With chinook weights declining, is a stocking cut in the future?Data from Lake Michigan sport anglers and fisheries biologists showed a decline in chinook weights in 2025, raising concerns that stocking might have to be reduced in coming years.
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Paul A. Smith
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Dec. 16, 2025, 5:15 a.m. CT
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Data from Lake Michigan sport anglers and fisheries biologists in 2025 have highlighted a concerning trend: lower weights of chinook salmon.The first indicators came in summer 2025 from results at fishing tournaments. In the 2025 Salmon-A-Rama fishing tournament, which allowed fish to be caught anywhere in Lake Michigan and offered a $50,000 first prize, the heaviest fish was a 29.58-pound chinook registered July 19 in Port Washington. In 2024 the winning fish was a 32.34-pound king, with six chinook topping 30 pounds.In the 2025 K-D (Kewaunee-Door County) Salmon Tournament held July 11 to 20 only one fish was heavier than 30 pounds and the average size was markedly down, according to organizers. In 2024 the K-D registered 14 chinook 30 pounds or heavier and 164 that were at least 25 pounds. In 2025 those numbers fell to one and 10, respectively.Need a news break?
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Kevin Naze of Algoma said it was "likely the most drastic drop in our 43 years" of running the tournament.Those fishing tournament results were corroborated this fall by data obtained by the Department of Natural Resources at
Strawberry Creek Salmon Facility
, the weir near Sturgeon Bay used by the agency to collect eggs and milt for the state hatchery system. The DNR also gathers lots of chinook data at the site.In 2025 the mean weight of 3-year-old female chinook was 14.67 pounds, the lowest since 2015, and well below the long-term mean of 16.97 pounds, according to DNR fisheries biologist Logan Sikora.The DNR handled 6,795 chinook at Strawberry Creek in 2025, the most since 2013 and well above the long-term mean of 4,691. The number of fish that enter the man-made site on the Lake Michigan shore fluctuates due to many factors, including stream flow from rainfall and supplemental water pumping, lake level, water temperature, stocking numbers, survival rates and dates of operation for the weir.The lower weights of chinook, though, are causing fisheries managers to look closely at the situation.
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A crash of alewife (the most important food source for chinook) in the early 2000s led to a dramatic decline in chinook in Lake Huron.Fisheries managers have been trying to avert a similar event in Lake Michigan.The chinook is not native to the Great Lakes but along with other Pacific Ocean-strain fish was introduced to Lake Michigan in the 1960s in an effort to control nuisance levels of alewife, also a non-native species.Get the Outdoors Briefing newsletter in your inbox.Get your weekly collection of outdoors news across Wisconsin.Delivery: Fri
Your EmailThe lake's ecosystem was suffering from a surge of invasive fish, including the sea lamprey, which was responsible for decimating the native top predator, the lake trout.With fewer predator fish, the alewife population exploded. Lake Michigan beaches were often covered with windrows of dead, smelly alewife.So non-native salmon and trout were introduced to Lake Michigan in a grand fisheries experiment. It wasn't clear how well species such as chinook, which in their native range lived most of their lives in salt water, would do in fresh water and with a completely different forage base. It worked and is regarded as one of the most successful programs in modern fisheries management.Not only were alewife numbers greatly reduced, but a new sport fishery took hold.And due to their large size and good food quality, chinook (also known as "king" salmon) proved to be arguably the most desirable of the bunch to anglers. State fisheries managers have responded by stocking more chinook than other species.It's proven to be a delicate balance, however.Not only does the alewife population fluctuate, but the number of wild chinook salmon, spawned naturally in streams in Michigan and Ontario, also is very large and unpredictable. In 2024 wild chinook made up 72% of the Lake Michigan chinook population, according to an estimate from the Salmonid Working Group, a function of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission's Lake Michigan Committee.Several times over the last four decades, including due to bacterial kidney disease in the fish, the Wisconsin DNR and other agencies have reduced chinook stocking to help prevent a collapse of the fishery.However in the last five years fisheries managers in both Wisconsin and Michigan increased chinook stocking. The Wisconsin DNR went from about 800,000 chinook plants in 2019 to 1.2 million in 2020, and the Michigan DNR increased from a goal of 650,000 kings in 2022 to 1 million in 2023.
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The number of wild chinook in Lake Michigan has surged in recent years, too. In fact, the 2023 year class of wild chinook salmon was estimated at 9.2 million, the highest since the number was first calculated in 2006, according to data from the Salmonid Working Group.The combination of wild and stocked fish equalled a chinook biomass of 8.61 kilo tonnes in Lake Michigan in 2024, the fourth consecutive year of an increase and highest level since 2005, according to GLFC data.At the same time, the alewife biomass declined for the third straight year, to about 175 kilo tonnes.Hungry fish typically equal improved catch rates for anglers. And Lake Michigan anglers in 2025 had good action for chinook and other species, according to most reports.
