Walleye Numbers Increase in Area

[alfredo]

Call it revenge of the walleye.

In Lake Huron, the first match might have gone to the invasive species -- zebra and quagga mussels, sea lamprey and worse -- but now we're in the first round of the rematch.

"We were seeing the invasives taking over everything," said Jim Johnson, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist. "Now we're seeing the natives strike back. And I think that's pretty cool."

Johnson was one of the featured speakers Wednesday night at the 2011 Great Lakes Fisheries Workshop, sponsored by the Blue Water Sportfishing Association in Port Huron.

The natives still are a little wobbly, though.

Lake Huron fishing was better in 2010 than in 2009, but it's still in pretty dismal shape after the alewives disappeared from the lake in 2004, taking most of the salmon fishery with them. The alewives disappeared because the invasive mussels vacuumed all the food out of the lake.

Since then, the predator-prey relationships in the lake have been adjusting to the new normal.

Unfortunately for anglers targeting salmon, chinooks have had trouble adjusting. Chinook salmon expect to dine at a table set by alewives. They're not adaptable enough to look elsewhere for sustenance.

"Chinooks are uniquely wedded to alewives," Johnson said. "Without the alewife, they can't find their niche out there."

In the summer of 2000, chinook salmon accounted for 58% of the Lake Huron catch. Last year, the king of the lake was walleye, accounting for 49% of the catch. The difference is more than percentages.

After years in the 1990s when anglers out of Thumb ports boated as many as 30,000 salmon, they weighed in just 174 last year. And they didn't weigh much. There hasn't been a Master Angler fish from Lake Huron since 2004.

It's not just trophies.

The salmon crash, Johnson said, has cost Lake Huron fishing towns such as Lexington, Port Sanilac, Harbor Beach and on up the coast $1 million to $2 million a year.

People aren't showing up to fish. That's a mistake, because fish are out there.

"Walleye catches in the main basin fishing ports has just soared," Johnson told the 70 or so anglers at the workshop. The "main basin" is Lake Huron excluding Saginaw Bay and Georgian Bay.

Soaring can't begin to describe what's happening to Saginaw Bay walleye.

For that, much of the thanks goes to those invasive mussels. They kept alewives from growing up and becoming one of the main predators of baby walleyes. With nothing eating just-hatched fry, more walleye are growing up into sport fish.

They're growing up smart, unlike the salmon. Walleyes are one species that has developed a taste for invasive round gobies.

According to the continuing Lake Huron predator diet study conducted by the U.S. Geological Service's Great Lakes Science Center, lake trout, too, are growing fat on diet of exotics. They're eating gobies, too, as well as the chinook salmon the DNR stocks to an uncertain fate in Lake Huron.

[GrandpaJim]

I'm sure Jim Johnson struggled mightily to keep the huge grin from his face over the decline of the chinook!! This is something he's pushed for years as he and other bios are intent on reestablishing lake trout as the apex predator in Lake Huron. I agree with all you've presented in your post. I realize and accept the many factors that have been presented in analyses of the dwindling stocks of chinook. The resurgence of walleye (pickerel) numbers is a definite positive. I struggle, however, to remain positive over DNR and MNR joint plans to stock 4 million lake trout in light of the fact that there is very limited support for this action from the sportfishing community (L.T.'s notorious for poor fighting characteristics) and even the commercial concerns don't want them (very low dollar value from the processing plants). I have serious difficulty when the head decision maker condescendingly makes reference to the financial losses (grossly understated by the way) incurred by Michigan sportfishing ports then magnanimously reminds anglers that there are still lots of fish to be had in the respective areas. Does he honestly believe knowledgeable anglers are unaware of the presence of walleye and lakers?? Shouldn't someone in his elevated position be aware that anglers view both species as a very weak substitute for the once prolific salmon and simply choose to expend neither the effort nor money in catching fish species that produce very limited effort on the end of a line??