TOPIC:

I think you could make the limit 20 per day and it wouldn't change anything. Who is going to fish for them. What do you do with them. Any of the states that have food consumption advisories for lakers is alarming to look at. I believe a laker needs to be 7-8 yrs. of age to spawn its first time,twice the age of an adult salmon. But, by then that fish is already on a do not consume list. The older the laker, the more contaminated it is. I used to eat them years ago. Poor mans lobster, smoked, grilled, tried them many ways. Not my piece of cake for sure. I love the coho for table fair.
Anway taking the limit from 2-3 isn't going to do anything. Limit them Like you do the silver fish. If there are more lake trout in the lake then kings, why isn't it the same limit of 5. With lakers becoming good spawners even at that number (5) nothing would change. Keep the concentration on slashing the numbers of laketrout, keep everything else were it sits. We have taken it on the chin, now its time that the lakers take the hit. 500,000 is a spit in the bucket but it is a start. But wasn't those 500,000 fall lake trout? As I remember you folks said before that the fall lakers are extra fish that don't do very good anyway. So if they didn't do that good as fall fish, then that 500,000 number really isn't to impressive.

I like this debate... Dr. Howard Tanners says...see www.ourmidland.com/sports/strong-opinion..._campaign=user-share

The thing that gets me if the states were concerned about the alewifes why not cut the lakers from each state lots when the silver cuts began and then try to work on the feds to cut more to save the fishery. I think the 4 states combined for a extra million plus lakers a long with the feds 2.3 million or more they owe the tribes. Then there was the big drop of returns in Michigan rivers where many rivers seeing up to 80 to 90 percent. I don't know what the other states had for returns last fall, but that sounds like a major crash in my book. If we were counting on natural reproduction from Michigan rivers last fall with that return rate, we are all in trouble.

I'm not a scientist but since we can't kill the mussels , is to try to save what alewifes we have to stop stocking all species of fish a couple of years and see if the alewifes increase in numbers or keep going down hill. It's just a bad situation all around and we will all see it play out in the next couple of years. Mike

Again, the states do not stock lake trout. The feds stock 2.74 million lake trout, Michigan stocks 50,000 or something in that neighborhood, which is like 1% of all lake trout stocked in the lake. That's it. Indiana does not stock lake trout. Illinois does not stock lake trout. Wisconsin does not stock lake trout. They are raised in federal hatcheries, not state hatcheries.

The states cannot cut unilaterally what they do not directly control by raising in their hatcheries. We have to work with USFWS to get them to reduce. I wish it was as simple as waving a wand and reducing lake trout, but it is far more complicated than that and takes time. I know that is not an answer anybody wants to hear, but it is reality.


You're right, we are in trouble with chinooks - the natural reproduction went down a lot. It happened because there was not enough food for the wild chinooks to survive either. Plus a bad drought year in fall 2012 didn't help them get into some of the prime spawning rivers either. Bottom line, if you have consecutive poor alewife spawns like we did in 2013 and 2014, you don't get recruitment of many chinooks, whether they are stocked or wild. Baby kings need baby alewives to make it to adulthood. When there aren't many baby alewives, most of the small kings starve to death before their 2nd year. That is precisely what happened in Lake Huron.

Ok. this one has been kicked and kicked around. The fact that lake trout, who eat alewife, is in a direct battle for forage with the Kings. Huge amounts of lake trout going in annually (millions) and who knows how much are presently living in the lake. Some for the next 20-30 years. This is not a good situation. So you say there is nothing that can be done by the states??????????
What happens if you buck the feds?????? Or are you sending this message," There is nothing the state DNR can do for you, to eliminate the situation, so you the fishermen are somehow going to have to do it on your own" This isn't a matter of who is right who is wrong, rather what can be done to stop the millions of bait stealing lakers.
You guys need to understand we fishermen see fish differently then you do. Your meeting to discuss why king cuts were and are so important, are fine. Were you lose me is the fact is one predator was taken when another filled its spot, at the same time saying your worried about a crash. This isn't right, thats it, get it. With the lakers in the millions and don't cycle out like salmon do, I feel as others who are asking, just how many lake trout are actually in the lake? What wll drive a fishing economy? Lake trout never did it before and it won't work again this time.
The only bright side of this whole thing was to hear how small of an amount of alewife are needed for the coho.

Lickety-Split wrote:

This isn't a matter of who is right who is wrong, rather what can be done to stop the millions of bait stealing lakers.

I think that says it all right there.

I get both sides of the laker issue. From a purely selfish standpoint, I'd never like to see another laker stocked again. But, I understand and respect the native species argument. On that note, I want to know why lakers are the only natives that matter? I'd be willing to wager that the current laker population is a lot stronger than the current perch population. Why aren't the FIsh and Wildlife people pouring their resources into perch or whitefish or sturgeon rehabilitation? Or better yet, putting there effort into reducing the mussel population or regulating the shipping industry to reduce the threat of even more invasives?

I'm at a loss to understand why the feds are even involved with Great Lakes trout. On the wildlife side of things the only wildlife they "own" are migratory species (birds) such as waterfowl, song birds and shore birds. They also own officially listed "endangered species" such as lynx, black footed ferrets and some rare trout in the western mountains. They took responsibility for resurrecting Lake Michigan's lake trout population long before the endangered species legislation was enacted in the early 1970s. I'd like to learn why they "own" the laker situation in the Great Lakes.

Another food for thought: State fish biologists are funded by the sale of fishing licenses in that state which gives them a direct accountability to the sportsmen buying the licenses. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists are funded by appropriations from congress making them accountable to politicians who are mostly influenced by special interest groups of which recreational anglers are only one small faction.

The feds do pour money into lake sturgeon, and have been for decades. They are also starting to work with native coregonids (whitefish/cisco family), focusing at this point on ciscoes and bloaters, which were the historic planktivore baitfish in the Great Lakes

www.fws.gov/FieldNotes/regmap.cfm?arskey=31801

www.fws.gov/midwest/news/bloater.html


I am not overly familiar with all their efforts on the coregonid front, but I do know that stocking native planktivores is challenging (due to the factors outlined in the article) but also because it is extremely difficult to stock anything at the bottom of the food chain, just due to the immense numbers you need to establish a population in the face of predation. That's why alewives and perch are not stocked, the numbers that would be needed to even make an impact are not remotely possible to reach.


As far as the shipping industry, there were regulations put into place in the mid 2000s (about half a century too late in my opinion, but better late than never) that mandate "salties" to exchange their ballast water at sea before entering the freshwater system. As a result, no new invasive species have been discovered in Lake Michigan for a decade.

I am glad you brought that up - this is a timely issue, and PLEASE contact your congress people to voice your thoughts.
www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/opini...-provision/85367188/

A provision tucked away in the $602 billion federal defense budget could have a big impact on the health of the Great Lakes.

It’s called the Vessel Incidental Discharge Act. If it’s added to the U.S. Senate version of the defense bill, it would make the Great Lakes vulnerable to more aquatic invasive species.

The act would exempt ballast water discharges from the federal Clean Water Act. The Coast Guard, which now shares oversight with the Environmental Protection Agency, would be in charge.

The Vessel Incidental Discharge Act also would prevent states from adopting new laws to restrict ballast water discharges and enforcing current laws without approval from the Coast Guard, and exempts ships that travel exclusively within the Great Lakes.

This could have a disastrous effect on the health of our Great Lakes.

Thanks again for taking the time to put all these responses together MC Angler. I honestly really appreciate you doing this and responding to so much of our frustrations on here. I do see your side to this and understand partially the science behind the decisions, and I think looking at the big picture here, we have no choice but to play the reduction game on kings and see if we get the bait rebound everyone is hoping for. If not, and we get the mega collapse they are predicting, I'd hate to look back at all these posts and all the gripes (while I'm selling all my gear on ebay) and say man, we were ignorant: why didn't we just let the DNR do their thing. For me, if ANYTHING comes of this, it's that more open dialogue has been created with all anglers who want Laker stockings gone and completely eliminated. If that is something we can at least all agree on (which is obvious) and can somehow convince the USFWS (which is impossible), maybe there's some hope. The concept of the overall health of Lake Michigan is something that the USFWS should be able to easily convince the tribes of, and justify the eliminated stockings. Afterall, nobody truly knows how many lakers are already out there, since they live forever.