TOPIC:

The fall meeting for the Stakeholders is set for September 25th. We will be at the Ike's right of rt.249 in Portage. Time will be from 6-8pm. Bar will be open, grab a cold one and here the latest news on the fishery.

This meeting is open to the public. I woud like to reach out to our fishermen at the ports of New Buffalo and St. Joe. This meeting is open to you fishermen. Your water fishes the same as ours. Wether its southern Illinois water or southern Michigan water we trade fish back and forth. Our fishing is very similar. This meeting gives you a chance to have your voice heard on the fishery. I expect that we will have a very full agenda. Please try to make this meeting.
Need more information?? Leave me a PM here and I'll get back to you.

Ed Erdelac

Lickety-Split wrote:

The fall meeting for the Stakeholders is set for September 25th. We will be at the Ike's right of rt.249 in Portage. Time will be from 6-8pm. Bar will be open, grab a cold one and here the latest news on the fishery.

This meeting is open to the public. I woud like to reach out to our fishermen at the ports of New Buffalo and St. Joe. This meeting is open to you fishermen. Your water fishes the same as ours. Wether its southern Illinois water or southern Michigan water we trade fish back and forth. Our fishing is very similar. This meeting gives you a chance to have your voice heard on the fishery. I expect that we will have a very full agenda. Please try to make this meeting.
Need more information?? Leave me a PM here and I'll get back to you.

Ed Erdelac



 

The SouthEnd Stakeholders meeting time has changed. Will now extend till 9pm. The fall meeting is something new.  We will talk about our fishery as everything is fresh in every one's thoughts.We will have 3 key speakers.  Meetings are open to the public.

This thursday, 9/25, the SouthEnd Stakeholders will hold their first fall meeting. The fall meeting may be the most important of the seasonal meetings. Everything is fresh in our heads and are ready to be discussed.

The speakers for this meeting are:

Captain John Dembowski- John is the president of the Lake County Fish And Game Protective Association 
Rob Ackerson - Manager of Mixsabah Fish Hatchery
Ben Dickinson - Lake Michigan Biologist

This meeting is open to the public. Time is from 6-9 pm at the Ikes right off rt.249 across from the Portage Marina parking lot.
There will be host of items discussed on our Indiana fishery. A question and answer period is set for each discussion item. You might want to bring a note pad along to take notes and add questions you may want to ask. Don't want to wait till spring to hear the latest on the fishery? Make this meeting!

The Stakeholders held their meeting last night, the first fall meeting. Everyone that attended thought the fall meeting should continue. If you didn't make the meeting you surely missed a full 3 hrs worth of why our fishery is the way it is. Our guest speakers did a great job talking with the group on each of the items they brought to the table. Ben finished out the meeting with a list of items that were asked for which looked like a Roman Scroll. Each item helped form a picture of what makes up our fishery. Thank You to all that came out and spent the hours of listening and asking very good questions.  The back and forth exchanges were very good.

One of the items for discussion was "can this vested fishing community find a way to help Mixsawbah and Bodine hatcheries?" There has been a request by our hatchery folks. As of now when they move fish from pond to pond or from pond to truck there is a large amount of manual labor that goes into that move. It also is very stressfull to the young fish. A portable fish pump is being requested that could be used by both hatcheries. This would help relieve the stress on moving fish and help eliminate alot of the manual labor involved. Some of our stakeholders have been involved with this manual moving of fish, so they have experienced a small portion of the manual work that is involved. The cost for such pump is approx. $30,000. The state has turned down this request. Presently we have two groups that have from time to time helped out Mixsawbah. Hoosier Coho Club and Lake County Fish And Game Protective Association. Can both groups working together over a span of time come up with this money? There was some very good back and forth discussions on this topic. We are the fishery. When we look at who all the vested partners are in the indiana fishery, it is a make up of the fishing community, as well as our DNR partners. We are all in this together.

Thanks for the recap, much appreciated for those of us living far away. 
I'm curious as to how to get the charter boats more involved in the help for the hatcheries. Aren't there several associations on our end of the lake? I know kingseeker is very involved at east Chicago.
Perhaps most of them are tied in with the coho club, idk.
Even though I have a very minute stake anymore, I'm more than willing to donate to raffles or whatever ideas for raising $$ come forth.

Thanks Reelfun for your thoughts and comments.I'm glad that you see how each of us can make a difference. If I could make a few comments.
Presently Mixsawbah is max'd out for any increased stocking. So, going forward with the fish pump helps what we do by eliminateing the stress, and any stress loss. That by itself is a improvement to our stocking.
At this meeting Harry Stevens who sponsors the HCC tournament Port vs Port was there along with Capt. John Dembowski. John is president for Lake county fish and game. By having these gentlemen at the meeting we had some good discussions. Others as you mentioned like Capt. John Warren and other Captains were also at this meeting. This meeting helped open discussion and some ideas. We are at the beginning on this one so we will see were it goes. But, your correct we all have a part to play with improvements to our fishery. Stocking fish isn't always the answer to making things better. We have at our hatcheries folks that do a extremely good job for us. State money is tight. Ben does a great job for us, but he isn't a miracle worker. We are the 1% out there in this fishery. But,what we do is noticed thru out this fishery. Our Skamania program is the best on the Lake. There is alot to be proud of here.

I forgot to mention that the fish pump being portable would also be used at Bodine. This isn't just for one of our cold water hatcheries. It will help both.

When i think of stakeholders i think of the marina i spent 4000 a year with, I think of my storage company and mechanic i spend $3000 plus with. I think of the tackle i spent $1000s on each year. Those are the stakeholders. My $75 out of state license means nothing. If I was one of those mentioned above id be the stake holder because without good fishing im not spending all of that money yearly. Currently its tough to justify have a "big" boat in Indiana strictly for fishing, we only have 3.5 good months. The rest is beach and pool time.

Tim

Lady m.

I'm curious Tim, what would you do to improve things then? 

The portable fish pump has been a topic of discussion while loading and moving fish this year and would be a great help.
With the current method, sample nets are weighed and fish counted to get an average weight by pound and then each net weighed and recorded as fish are moved manually.  Would there be any way of determining fish numbers when moving fish with the pump?