"Smoked salmon is to fish, what bacon is to meat," somebody not too famous
probably said that, and they're right.
Smoked Salmon Smackdown III is set for your Hoosier Coho Club meeting on
Wednesday (Sept. 9) at 7 p.m. at 121 Skwiat Legion Ave. Rules for the
friendly, my-smoked-fish-is-better-than-yours contest are at
www.hoosiercohoclub.org. . Bring your best batch, bring some friends and
enjoy some smoked salmon.
Featured speaker is captain Craig Koepke on tactics and tips for September
salmon and trout. Hear what's hot right now and what has been working this
summer.
Sept. 12 is the Salmon Slam. Rich Holm has been busy organizing another
great contest, First place is guaranteed $1,200, entry is $100 per team,
weigh best five salmon or trout, boats may depart from Portage or Michigan
City, but must weigh-in at Portage (catch may be transported by boat or
vehicle). Complete rules and registration form are at
www.hoosiercohoclub.org. For more details, call Rich at (219) 762-4362.
A pair of newspaper articles on the "state of the lake" - one opinion and
one discussion with Michigan's Jay Wesley:
From the 8-28-14 The News-Dispatch, by Mike McKee (edited);
I fished for carp before there were salmon and I'll fish for lake trout
if Chinook disappear.
Indiana Department of Natural Resources' biologists sketched a
questionable future for salmon fishing on Lake Michigan at last week's
public meeting in Michigan City. It's not over by a long shot, but the
crazy-good catching is likely in the past.
There are a lot of similarities between lake trout and carp, not the
least of which is they are both species of last resort.
I love catching big fish and the aforementioned bottom-dwellers filled
the craving nicely. I use to slay carp from shore before evolving to
trolling, which is mostly lake trout of late.
Like most anglers, I'd prefer salmon and steelies. They're simply sexier
and provide a lot more sizzle when hooked.
Alas, Lake Michigan is becoming more and more a lake trout lake.
Annual stockings are 3.4 million lakers versus 1.7 Chinook. Both species
have substantial natural reproduction. The kicker is lakers live much
longer than salmon.
Despite what anglers want, biologists have a goal, among other reasons,
of establishing a self-sustaining population of "native" lake trout.
And who knows? Fifty years from now fishermen may be thankful lake trout
were pushed so relentlessly. Lakers were here long before the invasive
species/industrial upheaval of the last century and appear to be better
suited for a more sterile Lake Michigan.
The sterility of the lake is the foundation of the current Chinook
quandary.
The big salmon feed almost exclusively on alewives, an invasive species,
but the food supply for alewives has been increasingly compromised in the
last decade by invasive Quagga mussels.
"Mussels are choking the lake from the bottom up," biologist Ben
Dickinson explained. "They're basically siphoning out all of the
phytoplankton in the water column - there has
been a 75 percent decline in phytoplankton."
Simplified science is phyto feeds zooplanton which feeds alewives.
Alewives have been reduced to 50-year lows and are less healthy,
Population estimate of the thumb-nail sized Quagga in Lake Michigan is
950,000,000,000,000 (that's 950 trillion).
The salmon fishery on Lake Huron collapsed a decade ago when Chinook
over-grazed, and eventually wiped-out its alewives, which were
simultaneously being squeezed by lack of food due to the mussels. Lake
trout are thriving now, but angling effort declined 90 percent from
Huron's salmon heydays.
There are some stark parallels on Lake Michigan, which have led to
cutbacks to the current level of Chinook stockings. On Huron, by the time
biologists realized 16 million Chinook were being naturally reproduced in
Ontario tributaries it was game over.
Hopefully, the alewife/chinook situation in Lake Michigan has been
checked in time. And, hopefully Chinook and lake trout will coexist.
On the other hand, with so many more lake trout feeding on the salmon's
preferred food, the alewife population would seem to be in grave danger.
Chinook could become extirpated, or at least trivialized. So, too, to a
lesser extent, may be coho and steelhead and brown trout.
The bottom line is great things rarely stay great forever. Lake Michigan
fishing will always be good for something.
Whether its salmon or lake trout, I'll be out there enjoying the heck
out of it.
Two Points
A couple of key points from the INDIANA DNR's presentation which were put
on screen;
1. Not much can change the fishery in a substantial way (i.e. bring back
lots of kings) unless mussel abundance drops immensely or alewives
increase a lot.
2. We can change the stocking mixture (more steelhead, less coho, more
browns or whatever) and we can tweak the stocking locations, but this is
not a high-impact activity that will 'fix' fishing."
Mussel Relief?
The nature of invasive species is a populatin boom, or peak, (often to
the detriment of native species) before settling into a niche within a
ecosystem. Invasive mussels, first Zebra, but since replaced by larger
Quagga, have knocked the Great Lakes food web for a loop. Studies are
ongoing, but there is a bit of research offering a glimmer that Quaggas
may be reaching their peak.
A presentation during a Ludington Workshop in January showed mussels were
not surviving well beyond 150 feet of water at Muskegon. Check it out at
on You Tube at
, The mussel' non-survival part
is about three-fourths of the way into the "Lower Food Web and Changes in
Alewife Conditon" tape.
Perch Positive
The best news delivered at the DNR meeting is test netting for
young-of-the-year perch was exceeding good recently.
Four, one-hour seines at East Chicago, Gary, Burns Ditch and Michigan
City yielded 2,500 y-o-y perch at each site. Last year the total for all
four sites was eight perch. This marks the second-highest catch of its
kind since the 1980s.
Of course, its a treacherous, multi-year journey from one-inch babies to
keeper-sized eaters, but for the first time in a long time there is some
positive news about Lake Michigan perch.
From the 8-23-15 South Bend Tribune, by Louie Stout;
It's been a tough year for Lake Michigan anglers, and based on a
conversation with Michigan fisheries biologist Jay Wesley, the fishery
continues to deal with ecological issues which could effect furture
fishing.
Most anglers know, and Wesley acknowledged, that the king salmon
population is lower than it’s been since the late 1980s. That impact was
really felt this year.
It was done by design as Michigan and other states slashed stockings two
years ago to reduce pressure on a diminishing alewife forage base.
Fish managers use stocking rates to maintain a balance between game fish
and the forage base. That got out of whack when it was discovered a few
years ago that there was more natural reproduction in king salmon than
previously realized. That was putting more mouths in the lake than the
forage could support.
In fact, studies show that the natural reproduction of kings has dropped
by as much as 14 percent since the stocking numbers have been reduced.
“That’s a good thing because it is giving our forage a chance to rebound,”
said Wesley. “I’m optimistic the alewives will come back. We’re doing an
assessment this fall to see how the 2015 alewife population is doing.”
The influx of quagga muscles has added a new dimension to the fishery’s
woes. Quaggas now dominate the lake floor from Michigan to Wisconsin and
could impact the forage base.
Like Zebra mussels, quaggas are not native and got here via bilge water of
international cargo ships. They have out-competed the zebra mussels, are
larger and can survive in deeper, colder water.
Like Zebras, they are filter-feeders, siphoning voluminous gallons of
water and removing the plankton and other microscopic organisms that other
small, young fish depend on for survival.
That includes young-of-the-year lake perch that seemingly struggle to find
anything to eat once they are hatched. That could explain why anglers
aren’t catching many small perch this summer.
(As a side note, Ball State Researchers reported finding a good number of
young-of-the-year perch during their work this summer. But whether they
survive in the coming months remains to be seen.)
Now, when the lake stratifies as the water heats up as it has this summer,
the plankton builds in the upper layer of the water column — above the
thermocline — and out of reach of the quaggas. That could provide help to
the forage base.
Furthermore, said Wesley, another exotic species, the goby, has been
providing a secondary food source for adult gamefish. He said lake trout
are feeding on them pretty heavily, and since they have begun targeting
gobies, natural reproduction of lakers is up 40 percent.
Unfortunately, gobies are bottom fish and don’t spend much time in the
part of the water column inhabited by steelhead and salmon. Lakers, brown
trout, smallmouth bass, ciscoes and larger perch — fish that linger near
the bottom when conditions are right — will feed on gobies during spring
and early summer.
“The gobies are providing bottom feeding critters a nutritional diet
despite the lack of alewives,” said Wesley.
But that doesn’t do much for the trout and salmon that feed farther up in
the water column and rely on alewives to keep them fed. In fact, many
anglers report catching smaller and skinnier steelhead and salmon in the
big lake this summer while the lakers have been robust.
Let’s hope that the alewife study this fall indicates this year’s alewife
hatch showed signs of a forage base comeback and can help bring the trout
and salmon fishery back to normal.
I would encourage all SouthEnd folks to try to make this meeting, smoked salmon, good company, good speakers, come and help support those that are supporting us. 
