steeliebob

So I can have a freezer full of lake trout, ha no thanks. They do make a good garden though.

Everyone seems to think that the lake trout are there for native american commercial fishermen. There has to be a market for them otherwise they are no good. Lately there has not been much of a market for them. My neighbor is a commercial fisherman and he is always asking me if I want a lake trout.

Alewives are an Atlantic Ocean fish. So how does a Pacific Ocean fish become so dependent on them? Also the Chinook and Coho have great spawning success in the Canadian and UP waters. Their success was so great that the Canadians quit planting them about 10 or so years ago. As for Lake Trout I keep every legal one that I can boat. I don't eat many of them but I find someone that will. If they want to get rid of the lake trout lower the size limit, increase the catch limit, and expand the season. There is no reason that they should have a closed season on them except maybe November and December.

You can count the number of fishing boats at the St Ignace boat launch on any given Saturday on three fingers or less. I have done it several times this summer.

When the bigger pike hit I thought I had a salmon for the first 15 minutes of the battle. It made a couple of screaming runs into the lake peeling off 100 yards of 8lb test in seconds. Then there was several shorter runs and eventually I saw what I hooked into.

Most of the guys on this site do not remember when alewives were out of control. They used heavy equipment on a daily basis to clean them off from the beaches in southern lake Michigan. Every wave deposited thousands of dead alewives, gulls could not eat them fast enough. At that time you could not find a gull unless it was on the shoreline eating alewives. I have seen them 3 feet deep and 25 feet back on the shore.

Looking at the postings on this site and other sites there seems to be plenty of alewives. If the DNR continues to stock less kings for the next two or three years the alewives will over run the lakes again. By the time the DNR gets back to 5 million salmon it will be too late because it takes them a couple of years before they do any damage to the alewives.

This is the way it is......So you have a $35000 boat and $15000 worth of gear designed for catching salmon. Sell it all for $20000 and suck up the loss or you be happy to catch lake trout, browns, steelhead, and atlantics. I think that the biologists have to get their head out of the mud because the alewives will rebound. When they do it will be faster and harder than the DNR anticipates them to. In other words they won't be able to plant enough salmon fast enough. The guys that quit salmon fishing and sell out are not going to turn around and get new gear. I would like to have all of the money that the DNR will be losing in the next few years. I know that I sure have saved lots of money since the salmon numbers went south.

Fair numbers in NE Wisconsin.

You think that the salmon are going to Canada to spawn. If they are coming up from Lake Huron and Lake Michigan you would think that the fishing would be good in the Straits. Good salmon fishermen are getting one fish per 7 trips. So far this year I have heard of two kings being caught out of St Ignace. Last year I caught 8 kings in a local river all fall August 1 through October 30. Don't hold your breath that they are spawning in the UP and Canada as they have to show up first. A great spawning year would help even with low numbers of salmon.