From the 4-1-16 Michigan City News-Dispatch
Outdoors: A mixed bag of news
No fooling, there was some good news to come out of the scientific community's "State of the Lake" meetings held in Milwaukee last week.
Mostly, it was more grim news about chinook salmon and baitfish in Lake Michigan. However, reports of a super crop of young-of-the-year perch continue to be positively stunning.
Indiana biologist Ben Dickinson summed up the perch presentation in an e-mail:
"The general trend (in young-of-year perch assessments) was way up."
"Illinois saw its best ever, Indiana saw second best since 1985, Wisconsin and Michigan saw a big uptick as well, but not as much as Illinois/Indiana.
"Illinois beach seining averaged around 175 fish per haul, in 2010 (the last big year class) it averaged about 100 fish/haul, and in the 1980s they saw mostly 25-50 fish per haul. Last year was the best they have ever seen."
Of course, its a treacherous, multi-year journey from one and one-half inch babies to keeper-sized eaters, but for the first time in a long time there is some uplifting news about Lake Michigan perch.
According to data provided by Tom Lauer, PhD, Ball State University, who has coordinated Indiana's Lake Michigan perch studies since the 1980s, it probably will take four to five years for hatchlings to grow to eight inches or better.
Lauer mentioned perch, like most other Lake Michigan fish, are growing slower in recent years, due primarily to quagga mussels filtering nutrients out of the bottom of the food chain.
Questioned how the big perch hatch happened after decades in the doldrums, Dickinson wrote:
"Environmental conditions just lined up correctly. Quality of eggs tends to be better in cold winters. And food availability lines up better for larval perch in some years over others. That’s a big part of why perch recruitment is boom or bust. If the perch hatch coincides with a plankton bloom, they prosper. But if the perch hatch happens before plankton become abundant, the year class is usually a bust, because they don’t have anything to eat.
"All the upper Great Lakes tend to see their walleye/perch recruitment go in coinciding cycles. Erie saw a great hatch as well in 2015. For further reading, there’s a great article at
news.osu.edu/news/2015/07/15/yellow-perch/."
The other positive note on Lake Michigan, and this is just an early-season observation, is coho are a bit bigger than average and nearly twice the size they were last April.
If you recall, several top boats weighed limits of coho averaging 1.6 pounds during the Buffalo Bill contest in mid-April 2015. They're already averaging three this spring with a few plumpers pushing four pounds.
Whether its due more to a mild winter or more food around, the plus-size of coho is usually mirrored by the other salmonids. Hopefully, the coho didn't fatten up at the expense of the bumper crop of young perch.
Assessments of chinook and their preferred prey fish, the alewife, continued on a downward spiral.
Alewife estimate of .5 kiloton was the lowest since surveys started in 1973. Total prey fish (chubs, shiners, gobies, smelt, etc., in addition to alewives) count was four kilotons, also the lowest on record.
Worse, there was virtually zero alewife recruitment in 2013 and 2014. Last year's alewive hatch was better, but only 25 percent of the long-term average.
"There are almost no 2010 alewives left, primarily, adult alewives are 2012 fish," biologist Brian Briedert said earlier this winter.
Still, there is a possibility alewives could pull off a perch-like miracle hatch. Again, they're severely depressed, but 450 tons (.5 kt) of them are still out there.
"Alewives could pull off a big year class if conditions align," Dickinson wrote.
The chinook population crashed last year, evidenced by some of the poorest returns to spawning streams. They were also undersized.
"Poor survival of hatchery fish, poor recruitment of wild fish in 2013, stocking reductions, reduced forage base, two brutal winters in a row… take your pick," Dickinson e-mailed. "Lots of issues coming together for a perfect storm. Baby chinooks don’t survive very well unless there is a good supply of small alewives. The 2013 and 2014 year classes of alewives were very very poor, so survival of young chinooks was also poor."
The 2016 chinook fishing outlook is also not good. Stocking reductions of 50 percent and poor recruitment of wild fish due to drought conditions will impact the numbers of mature, 3-year old salmon in the lake in 2016.
To save the alewives and inherently save chinook, additional stocking cuts are likely. Lake trout stockings are already being scaled back.
“The Lake Committee recently worked with the USFWS to cut lake trout stocking in Lake Michigan by more than a half million fish lakewide,” Dickinson wrote.
50th Anniversary
Coho salmon were originally stocked in the Platte River in Michigan on April 2, 1966. It took brilliant, outside-the-box thinking to bring Pacific salmon to the Great Lakes and ignite a multi-billion dollar fishery. Chinook were brought in later, and lake trout restoration has been relentless.
Now, the fishery is spiraling downward, due in part, to over-predation of alewives by chinook and lake trout. Imagine how spectacular the fishery might continue to be today if coho salmon were the apex predator.
Did that really happen?
Seems Indiana Governor Mike Pence and the Indiana legislature know more about deer and deer hunting, and rifles for deer hunting than the professionals within the Department of Natural Resources. House Bill 1231 was signed by the governor last week and makes legal the use of .243, .30-.30, .30-06 and. 308 caliber rifles for the 2016 season.
Extensive public information gathering sessions were held by the DNR regarding rifle-hunting for deer last year, and ultimately rejected by the DNR and a majority of hunters.
Legislators establishing their own fish and wildlife rules is a slap-in-the-face to Indiana sportsmen and the DNR.
