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What's wrong Sep 25, 2018 12:35 pm #21371

  • BNature
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What's wrong with this picture? Any of you Indiana fishermen think this is equitable? Any of you Lake or Porter County fishermen think this is equitable?

Now is the time for Indiana to plan to obtain more chinook eggs to boost hatchery production. Not a month from now or after some meetings are held. NOW!

I've sent my opinion to DNR leaders. Perhaps they need more input from other Southenders.

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What's wrong Sep 25, 2018 4:10 pm #21373

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I think we all would like to see more no doubt.

I would like to hear more details about how the stockings are divied up as I cannot remember all the details. I do believe one large factor is geography, whether that is miles of shoreline or square miles I am not sure. What are the other factors involved? Other available gamefish stocked in higher / lower numbers? bait modeling? Expected survival rates? Natural reproduction? I am just throwing things out there as guesses to what the factors are. I am sure someone can clarify once again they why's.

If based on just geography, the numbers seem within reason. I dont much like this but they do. The 2017 numbers indicate Indiana had about 4.7% of the total stocked chinooks. Data I found from 2012 (assuming its accurate) shows Indiana had about 6.7% of the total stocked chinooks. Hard to find that data.

It would be pretty cool if we could see a chart over time of the Indiana percentage of total stocked chinooks and get a nice explanation of the factors in why that number moves around which I am sure it does.
Boatless!

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Last edit: by Dirty.

What's wrong Sep 25, 2018 4:13 pm #21374

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I believe they are alternating years now between Trail Creek and another site, Little Cal maybe? Thought I remembered reading that somewhere, but I cannot find that anywhere now...

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What's wrong Sep 25, 2018 4:33 pm #21375

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I do believe that is correct yes.
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What's wrong Sep 25, 2018 8:10 pm #21377

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I believe the reason for the cut in stocking was the poor returns and decline in alewife population throughout the lake.

Also wondering if maybe there has been an increase in near shore water temps and creek temps during the fall spawn run of Chinook salmon over the last several years that has attributed to the poor return rate. I can understand a smaller Coho that’s maybe 5 lbs being able to survive warmer waters, but a larger adult Chinook over 10 lbs I would think would have a much tougher time reaching spawning grounds in warm water.

Like a fat guy vs a skinny guy trying to work all day doing a roofing job in the summer heat. Fat guy is probably gonna drop quick or not take the job at all.

Seriously though, I wonder how many Kings get close to running in and then the nearshore water temp flips when a north wind comes in and we don’t get any rain and they just go back offshore and die.

Is this a thing? Or are they that hardwired that at some point they will just go in regardless of conditions because it’s their biological time?

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What's wrong Sep 26, 2018 6:11 am #21381

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That really sucks

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What's wrong Sep 26, 2018 8:10 am #21383

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I here you Mike,

If you take 2 Illinois harbors they get more kings,1 gets almost as much as Indiana does. We are becoming a OPF state. It would be felt sharply if we didn't have the coho fishing we had.

As far as mentioned earlier, I can't find anything in writing that poor returns had anything to do with Indiana cutting back on kings plants. Poor returns have many factors.
Lickety-Split

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but by the moments that take your breath away

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What's wrong Sep 26, 2018 12:25 pm #21386

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"Seriously though, I wonder how many Kings get close to running in and then the nearshore water temp flips when a north wind comes in and we don’t get any rain and they just go back offshore and die.

Is this a thing? Or are they that hardwired that at some point they will just go in regardless of conditions because it’s their biological time?"

I am not a Biologist just a guy that stayed at a holiday in express last night, But!!! Seriously not a Biologist but spend a lot of time on the lake and some in the creeks. What I have seen over the years is they run and then just hold up in a hole or stretch of river and basically bake themselves waiting for rain or water temps to get right. It was brutal to watch last year with high temps in the creeks for a couple weeks I would hit a few holes and see the fish stacked in there hanging in the current doing as little as they had to, then next trip several belly up and not spawned out. Just an observation no technical data to prove or disprove what was happening was anything outside of salmon's natural process.

As much as it seems there is a vast inconsistency with stocking distribution and how the different agencies will not work together to improve and preserve a multi billion dollar travel and fishing industry for the great lakes states. There is one state that has said it is very important to them and they seem to have the lions share of the stocking. Coincidence?
Jeff
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Last edit: by netminder34.

What's wrong Sep 26, 2018 2:19 pm #21389

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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.

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What's wrong Sep 26, 2018 3:04 pm #21390

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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



No thanks!

Thanks for this information and putting it in simple and logical format that I think everyone can understand.

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