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The 45,000 Indiana will be getting and you actually catching one of those as a 4 year old is probably about the same as winning the daily lotto. They are better off saving the money and giving salmon welfare vouchers to go get a few fillets at the grocery store. Truthfully, the survival rate of a stocking amount that low and those fish actually reaching maturity (between the cormorants and predation) are some statistics I'd love to see produced. I get the old adage that "it's better than nothing" but let's face it, it's bleak.

Everyone has been seeing what Wisconsin fishing looks like right now. But how many are aware of what SU Wisconsin does differently then the rest of the states that stock fish. To avoid the predation from birds and others Wisconsin has adopted the use of net pens. They hold there fish in the net pens for some time and then the fish are released at night so the birds get minimal predation. Wisconsin has always been ahead of the game and really are doing great things getting their fish a great start. SU of Illinois has constantly approached their state about adopting the same only to be turned down time after time.
The DNR of Wisconsin has a asked the SU group to use the nets pens for the brown trout stocking now after seeing for thereselves how well the pens have worked for them and how low the die off has been. There are better ways to just drop a hose over a bridge and start pumping fish. Some of our fish have died in recent years in Indiana as the pump trucks aerator failed over night. clearly there are other alternatives that have been tested and do work well.

Looks to me like they just suspended chinook stocking altogether for the next 3 years at a minimum, beginning in 17, till they reassess predictor/prey balance, and will be increasing steelhead by 45 to 50k......

chicago.suntimes.com/sports/indiana-chin...nd-stocking-chinook/

Well that's an interesting article...thanks for sharing. At least we are trading silver for silver, so there is some compromise there. If I'm reading that correctly, they are putting the kibosh on the original 45,000 kings we were all discussing previously in this post, and are now replacing them with steelies? Or do we get 1 last stocking of kings this year and then the steelies from here on out?

Looks like they are cutting 550,000 lake trout too. Would be nice to see that number grow, and increase the bag limit to 5. I understand they are "native" to Lake Michigan, but unnaturally flooding the lake with several million of them annually isn't "natural".

My positive side hopes for a couple of mild winters, with really high alewife reproduction rates to accompany these king cuts. Should lead to bigger coho and steelies while we wait for king stocking to resume.

Agreed, that the 550,000 laker reduction is a good start. The word natural when looking at lake trout in Lake Michigan is a word to use loosely. What most do not know is how many different strain a being stocked as the original lakers were wiped out. Some that live very deep and never go shallow and others that we catch on this end are considered shallow water lake trout but the strains are not natural to the lake. You have the Seneca, Klondike, ParrySound, Siscowet,Lewis Lake, Apostle Island,Green Lake,Isle Royal the Marquette. The Siscowet is usually in water deeper then 300ft.

Also the 500,00 laker cut is not a Indiana cut, it comes from the lake wide count

So does that mean are stamp will be cut in half since it's just a trout stamp now? So the dnr plan to have another meet in August to talk about it. We don't have a say in it so what's the point the dnr and the feds are going to do what they want no matter what we think. What percentage of those fish are actually stocked here, most or all will be stocked in St. Joe. Have we not learned from the other great lakes crashes that the lake trout will be around no matter what the outcome, so if they stock none for the next 3 yrs and with the king cuts that's should give the alewives a chance . Thing that gets me is no one knows how many lakers are in the lake right now and how that affects the perch population? Mike

I not sure its such a great deal, over 100,000 less fish will be stocked in Indiana next year than was stocked this year.