Yes, the kings are now being rotated every other year between Little Cal and Trail Creek. We had been planning on eliminating some poorly performing fall fingerling steelhead, so we are going to replace those up with chinooks, and are planning on stocking 70-75K kings moving forward.
Stocking cuts over time have been determined by geography, fishery (effort, seasonality, different modes like stream, shore, boat), wild fish production, survival of stockings, and other factors. The current lakewide salmon management pegs things to the 2012 stocking targets for a reference point. Using the 2017 numbers compared to the 2012 reference point, Michigan took an 80% cut, Indiana a 72% cut, Illinois a 34%, and Wisconsin 33%. The reason things feel shocking now is because during the 2013 cuts, Michigan and Wisconsin took giant cuts and Indiana took a tiny 11% cut.
Like Jeff said, based on geography it is pretty proportional, and frankly pretty damn favorable for Indiana. Indiana has 1.04% of the surface area of Lake Michigan and stocks 4.72% of the kings lakewide. Illinois has 7% of the surface area and stocks 12% of the kings. To compare apples to apples, as a function of number of kings per square mile of lake in each state: Indiana 270, Wisconsin 106, Illinois 104, Michigan 25.
The reason Wisconsin stocks a disproportionate amount of kings compared to other states now is that the last go-round of cuts they elected to drastically slash their brown trout stockings and I believe reduce some steelhead as well to retain some of their chinook stockings. The Lake Michigan Committee agreed that individual states could achieve stocking cuts using multiple species if they desired, as long as they did not exceed the overall stocking quota agreed upon.
We in Indiana decided to not gut our other fisheries to retain a relatively poor fall king fishery. Indiana has seen declining returns on chinooks since 2013, despite stable stocking numbers. This was before the first stocking cuts even took hold, and far before this latest cut took hold. To repeat, the poor fall fisheries in the last 4-5 years are not a result of Indiana chinook cuts... their ability to survive and return has declined substantially on the south end of Lake Michigan.
We feel it's irresponsible to the angling public to dedicate a large portion of our stocking quota to fish that are not providing a good terminal fall fishery to multiple modes of angling, when we have species (coho and steelhead) that ARE surviving well and returning at acceptable rates for shore, stream, and boat anglers alike, through multiple seasons.
Lake Michigan managers use "chinook equivalents" based on lifetime prey consumption derived from bioenergetic modeling. This allows standardized stocking equivalents when making blended stocking cuts to achieve a reduction. 1 chinook = 3.2 cohos, 2.4 steelhead, and 2.2 brown trout. Using these equivalents, to regain the 130,000 chinook we cut (that were not producing a good fall fishery, mind you) , we could:
1) Eliminate our skamania program entirely
OR
2) Eliminate our coho and winter run steelhead programs entirely
OR
3) Eliminate brown trout, winter run steelhead, and 25% of the skamania stockings
Do any of those options sound palatable to folks? These are fisheries that are utilized heavily by pier anglers, stream anglers, and boat anglers alike for pretty much 12 months of the year.
We covered all this at several public meetings over the past several years. Including in 2016 when these cuts were originally announced and we were deciding which direction to go. Yes, we know kings are awesome. They're the cheapest fish to raise in our hatcheries and they sell the most licenses, when they survive to adulthood and return for anglers to catch. We would LOVE to have a better king fishery in the fall, but at this point it is not biologically feasible without basically gutting the best fisheries we have, coho and steelhead
Jeff, to your question about Indiana's share of lakewide kings over time, attached is a graph since 2002. I chose 2002 because it's the first year using our current stocking locations (with the exception that last year the Buffington Harbor/EC was eliminated) and because it was about this time that managers realized that kings needed to be managed on a more lakewide basis, and it was right before Huron colllapsed and led to the current lake michigan management era, I guess you could call it.
The proportion stocked by Indiana climbs thru the 2000s and 2010s not because Indiana is stocking more, but because other states were cutting back and Indiana was not, for the most part. There are minor fluctuations because hatchery production numbers bounce around plus or minus 5-10%. Lots of variables affect that - egg quality, eye up rate, survival, growth, fish health issues, etc.
