State officials warn that without stocking cuts, fewer or smaller Chinook salmon may be the result in Lake Michigan and its tributaries like the Manistee River where this was caught.
By Howard Meyerson
LANSING – Michigan fish managers are facing a frightening scenario on Lake Michigan: too few prey fish to sustain the salmon population at current stocking levels. The solutions, they say, involve cutting hatchery plants.
Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources and Lake Michigan managers have invited anglers to have a say in the outcome. Four management options were presented to anglers in a workshop held April 14 in Benton Harbor. The choices were the consensus of a multi-state working group that spent a year reviewing Lake Michigan’s forage base and running stocking scenarios on a sophisticated computer model.
Whittled down from a field of 25 choices, all four call for cutting stocking efforts by 30 to 50 percent and further decisions about lake trout, steelhead, brown trout and Coho salmon. Officials say they wanted options that would not decimate the forage base or result in smaller or fewer fish.
Lake Michigan is stocked with 2.5 million Chinook salmon fingerlings annually. They feed exclusively on alewives unlike steelhead, coho salmon and brown trout which feed on various prey. If the alewives disappear so do the big kings. Continue reading
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