TOPIC:

Fished port to port Saturday for team Portage. First I'll say it was well run and the after party was a blast. Thanks to Stevens marine for sponsoring, and Jeff for leading team Portage. I hope it'll become an annual thing. 

Fishing was the slowest I can remember for early June. Lots of bait, caught more alewifes than salmon. Started in 70 fow out west in the 18s worked to 110-115 fish and back to the 10s into 65 fow. Ran 12 rods and went 3 for 5. Lost our first 2 fish double kings. One wrapped himself after a couple runs and 1 played chicken with the boat and got off. Heart breaking. Went 3 for 3 to end the day on coho. Alewifes out there right now are magnum size. 

 

One thing is for sure: I can't remember a time when I hooked as many alewife on lures as I have this year trolling so far.  It's been a LONG time since I can remember doing this every trip, which I believe is a reflection about just how much bait is truly out there this year.  Is this the sign of a significant rebound?  I hope so.  

I'll also say this: there are plenty of fish out there too, and you are marking them and can see the big hooks on your graph - but do they have so much real food offerings that they are hesitant to eat baits lately?  That I'm not sure, but I am sure they are not hurting for real food sources!

We hooked more alewives than caught coho on Saturday.  I remember going to an info session last year where a study on bait fish in our area concluded that though there were more alewives than there were a few years ago, these alewives weren’t necessarily old enough to be extremely successful spawners.  This year trip after trip we are snagging alewives after going through bait balls.  These alewives are just as long  as a flasher.  Bait balls used to be our cue for a hit or hungry fish but this year they’ve basically meant nothing for us.  

I’d love to hear someone who is qualified speak on the current alewife situation on our end of the lake this year.  Our observations are data, but it’s very possible that we looking through a microscope with too small of a sample size.  

Start Paddling:
I'd say your characterization of more alewife, but younger alewife is a pretty good concise summary of the lakewide situation right now. 



edit: it's not letting it start at the specified time, go to 59:23 into the presentation to see the image I am referencing 

This is the start of a presentation about the 2021 state of Lake Michigan preyfish from the USGS forage fish expert Dave Warner (he runs the acoustic survey). It's a good presentation, if you have the time and interest to watch the whole thing I really recommend it.

Note that almost all the fish captured are age 0, age 1, or age 2. A few Age 3s, and very few older than that. But, there are some. A few years ago IIRC they didn't even catch any older than 3 at all. Period.

Alewife are not sexually mature until Age 2 at earliest. The survey used to get a lot more fish in the Age 4, 5, 6, 7, and even a few 8 year old fish. This is (errr...was) a good thing because an 8 year old alewife had at least 5, probably 6 spawning opportunities over the course of their lifetime

Whereas if all fish are dying (read: eaten) by Age 3 or maybe 4, that is maybe 2 spawning opportunities for each fish.  Much less of a stable situation. If an alewife spawns once or twice in its lifetime before it dies, and if either one of those years happens to be poor conditions for larval survival, that entire yearclass of alewife contributed very little to the future bait population. That is the dire situation the lake was in 6-8 years ago. 2 bust yearclasses in a row could sink the lake. Thankfully we avoided that, it was a close call. The extremely poor alewife spawns of 2013 and 2014 produced some really lean years. 


(go to 56:52 to see the graph)
Note the right graph - bad spawns in 2013 and 2014. We were really on the edge.   But recently, we had a pretty poor yearclass of alewife in 2019 and it didn't sink the fishery - likely in large part because by reducing predation pressure leading to alewife living longer than they were a few years ago, we've built some resilience into the system

It's sort of like having a savings account. If you are living paycheck to paycheck (not enough "savings" of older alewife), one unexpected bill (a bad alewife spawn in this analogy) will put you in debt.   

But if you have a robust savings account (older alewife) you can weather a couple unexpected expenses without getting in bad financial straits 

I would say that we're seeing lots of encouraging signs (more bait, larger bait, more yearclasses) but we're not to the point yet where we feel very confident that we have a robust situation that will persist even if there are some big bumps in the road ahead


One final thought -  note that when the acoustic survey is performed (August) 1 year old alewife were about 100-140 millimeters (4 to 5.5 inches). And then pretty much anything 2 years or older is in that 140 mm to 200 mm range (5.5 to 8 inches) size class. There is considerable overlap, and outside of being confident that a <2.5 inch alewife is Age 0, you cannot tell an alewife age from the length due to the fast growth and substantial overlap in length at age. So, while seeing larger bait is certainly a great sign (they're finding enough to eat, growing well, have more calories per individual etc) , it also doesn't mean they are older fish. 

That's how it was years ago. Those are definitely big enough to spawn!

Thanks for the report!

Sure would be nice to see some evidence of spawning that has produced young Ale's. Cannot remember how long it has been to see the fish here in Indiana water that was stuffed with young.

I see half way up the lake where they are seeing some but not here.