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Thanks for the update Blood Run.So correct me if I'm seeing this wrong. The Huron Kings are said not to be coming over to lake Michigan anymore. Approx. 700,000 kings not coming this way. The lake is going to increase lake wide by 455,000. so lake wide are we going to still be shorter by approx. 300,000 kings. If the lake had no problems carrying the Huron Kings and they are not coming anymore then it seems that we are going backwards in lake wide king stocks.
Thanks for setting the truth on lake trout. Jullians reef should not be getting more USFWS lakers,due to natural reproduction. Just north of Jullians ,Waukegan reef is also seeing natural spawning lakers
Indiana is as I mentioned before a OPF state. We catch other peoples fish coho,kings and have no return for ourselves, other then steelhead. I believe Indiana is the source for those eggs, for other states.

You are correct for the most part. There is disagreement between the Lake Huron and Lake Michigan basin coordinators. Lake Michigan claims the kings still are swimming over and feeding, therefore must be counted in the predator prey calculations for Lake Michigan. The Lake Huron coordinator says they are not, and therefore can justify continuing to stock kings in Lake Huron because he believes he has the bait to support those kings....the rub is, Lake Huron cannot produce a predator prey ratio, nor can they produce a valid prey assessment to verify their claims. Stocking of kings in Lake Huron is purely political right now, general belief is that Lake Huron cannot support their own chinook due to lack of prey base.. Therefore Lake Huron should not be stocking any chinook, at least outside of the tribal stocking at Nunns creek (disagree if you will) mandated by tribal agreements with Michigan.

The net of it is...Indiana is getting the short end of the stick. In reality, all 700,000 of Lake Huron kings are in fact mostly fed by Lake Michigan alewife for the majority of their lives. The beneficiaries of those fish are mostly Wisconsin, and other northern portions of the lake. It would be nice for Indiana to call out this discrepancy and insist that at least a healthy portion of those fish to be stocked in Indiana waters...being that we (Lake Michigan) both feed them for most of their lives AND have to account for them in our predator prey modeling (which means we have to stock less chinook in Lake Michigan to account for Lake Huron swimover...i.e. some port in Indiana could stock more but has to not stock at all) Indiana anglers do not benefit at all from Lake Huron chinook stocking, they simply do not migrate down and contribute to the fishery in the south (based upon CWT data).

Will Indiana call out the discrepancy ? Or will Indiana not say anything to that effect, in order to not disturb the political relationship between both states as it relates to stocking agreements of other silver fish?

The south end would be an ideal location for increased stocking of chinook (i.e. taking them away from Lake Huron = no net increase in Lake Michigan chinook stocking).. Low probability of natural reproduction in too-warm and unsuitable spawning habitat (i.e. would not increase wild numbers) and a plethora of bait to support such a population. Balls and balls of bait all season long down in the south...very few silver after they migrate north to their stocking/natal streams.

The south end deserves a late summer and fall silver fishery, the economic impact and angler participation is profound when it exists.

Fished MC yesterday from sunrise to 3:00 pm searching offshore for staging Kings 75 - 145 ft. 11 rod spread running 225 -350 coppers, 3 riggers cheated and 2 wire divers. Spoons, meat rigs, J plug, FF's. Occasionally marked suspended bait balls but NO takers on Kings. Radio chatter said Trout were being taken deep but no silvers. Indiana doesn't have any natural reproduction that I'm aware of so no increase in stockings means we should continue expecting the same. Ended the day with 1 - 11 lb. steelhead on standard modified green dolphin slider pinned 10' above base lure at 54'. We released one 9" coho and 1 trout. All caught on the same rod. Should have fished for perch.

I didn’t slip my boat the the last half of 2 seasons due to no returns. I know there’s lake trout but I don’t fish for them. I don’t really care about kings, I just want some kind of fall return as stated in previous post. Why can’t Indiana get a good number of coho stocking enough to have some fall action since Indiana in some eyes isn’t Suitable for kings as some say (but was years ago?). Fact is if indiana and Illinois doesn’t stock any fish we would have the same fishery we have now, plus lake trout, now that they are Reproducing naturally. That would save me some money on a stamp or give my money to Wisconsin and Michigan since they’re doing all the stocking. Mike

Great posts bloodrun. Pretty much all ports south of Grand Haven get nothing other than a small revolving plant of every other year. For example, South Haven got a small plant last year and St. Joe got a few this year. Not nearly enough to support a summer or fall fishery. All of the charters just pound the lakers(mostly small) to a limit and go in. Catching more than two silvers is a great day in South Haven since May.
If there is no natural production in the southern ports and the fish will either be caught or out of the system in 4 years anyway I don’t see why these ports shouldn’t get a reasonable annual plant to support some kind of king fishery like Wisconsin does.

I think we do get decent coho returns. The problem is they just shoot upstream. With the few kings we’ve had the last couple years it seems like you have to make about 10serious trips to get one night where you have a couple bites.

Grandhaven south it is sad for silver fish. I've only heard of the random silver, most charters have been pounding the trout and perch. The spring fishing till about early june has been amazing past 2 yrs then they are gone for good it seems.

bloodrun wrote:

Indiana is not slated to get any of the 450k increase in Chinook. Michigan is only slated for about 150k. The rest goes to Wisconsin.

This is incorrect per preliminary discussions I have been informed of. But we obviously won't know until the lake committee makes their final decision. Indiana is not going to be ok (nor should any state) with a lakewide stocking increase that does not result in ALL states getting some type of increase. Frankly, if there is any increase, anything outside of every state getting at least some increase would be bullshit, not to be too blunt.

Indiana anglers do not benefit at all from Lake Huron chinook stocking, they simply do not migrate down and contribute to the fishery in the south (based upon CWT data).

Actually based on the CWT data, during the spring and summer fishery, Indiana anglers catch just as many Lake Huron kings as they do Indiana kings. Obviously that's not true in the fall, since all the Lake Huron fish are not down here, but rather way up north/in Huron

I've made plenty of posts in the past debunking the "Indiana gets the short end of the stick" argument when it comes to silver fish. We stock more per area than any other state.

Nature has given us the short end of the stick in terms of survival. Even our coho returns have dwindled significantly. Steelhead are about the only thing that have not tanked in survival, and have been giving us good returns to our terminal fisheries

I'm also not interested in rehashing the whole lake huron thing - it's been beat to death. That is a decision in which the lake committees for both lakes will have to decide. There's no playbook for that, I don't think there's ever been a situation like this in the history of Great Lakes management.

IF those Huron kings that mostly are supported by Lake Michigan forage (fully agree with Bloodrun, hard to argue with this given all available evidence) are moved from Lake Huron over to Lake Michigan (pointless to speculate until it would/might happen) then it certainly makes a lot of sense in my eyes for them to be distributed among the southern basin. I fully agree that since Lake Michigan is including the Lake Huron kings in the predator prey model that guides Lake Michigan management, that it sure would be nice if they were *actually* Lake Michigan fish rather than planted in Huron. But, again - nothing I can do about that until there is a decision hashed out between the lake committees.


I have lots of ideas to increase fall return in Indiana and hopefully they can come to fruition both politically and biologically in the near future. We do plant quite a few cohos, but the problem is that outside of the St. Joe River stocking, they are fall fingerlings and they have not been surviving as well as they did in the past. I would like to really shake up our stocking program and be able to stock coho as spring yearlings, like we switched to on the St. Joe. That has paid huge dividends and would likely do so for our other stocking locations. But it will require some significant changes to our stocking program. And it would mean stocking *fewer* cohos than we do currently, but they would survive much better and give us a better overall return.

In addition to that, I'd really like to get back to stocking more kings and making sure they can be stocked at 3 ports again. But, I'm sure no matter what there will be people upset by whichever course of management is decided upon

Thank you for the response Ben. When you talk about changing the coho stocking to possibly help us and you say less fish. Theoretically how many less coho and what do you figure the mortality rate is with them going in as fall fingerlings like we are doing now. It’s very possible a few thousand less fish could mean thousands more 3 years later correct? Thoughts on brown trout that we put in and no one seems to hardly ever catch?

The way I look at all this is we get a great spring fishery but a horrible fall fishery. It is what it is. Of course it would be great to improve but it's better then nothing.

Think about the places up north that dont get silver until months after us.