Lake Michigan Stocking Options

[Jay Wesley]

Option 4 was the best ranked option Lakewide.

This results in reducing chinook salmon 30% and coho, brown trout, steelhead and lake trout by 10%.

Which species should be cut the least if we mix and match species?

[Twill23]

Lake Trout.

These fish are not 4 year fish. A 15+ pound lake trout is anywhere from 10-20 years old. Lake trout also feed on goby, which are plentiful.

[EdB]

Steelhead, they contribute more to the fishery both open water and inland than the other species. The inland river and pier/beach fishery steelhead provide brings opportunity to a large number of anglers who don't have big lake boats.

Kill the Lake Trout rehab program, cut the offshore stocking and put what's left inshore for a put and take fishery. The rehab effort, after all these years striving for it, is a failure......I know, the Feds will never agree to that.

[Cork Dust]

Lake Trout compose 10-12% of the sport catch in Lake Michigan, yet have been nearly half of the total lakewide plant values. At legal size, they remain on the do not consume list. As Ed B states, makes no sense after thirty years of failed efforts to continue in a forage depleted system.

[Jay Wesley]

Lake Trout compose 10-12% of the sport catch in Lake Michigan, yet have been nearly half of the total lakewide plant values. At legal size, they remain on the do not consume list. As Ed B states, makes no sense after thirty years of failed efforts to continue in a forage depleted system.

Thanks for your comments. There is a lake trout rehabilitation plan for Lake Michigan and it goes out to 2025 I believe. If there is no natural reproduction after that, there will be a change in management. We could reduce the nearshore stocking though, which is mainly for sport fishing.

[Cork Dust]

Option 4 was the best ranked option Lakewide.

This results in reducing chinook salmon 30% and coho, brown trout, steelhead and lake trout by 10%.

Which species should be cut the least if we mix and match species?

http://m.jsonline.com/newswatch/165847156.html

Okay, so much for public input. The consensus decision from the Lake Michigan Management Committee meeting is a projected 50% lakewide reduction in Chinook plants initiated in Spring of 2013. No creel limit alterations on Chinook. No additional plant reductions for other species until 2014, other than Wisconsin (tentatively, or, as worded in the meeting notes release-MAYBE) and no presence or public acknowledgement from the USFWS/USGS of the current age structure and diminished forage abundance data's (even though they play a key role in gathering and interpreting these data) potential impact on or by their "proposed" Keystone predator, lake trout.

So, despite a consensus opinion among fishery research and management personnel lake wide that salmon abundance is too great for the current forage base to support, adult salmon preferentially consume adult alewife, as well as three years to have these planting cuts significantly impact Chinook numbers in Lake Michigan, the option that was projected to have the lowest probability of significantly increasing the forage base to the modeling study's pre identified biomass goal was chosen. Over the last 5+ years, since instituting the Red Flags (structured to avoid a repeat of the forage base crash that occurred in Lake Huron) analysis matrix to direct management decisions based on key biologic parameters of overall fishery and stock health, with no action taken while age structure, total biomass, and adult biomass of the alewife stock sequentially declined to the most diminished age structure on record, I would expect something that smacked of more decisive action.

Why is it that Wisconsin was the only State to opt to cut multiple species plants? Why is it that inshore lake trout plants were not cut, particularly since they constitute around ten percent or less of the sport catch, while currently encompassing fifty percent of the lake wide plant number value. Why is it that a more aggressive plant reduction option was not chosen now that the data indicating that 14-18 million Chinook smolts exit Canadian tributary streams each May in Lake Huron, particularly when these values indicate the adult Chinook that propagated these numbers of yearlings would far exceed the Lake Huron forage base's ability to "grow" them to adulthood (indicating that they likely access Lake Michigan for forage in some significant numbers)?

Now I know it is time to sell my Great Lakes boat...

[jimcr]

Now chew on this , the feds want to increase Lake trout , The Indians need more for there rituals.

The stocking cuts for wisconsin are at 42 % if they stay with what the DNR told us Last week. Ill and Indiana are not taking cuts.

[Cork Dust]

The Feds have an agreement with fishery managers at the State level on lake trout recovery that runs through 2025.

Alewife, particularly adult alewife, are top-notch larval fish predators, feeding on yellow perch, lake trout, burbot, emerald shiner, lake whitefish, and bloater larvae. The deep water refuge reef plants of lake trout that were enacted and expanded at the sea mount-like reefs in northern Lake Michigan were largely a bust. Follow-up data indicate that, as adult alewife stock density has diminished and larval predation has been reduced, burbot stocks have rebounded. The open ocean sea-mount component of the story now comes into play. Elevated stock densities of larval burbot have resulted in increased colonization rates of these open-lake reefs, increasing burbot densities at these sites. Consequently, these more abundant burbot stocks have happily devoured most of the planted lake trout released on these reef sites within a few months of the plant date.

Lake trout are quite susceptible to Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS), a thiamine deficiency induced mortality factor driven largely by elevated thiaminase (the enzyme that catalyzes the destruction of thiamine stores) levels in their diets. Alewife and smelt contain larger concentrations of thiaminase than the remainder of the forage stock. My read on the Fed's initiative to expand lake trout plants at record low stock densities of alewife is a desperate attempt to move thirty years of largely failed effort to rehabilitate the lake trout stocks in the lower Great Lakes to achieve elevated or self-sustaining levels of natural reproduction. All for a fish that is recommended the Public not consume at legal size!

What the Feds seem unable or unwilling to grasp or concede is that the principal reason that lake trout stocks are self-sustaining in Lake Superior is that the native specie components of the food web remains largely intact in this Great Lakes water body, when compared to those of the lower Great Lakes.

The other interesting potential twist in all this "wrangling" by fishery management personnel, is that Michigan sells fish to Illinois and Indiana from its hatcheries. Under this array, Michigan's Dept. of Nat. Res. receives some level of financial offset to its hatchery program component by continuing to sell fish (Chinook,coho, brown trout, steelhead, and lake trout)to these States, while it absorbs the majority of the Chinook stocking reductions (and consequent reductions in Chinook production within the hatchery system) along its Lake Michigan coastline.

Chinook used to cost between 13 and 16 cents apiece(prior to escalations in food meal component prices) to raise to size at release. All other fish species have significantly higher rearing costs, with Steelhead pegging-in at over two dollars a fish, from what I remember.

[Paulywood]

The Feds have an agreement with fishery managers at the State level on lake trout recovery that runs through 2025.

Alewife, particularly adult alewife, are top-notch larval fish predators, feeding on yellow perch, lake trout, burbot, emerald shiner, lake whitefish, and bloater larvae. The deep water refuge reef plants of lake trout that were enacted and expanded at the sea mount-like reefs in northern Lake Michigan were largely a bust. Follow-up data indicate that, as adult alewife stock density has diminished and larval predation has been reduced, burbot stocks have rebounded. The open ocean sea-mount component of the story now comes into play. Elevated stock densities of larval burbot have resulted in increased colonization rates of these open-lake reefs, increasing burbot densities at these sites. Consequently, these more abundant burbot stocks have happily devoured most of the planted lake trout released on these reef sites within a few months of the plant date.

Lake trout are quite susceptible to Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS), a thiamine deficiency induced mortality factor driven largely by elevated thiaminase (the enzyme that catalyzes the destruction of thiamine stores) levels in their diets. Alewife and smelt contain larger concentrations of thiaminase than the remainder of the forage stock. My read on the Fed's initiative to expand lake trout plants at record low stock densities of alewife is a desperate attempt to move thirty years of largely failed effort to rehabilitate the lake trout stocks in the lower Great Lakes to achieve elevated or self-sustaining levels of natural reproduction. All for a fish that is recommended the Public not consume at legal size!

What the Feds seem unable or unwilling to grasp or concede is that the principal reason that lake trout stocks are self-sustaining in Lake Superior is that the native specie components of the food web remains largely intact in this Great Lakes water body, when compared to those of the lower Great Lakes.

The other interesting potential twist in all this "wrangling" by fishery management personnel, is that Michigan sells fish to Illinois and Indiana from its hatcheries. Under this array, Michigan's Dept. of Nat. Res. receives some level of financial offset to its hatchery program component by continuing to sell fish (Chinook,coho, brown trout, steelhead, and lake trout)to these States, while it absorbs the majority of the Chinook stocking reductions (and consequent reductions in Chinook production within the hatchery system) along its Lake Michigan coastline.

Chinook used to cost between 13 and 16 cents apiece(prior to escalations in food meal component prices) to raise to size at release. All other fish species have significantly higher rearing costs, with Steelhead pegging-in at over two dollars a fish, from what I remember.

Lots of good info here, thanks for sharing. You are obviously educated in this area and I appreciate you helping us who are less informed. I have been actively voting and responding to questionnaires from a fishing perspective but it's always good to hear the scientific reasons for any changes.

Nick

[Cork Dust]

I ran through the meeting outline notes from the Wisconsin based August Workshops. I could find nothing in this document that indicated that Wisconsin would be directed to take a greater Chinook plant reduction than the previously outlined 38%, as well as no mention of no plant reductions for Illinois, and Indiana. Jim, who was the source of this information?

[jimcr]

one of the slides that Brad discussed with us at the meeting , Also how can Michigan take a 66.8 % cut and Wisconsin Take a 38.7 % cut . The numbers don't work out . Look at page 18 .

http://dnr.wi.gov/fish/lakemich/WisconsinSalmonidWorkshoPresentationWorkshop6.pdf

Now this is not the Final but its what recommended. the 42% total may be what Us here in Milwaukee are going to lose.

[Cork Dust]

Thank you.

My interpretation is that the percentage cuts are reductions from the individual State's Chinook plant allotment, with the resulting total lake plant reductions summed to yield the lakewide 50% reduction value. The 2006 plant reductions were enacted in similar fashion, with a lakewide reduction value of twenty-five percent, while Michigan's Chinook plant reduction value was thirty percent.

So, essentially, while Michigan streams would see near seventy percent reductions in planted Chinook, there still would be ample smolt "release" rates into the open lake waters in spring, since the yearling Chinook stock has been pegged to consist of 54% wild origin fish, most of them originating from Michigan streams. The unquantified component is how that value increases to nearly 70% for 3+ year old fish in Lake Michigan. The hypotheses being advanced are: 1)Survival of hatchery origin Chinook in a forage depleted environment is lower over time that wild origin stock survivorship. 2.) Emmigration of Chinook from Lake Huron waters contributes to the expansion in wild origin fish in the Lake Michigan Chinook stock.

[jimcr]

Thank you.

My interpretation is that the percentage cuts are reductions from the individual State's Chinook plant allotment, with the resulting total lake plant reductions summed to yield the lakewide 50% reduction value. The 2006 plant reductions were enacted in similar fashion, with a lakewide reduction value of twenty-five percent, while Michigan's Chinook plant reduction value was thirty percent.

So, essentially, while Michigan streams would see near seventy percent reductions in planted Chinook, there still would be ample smolt "release" rates into the open lake waters in spring, since the yearling Chinook stock has been pegged to consist of 54% wild origin fish, most of them originating from Michigan streams. The unquantified component is how that value increases to nearly 70% for 3+ year old fish in Lake Michigan. The hypotheses being advanced are: 1)Survival of hatchery origin Chinook in a forage depleted environment is lower over time that wild origin stock survivorship. 2.) Emmigration of Chinook from Lake Huron waters contributes to the expansion in wild origin fish in the Lake Michigan Chinook stock.

I just stared fishing out on Lake Michigan in 2010, now in my 3rd season

I would hate to see what happened in Lake Huron happen here but also I hope that these guys are not just hoping they will get it right. I asked them at one of the meetings at WI Sea grant , what they are doing to address the real problem , and the fisheries DNR rep laughed . Said there is not anything they could do about the invasive species problem. (muscles) Its kind of like whats happening with the Asian carp, nothing right now, but if they get in they will find all kinds of money to through at the problem.

I love fishing the big pond , and hope they dont' get it wrong because if they do our boats and gear won't be good for any but door stops.

[Jay Wesley]

The Lake Michigan Committee will provide a news release once a final decision has been made. The Lake Committee has a meeting on the 23rd. An announcement should come shortly after.

Details of each states reduction and options to use other species will also come out.

One reason that there is differential survival of hatchery vs. wild chinook is not because the hathery fish are dying, they actually have faster growth so they return earlier. Wild fish grow slower and tend to make up the majority of the 3 and 4 year olds. This is why the OTC marking showed 60-70% wild fish with the 3 and 4 year olds.

For Michigan, we are committed to the Lake Trout Rehabilitation Strategy. We also had a number of comments that lake trout are a valuable nearshore fishery when other species are not around. We (Michigan) will consider brown trout reductions at ports that are interested. Brown trout are expensive to raise and creel returns are low.

[tgafish]

Jay I think you guys are going to have an impossible time explaining any other option than option 4. It wins on science and public opinion. It won't make everyone happy but everyone will understand why it was done.

[Jay Wesley]

All 4 options were put out to public comment because they could accomplish our objectives. When you look at the break down of the public comment by state, Mich preferred option 2. This is also what I heard while talking with the public. Option 4 was run in the model to reduce chinook 30% and all other species 10%. It really started to get muddy when one state was just going to cut lake trout and another was just going to cut brown trout.

After a lot of discussion as a lake committee, Option 2 made the most sense and was logistically the easiest to implement and make more frequent changes. Coho, brown trout, lake trout, and steelhead are in the hatcheries for 18 months, so it takes a full year after a decision is made to change the stocking. We can make a decision to increase or decrease chinook stocking and implement that change the following year.

More details to come. Some states may also cut other species using chinook equivalents.

[Cork Dust]

The Lake Michigan Committee will provide a news release once a final decision has been made. The Lake Committee has a meeting on the 23rd. An announcement should come shortly after.

Details of each states reduction and options to use other species will also come out.

One reason that there is differential survival of hatchery vs. wild chinook is not because the hatchery fish are dying, they actually have faster growth so they return earlier. Wild fish grow slower and tend to make up the majority of the 3 and 4 year olds. This is why the OTC marking showed 60-70% wild fish with the 3 and 4 year olds.

For Michigan, we are committed to the Lake Trout Rehabilitation Strategy. We also had a number of comments that lake trout are a valuable nearshore fishery when other species are not around. We (Michigan) will consider brown trout reductions at ports that are interested. Brown trout are expensive to raise and creel returns are low.

Jay, with all due respect, when you make a statement that hatchery fish are growing faster and returning "earlier" than wild fish which are returning at three and four years of age, for a fish with a finite life cycle like Chinook salmon, they are dying at a younger age, so there is a difference in survivorship. So, essentially you are saying that hatchery origin fish are returning in highest frequency at age III, which matches well with Wisconsin's Strawberry Weir data and wild origin fish are returning at ages III and IV. My "guess" is that hatchery fish are returning in a tighter temporal window as well.

By justifying Michigan's abandonment of the survey respondent consensus lakewide response preference for Option 4, with the statement that several respondent individuals wanted lake trout plants retained (when they already compose nearly fifty-percent of the existing salmonid stock and will Increase as a stock component under the chosen stocking policy to be enacted in Spring of 2013 due to their longer life expectancy) and that Michigan is fully supportive of the lake trout rehabilitation compact and initiative that runs to 2025, you offer,at best, a weak argument and justification for this decision. I wonder, in our litigious society, how the State and USFWS/USGS would react to a lawsuit focused on a management policy the preferentially strives to repopulate the Lake Michigan fish population with a fish that is on the State's own published do not consume list at age of recruitment to the Sport Fishery? Perhaps your agency now practices a different type of fishery biology than I learned in graduate school at MSU?

What I see in this is a USFWS/USGS driven absolute disinterest in the pending crash of the Lake Michigan forage base. So when is the background restocking of lake herring going to occur? What you folks fail to acknowledge or accept is that the principal factor that has lead to the restoration of a spawning lake trout stock in Lake Superior is the simple reality that the endemic food web has remained largely intact, when compared to the lower Great Lakes.

If you really hope to achieve a self-sustaining stock of lake trout in Lake Michigan, I would encourage your agency, and your Federal partners to focus on efforts that would beneficially restructure the food web and eliminate many, most, all, of the 184 currently identified invasive specie that now populate Lake Michigan. Since the Feds. continue to insist on 'driving the bus' largely via posturing about funding sea lamprey control monies, they could coordinate and direct the USACE, USCGS, USGS, NOAA, EPA efforts via the President's appointed Great Lakes Czar instead of the thirty year failed effort at top down species management and restoration that has been a waste of billions of dollars in Federal tax money. As a starting point, perhaps they could convince the USACE to reword their goal statement regarding Asian Carp from manage their invasion and proliferation to a zero tolerance policy like the USFWS adopted in the emergency response plan for Asian Carp-but, I digress!

[Jay Wesley]

Jay, with all due respect, when you make a statement that hatchery fish are growing faster and returning "earlier" than wild fish which are returning at three and four years of age, for a fish with a finite life cycle like Chinook salmon, they are dying at a younger age, so there is a difference in survivorship. So, essentially you are saying that hatchery origin fish are returning in highest frequency at age III, which matches well with Wisconsin's Strawberry Weir data and wild origin fish are returning at ages III and IV. My "guess" is that hatchery fish are returning in a tighter temporal window as well.

By justifying Michigan's abandonment of the survey respondent consensus lakewide response preference for Option 4, with the statement that several respondent individuals wanted lake trout plants retained (when they already compose nearly fifty-percent of the existing salmonid stock and will Increase as a stock component under the chosen stocking policy to be enacted in Spring of 2013 due to their longer life expectancy) and that Michigan is fully supportive of the lake trout rehabilitation compact and initiative that runs to 2025, you offer,at best, a weak argument and justification for this decision. I wonder, in our litigious society, how the State and USFWS/USGS would react to a lawsuit focused on a management policy the preferentially strives to repopulate the Lake Michigan fish population with a fish that is on the State's own published do not consume list at age of recruitment to the Sport Fishery? Perhaps your agency now practices a different type of fishery biology than I learned in graduate school at MSU?

What I see in this is a USFWS/USGS driven absolute disinterest in the pending crash of the Lake Michigan forage base. So when is the background restocking of lake herring going to occur? What you folks fail to acknowledge or accept is that the principal factor that has lead to the restoration of a spawning lake trout stock in Lake Superior is the simple reality that the endemic food web has remained largely intact, when compared to the lower Great Lakes.

If you really hope to achieve a self-sustaining stock of lake trout in Lake Michigan, I would encourage your agency, and your Federal partners to focus on efforts that would beneficially restructure the food web and eliminate many, most, all, of the 184 currently identified invasive specie that now populate Lake Michigan. Since the Feds. continue to insist on 'driving the bus' largely via posturing about funding sea lamprey control monies, they could coordinate and direct the USACE, USCGS, USGS, NOAA, EPA efforts via the President's appointed Great Lakes Czar instead of the thirty year failed effort at top down species management and restoration that has been a waste of billions of dollars in Federal tax money. As a starting point, perhaps they could convince the USACE to reword their goal statement regarding Asian Carp from manage their invasion and proliferation to a zero tolerance policy like the USFWS adopted in the emergency response plan for Asian Carp-but, I digress!

If the states really wanted just lake trout, we would let the salmon fishery crash. This is what has allowed Lake Huron's lake trout to rehabilitate.

We are trying are best to manage for a diverse fishery. It may be impossible with all the invasives, but we are doing are best.

Give me a call sometime, you sound like a very education person that may be able to offer some good insights. Perhaps you are willing to serve on a committee or two.

Thanks!

Jay

[Cork Dust]

Jay, excellent effort at misdirection. I never said the States wanted a Great Lake with just lake trout. The long term intention of this stocking decision (50% chinook only 2013 plant cut) is a system with lake trout as the dominant predator(whether this is achieved by a self-sustaining stock or heavy hatchery supplementation is moot at this point), with Pacific Salmon relegated to a background exotic, much like what has occurred in Lake Superior.

I am one of the folks who tried to get the MDNR to cut chinook plants further than the 50% reduction that occurred in the interval of the alewife stock collapse. I began this conversation with Dave Borgeson,Jr. in late 2007 and continued it with your predecessor in 2008. My chief concern was emigration of these salmon, along with Lake Huron north shore origin wild fish into Lake Michigan to feed on an alewife stock that had been documented to already be under forage stressors (food quality and ration) by Pothoven and Mandenjian. I was repeatedly assured that Lake Huron planted chinooks weren't surviving well and neither of these stocks was likely 'straying' to forage in Lake Michigan(at this time data were available to document that roughly 80% of the Lake Huron chinook stock that remained were wild origin fish). I was also reassured by folks at the Charlevoix lab and your predecessor that the "Doughnut in the Desert" late winter chlorophyll 'a' spike identified by Kerfoot's group in 2000/2001, as well as the more southerly latitude of the principal overwinter refuge for the alewife stock in Lake Michigan would both serve as significant offsets to any significant forage base crash.

When Tom Nalepa et al. published their findings in 2010 on proliferation rate and extent of Quagga sp. mussel colonization and energy entrapment in the demersal energy pool,I again became quite concerned about accelerating impacts on diminished ration quantity and quality for alewife, as well as potential adverse impacts on their age at recruitment to the adult spawning stock. I contacted personnel at the USGS Great Lakes Science Center, as well as the MDNR's Charlevoix Research Lab. I was told that they had been both authorized to initiate a broad State of the Lake study, assessing food web relationships as well as age and growth and age at recruitment update studies on the alewife population in Lake Michigan. Obviously, this work occurred since the 2010 forage fish abundance reports (trawl and acoustic studies) were simply presented in tabular form. Yet, no publications or reports have appeared from these efforts.

When I received an internal PowerPoint presentation generated by the USGS Great Lakes Science Center folks that had also seen broad circulation within the MDNR, that stated in its conclusion bullet point overview slide: "Signs from both the bottom trawl survey and the acoustic survey of an impending complete collapse of the Lake Michigan alewife population" in Lake Michigan, my faith in what I was told to date was quite shaken.

So,here is the overview of the status of all those 'factors' that were deemed to protect the alewife stock and NOT allow Lake Michigan's sport fishery to go the way of Lake Huron's. The late winter plankton gyre in southern Lake Michigan that became known as the "Doughnut in the Desert" was documented by Kerfoot's group at MTU to have disappeared in 2009/2010. Alewife growth rate continues to slow,as does age at sexual maturity for the stock (formerly Age III). Relative standard error (RSE) values in the trawl and acoustic surveys continue to increase, indicating that alewife are distributed in an increasingly patchy array lakewide. I suspect that RSE values are highest in the northern portion of Lake Michigan, but I could not get that question addressed or answered at the Benton Harbor meeting in April (I attended via the remote link and we were only allowed one question).

So, when the conscensus survey respondent majority suggests professional fishery managers adopt Option 4, yet they settle on Option 2, I become VERY suspicous of their motives, intent, and overall degree of concern for the sport fishery's well being, particularly as it pertains to the Pacific Salmon stocks.

As background for others reading this thread, Dr. Jone's group's Decision Analysis Model predictions yielded the following liklihood outcomes estimates (expressed as percentages) for Option 2 and Option 4, respectively: 1.) Risk of low alewife biomass <100Ktons (12% for Option 2;3% for Option 4) 2.) Risk of low Chinook Wts. of < 13lbs. (20% for Option2; 7% for Option 4) 3.) Risk of <200K Chinook in the sport catch (21% for Option 2; 7% for Option 4) 4.) Risk of < 8 fish/100 angler hours of fishing effort (19% for Option 2; 6% for Option 4).

So, I'll echo the kid in the crowd's question as the White Sox players left the courtroom following the reading of the verdict on their efforts to throw the World Series that year, "Say it ain't so, Joe, say it ain't so?"

[Jay Wesley]

For Immediate Release

August 27, 2012

PROPOSED SALMON STOCKING REDUCTIONS ANNOUNCED

FOR LAKE MICHIGAN

ANN ARBOR, MI—Following more than a year of consultation with angler groups and other stakeholders, the Lake Michigan Committee (LMC) has proposed a new management strategy for Lake Michigan salmon. Beginning in spring of 2013, the LMC recommends that Chinook salmon stocking in Lake Michigan be reduced to one-half of current stocking levels. With salmon egg collections to begin in September, 2012, fisheries management agencies are now developing plans to decrease fingerling production targets to levels supporting reduced stocking, for a minimum of three years. The LMC comprises representatives from each of the state fisheries management agencies in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority (CORA). The Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC) facilitates the committee’s activities.

The proposed Chinook salmon reduction is in response to recent increases in natural reproduction of Chinook and declines in the forage base. Recent studies have shown that approximately 55% of Chinook salmon in Lake Michigan is produced naturally, and prey fish (e.g., alewife) are currently at or near historic low levels, conditions similar to those leading to the collapse of prey fish populations in Lake Huron. The planned stocking reductions are intended to maintain a quality Chinook salmon fishery, while reducing the predation on the forage population.

While Chinook salmon are highly dependent on alewives, all Great Lakes salmonids use those forage fish to varying degrees. Balancing predator and prey populations by reducing predation pressure is necessary to stabilize the ecosystem as well as to preserve the quality and diversity of the multi-billion-dollar sport fishery. The LMC’s approach gained widespread support from all agencies and their constituents throughout the decision-making process. Along with the proposed reductions, an adopted monitoring plan should allow management agencies to react quickly if conditions change.

Each LMC member agency must still approve and implement the committee’s recommendations. Under the proposed agreement, the 3.3 million Chinook salmon annually stocked into Lake Michigan would be reduced by 1.6 million fish, for a total of 1.7 million fish to be stocked. Of the reduced stocking, Michigan would shoulder the largest reduction, stocking 1.1 million fewer fish, since Michigan streams currently contribute the majority of the natural reproduction. Wisconsin would reduce its stocking by 440,000 fish, while Illinois and Indiana would reduce by 20,000 and 25,000 fish, respectively. The CORA tribes do not stock Chinook salmon. This proposed stocking reduction should still provide for fall spawning runs for stream and nearshore anglers. Each agency will work with their respective management teams to implement these changes in the manner most appropriate to each jurisdiction.

Contacts:

Tom Gorenflo, CORA: 906-632-0072

Marc Gaden, GLFC: 734-417-8012

Steve Robillard, Illinois: 847-294-4134

Jeremy Price, Indiana: 260-244-6805

Jay Wesley, Michigan: 269-685-6851 x 117

Brad Eggold, Wisconsin: 414-382-7921