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Lake Erie anglers face new limits
September 25, 2003
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER
LANSING -- With walleye stocks dropping faster than the Detroit Tigers' winning percentage, it's no longer a question of whether the Lake Erie walleye season will be closed during the spawning run next spring. The key question is whether it will be closed only in April, or in April and May.
The state Natural Resources Commission will deliberate that question Oct. 9-10 at its meeting in Lansing, where it will consider two plans to reduce the state's Lake Erie walleye take by 40 percent.
Michigan's effort is part of a basin-wide attempt to achieve the same reduction all over the lake with similar support from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario.
One Michigan plan would close the lake to walleye fishing in April and May and allow a bag limit of five fish a day for the rest of the season, with a minimum size of 15 inches. The limits this year were six fish and 13 inches.
The second plan, preferred by charter-boat captains, bait shop owners and communities that make money from walleye fishing, would close the fishery from April 1 through May 1 -- the first Saturday in May. The season then would open with a four-fish daily limit and 15-inch size limit.
Both proposals also would increase the size limit to 15 inches on Lake St. Clair and the Detroit and St. Clair rivers but would not close the season on those waters.
Neither plan likely would result in a drastic reduction in the number of Lake Erie walleyes caught by Michigan anglers. A six-year average shows that April accounts for only 1 percent of the total take, and April and May together account for 13 percent. But the plans would prevent anglers from taking fish out of the spring spawning run.
"The proposals are biologically equivalent and would achieve the goal of reducing the harvest by about 40 percent," said Kurt Newman, a state Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist, who prepared the proposals with fellow biologists Mike Thomas, Gary Towns and Todd Grischke.
For reasons not yet understood, Lake Erie's fabled walleye stocks, which peaked at nearly 80 million in 1988, dwindled to fewer than 18 million this year. Three years of poor to disastrous spawning threaten further precipitous declines unless something is done to protect the remaining fish.
Newman doesn't think it's an accident that walleye numbers began falling just as the numbers of exotic zebra mussels began to explode. Many biologists think the mussels compete for food with newly hatched walleyes and with the species walleye eat.
In addition, Lake Erie has experienced 10 of the mildest winters on record since 1988, and scientists think walleyes might require at least occasional cold winters for good spawning.
"When you think about it, the lake is like a big ball of energy, and that energy can go into creating walleye flesh or zebra mussel flesh," Newman said. "And that energy pie isn't as big as it once was. Not only have the zebra mussels cleaned out a lot of nutrients, we also took a lot of nutrients out" with pollution controls.
The effects of the zebra mussel invasion and water quality improvements might have been compounded by factors like climate change and dropping water levels.
"It looks like we got a good year-class this spring, but we won't really know that for a few months," Newman said of newborn walleye. "Even if we did have a good year this spring, those fish won't reach legal size until at least 2005, and they won't start spawning until 2006."
The 2002 spawning class was a disaster, Newman said, something that was proved by biologists who pulled trawl nets through areas where they have been sampling walleye numbers for 30 years.
"We have long-term data on those areas, and we know that we should get hundreds of young-of-the-year walleyes in the trawl," he said. "From the '02 class we got four. Four!"
The four American states with Lake Erie shorelines have come up with proposals that would reduce the walleye take by 40 percent. But Ontario, which is allotted about half of Lake Erie's allowable catch, has yet to match those proposals. Instead, Ontario has offered a 25 percent cut in its valuable commercial walleye fishery. Ontario sport anglers take only 3 percent of the province's allowance.
"Walleye fishing on Lake Erie in 2004 is not going to be as good as it was in 2003, and 2003 was way down from what people have been used to in the past 10 years," Newman said. "What we have to do is manage the stocks so that we maintain a more consistent level, and we can do that.
"My job is not just to provide fish for the people who are fishing now. I have to think of the fishing for their grandchildren."
September 25, 2003
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER
LANSING -- With walleye stocks dropping faster than the Detroit Tigers' winning percentage, it's no longer a question of whether the Lake Erie walleye season will be closed during the spawning run next spring. The key question is whether it will be closed only in April, or in April and May.
The state Natural Resources Commission will deliberate that question Oct. 9-10 at its meeting in Lansing, where it will consider two plans to reduce the state's Lake Erie walleye take by 40 percent.
Michigan's effort is part of a basin-wide attempt to achieve the same reduction all over the lake with similar support from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario.
One Michigan plan would close the lake to walleye fishing in April and May and allow a bag limit of five fish a day for the rest of the season, with a minimum size of 15 inches. The limits this year were six fish and 13 inches.
The second plan, preferred by charter-boat captains, bait shop owners and communities that make money from walleye fishing, would close the fishery from April 1 through May 1 -- the first Saturday in May. The season then would open with a four-fish daily limit and 15-inch size limit.
Both proposals also would increase the size limit to 15 inches on Lake St. Clair and the Detroit and St. Clair rivers but would not close the season on those waters.
Neither plan likely would result in a drastic reduction in the number of Lake Erie walleyes caught by Michigan anglers. A six-year average shows that April accounts for only 1 percent of the total take, and April and May together account for 13 percent. But the plans would prevent anglers from taking fish out of the spring spawning run.
"The proposals are biologically equivalent and would achieve the goal of reducing the harvest by about 40 percent," said Kurt Newman, a state Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist, who prepared the proposals with fellow biologists Mike Thomas, Gary Towns and Todd Grischke.
For reasons not yet understood, Lake Erie's fabled walleye stocks, which peaked at nearly 80 million in 1988, dwindled to fewer than 18 million this year. Three years of poor to disastrous spawning threaten further precipitous declines unless something is done to protect the remaining fish.
Newman doesn't think it's an accident that walleye numbers began falling just as the numbers of exotic zebra mussels began to explode. Many biologists think the mussels compete for food with newly hatched walleyes and with the species walleye eat.
In addition, Lake Erie has experienced 10 of the mildest winters on record since 1988, and scientists think walleyes might require at least occasional cold winters for good spawning.
"When you think about it, the lake is like a big ball of energy, and that energy can go into creating walleye flesh or zebra mussel flesh," Newman said. "And that energy pie isn't as big as it once was. Not only have the zebra mussels cleaned out a lot of nutrients, we also took a lot of nutrients out" with pollution controls.
The effects of the zebra mussel invasion and water quality improvements might have been compounded by factors like climate change and dropping water levels.
"It looks like we got a good year-class this spring, but we won't really know that for a few months," Newman said of newborn walleye. "Even if we did have a good year this spring, those fish won't reach legal size until at least 2005, and they won't start spawning until 2006."
The 2002 spawning class was a disaster, Newman said, something that was proved by biologists who pulled trawl nets through areas where they have been sampling walleye numbers for 30 years.
"We have long-term data on those areas, and we know that we should get hundreds of young-of-the-year walleyes in the trawl," he said. "From the '02 class we got four. Four!"
The four American states with Lake Erie shorelines have come up with proposals that would reduce the walleye take by 40 percent. But Ontario, which is allotted about half of Lake Erie's allowable catch, has yet to match those proposals. Instead, Ontario has offered a 25 percent cut in its valuable commercial walleye fishery. Ontario sport anglers take only 3 percent of the province's allowance.
"Walleye fishing on Lake Erie in 2004 is not going to be as good as it was in 2003, and 2003 was way down from what people have been used to in the past 10 years," Newman said. "What we have to do is manage the stocks so that we maintain a more consistent level, and we can do that.
"My job is not just to provide fish for the people who are fishing now. I have to think of the fishing for their grandchildren."
