-run
strain. According to Bodine (hatchery staff), the sex-ration was
favorable and we should have enough females to reach our stocking goal,
barring unforeseen complications."
Indiana receives chinook eggs from Michigan and that became a scary
predicament when an insufficient salmon return to the Little Manistee weir
/egg-collection site was realized. Your Indiana biologists were on top of
the situation and made arrangements and a weekend road trip to Wisconsin
to secure chinook eggs. Michigan turned to the Swan River on Lake Huron to
collect enough to meet its' needs.
As of this writing, coho egg collection was way behind schedule as those
salmon returned in sufficient numbers to the Platte River but were not in
"ripe" condition.
Bottom line is lots of weird stuff is going on in the lake and most of it
is bad. Plenty more to discuss, including a couple positives, at
Wednesday's meeting.
Here's a 10-2-15 News-Dispatch story rehashing the 2015 chinook dilemma;
Few young alewives equal few Chinook
Seems pretty simple, but it is the best explanation for the horrendous,
Lake Michigan salmon returns in 2015.
Research biologists told us alewife hatches and survival were extremely
poor in 2013 and 2014 (see Ludington work shop,
among other instances), but nobody realized
how bad until the "chickens came home to roost" with the recently
completed fall Chinook run.
Local fishing was the worst I've seen in 40 years. I can count on one
hand and one finger the number of mature kings I've heard caught by
anglers I know in Trail Creek or the Michigan City harbor since Labor Day
At the Little Manistee weir in Michigan, where every returning salmon is
tallied, a paltry 386 Chinook had come home as of Thursday (Oct. 1). That
is way down from a previous all-time low of 2,781 in 2014.
Of relevance, returns to the Little Manistee topped 14,000 in 2011 and
12,000 in 2012, which coincide with the last respectable alewife hatch of
2010.
Basic history is Chinook are stocked at six-months of age as three-inch
fingerlings and return to planting sites (or natal streams in the case of
"wild" salmon, which are at least 50 percent of the total Chinook in
Lake Michigan) three and one-half years later.
At some point in their young lives, Chinook switch from zooplankton and
insects to minnows to continue growing. Small mouths need small food,
which is mostly alewives in the Lake Michigan ecosystem.
While anglers (often angrily) speculated where the mature kings were this
fall (and spring and summer), the most likely answer is they starved to
death years previously.
The next conclusion is stocking numbers (and natural reproduction) really
don't matter if Chinook can't get past the bottleneck of the right size
prey being unavailable at a certain age.
Indiana biologist Ben Dickinson offered a bit of hope this week.
"Conversations with the USGS indicate they have surveyed more
young-of-year alewives this August and September than they had in 2013 and
2014," Dickinson said. "It remains to be seen how they survive and they
(Feds) won't have any hard data until the numbers are crunched and
calculations completed, which is usually in March."
Dickinson offered more good news as he made a run to Wisconsin last week
to secure enough Chinook eggs to meet Indiana's stocking goals.
There had been great concern when the poor return to the Little Manistee
weir started to unfold that there might not be enough Chinook eggs
available. Michigan collects their quota as well as eggs for a contract
with Indiana from the LM site.
Fortunately, Dickinson and the Indiana DNR were on top of the situation.
Michigan has subsequently met its needs by pulling eggs from the Swan
River hatchery on Lake Huron.
Stocking Goals
Salmonid stocking targets for 2016 and beyond for all of Lake Michigan
with Indiana in parenthesis are;
Chinook 1.7 million (200,000), Coho 2.5 million (270,000), Steelhead 1.9
million (505,000), Brown Trout 1.4 million (50,000) and Lake Trout 3.4
million (92,000). Of note, both Chinook and lake trout enjoy substantial
natural reproduction, which adds to the fishery.
