Article published November 10, 2009
Shoring up walleye stocks is daunting task
When it comes to shoring up Lake Erie's highly valued walleye stocks, which currently are foundering as badly as the world economy, the elusive search is on for magic bullets.
Fisheries biologists and managers have looked at most if not all of the proposals - many are resurrected whenever walleye stocks cycle downward, as now - and they would be only too glad to adopt them if they made science sense.
Stocking hatchery-reared walleye in the lake is one such example. Jeff Tyson, Lake Erie fisheries research supervisor for the Ohio Division of Wildlife, noted that it would take a stock of 224 million walleye fingerlings to produce an average size year-class of 10 million age two fish.
That is 32 times the capacity of Ohio's walleye hatcheries, and it would take 72,800 mature female walleye to produce such a supply of eggs, only half of which survive to hatching. Tyson said that state electroshocking crews in the Maumee and Sandusky rivers in the spring only manage to capture about 4,000 walleye, and of them only 800 are females.
That is tens of thousands of fish short of what would be needed and illustrates the daunting scope of the numbers alone needed to stock a lake the size of Erie- more than 6.3 million acres.
Dumping hatchery fingerlings into the lake, moreover, could dilute and even endanger the highly evolved genetics, including homing and timing instincts, of the various reef and river stocks.Another major campaign has taken aim at First Energy's Bay Shore Power Plant, located where the Maumee River empties into Maumee Bay.
Bay Shore's cooling-water intake annually entrains millions upon millions of walleye fry, and that has been a big bone of contention. A move toward best management practices - such as reducing the intake during spawning runs - is desirable. (Note that even year-old and 2- year-old fish, the latter 15-inchers entering the fishing stock, easily can swim out of the intake channel and avoid destruction.)
But even if you could shut down the plant completely during the spring spawning run up the Maumee River, which is not likely, there is no guarantee it would allow for consistently good year-classes from the Maumee River stock, noted Tyson.
"We've always got the weather trump-card." Good weather, good hatch; bad weather, bad hatch. It is that simple, or that difficult.
It would be hard to make a case against Bay Shore in court, which is where any spawning shutdown debate ultimately would reside. The fact is, the plant has been in operation more than 50 years - right through the walleye boom of the 1980s, and ultimately state fisheries managers would have to justify to a judge just how that boom could have occurred if Bay Shore is wrecking walleye stocks.
It can be argued that if millions of fry succumb annually at Bay Shore, billions more succumb to natural causes at large on the lake.
Another contentious issue is the dumping of Maumee Ship Channel dredgings in the open waters of the outer bay. The Maumee River watershed produces more silt - from erosion of farmland and urban runoff - than all the rest of the rivers on the Great Lakes, combined.
But Tyson notes that such dumping already is restricted until after July 1, long after any spawning and hatching may occur in the bay. Too, a strong, prolonged northeaster will kick up the shallow western basin's south shore and turn the water-column to "mud," creating a built-in siltation problem irrespective of ship channel maintenance.
The same argument about Bay Shore - that it was on-line before and during the walleye boom - applies to the dredging issue, however desirable it may be to eliminate as much additional siltation as possible.
Which leaves, among major suggestions, the question of closure of fishing during spring spawning. To which Tyson replies:
"We've done a lot of research in the rivers and on the reefs, and what it indicates is that closure, within the range of populations seen on Lake Erie, does not have an impact on year-class strength."
The biologist noted that only four percent of the annual sport catch occurs in March and April, and that is not significant enough to affect the adult walleye stock. Most of the annual sport-catch occurs May through July on the lake, and a female fish removed in May or June is just as unavailable next spring as one caught in March or April.
Nonetheless, Jack Tibbels, who owns Tibbels Marina at Marblehead, is pushing for a spring closure on walleye fishing. He has been circulating letters to the editor in local and county newspapers, stating his case.
"This is my solution to preserve a great industry for the future," Tibbels says in part. "I have 55 years experience as a fishing charter captain and commercial fisherman. I have seen walleye fishing go from catching 100 walleye daily, to no walleye, to plentiful, to current lows heading for depletion. Without protecting the spawning of walleye, [smallmouth] bass, and [yellow] perch, we can only expect declining fish populations."
Tibbels runs party boats, which charge $37 a head for fishing, and he also runs standard "six-pack" charters which take up to six anglers for about $600. He operates a fully equipped marina. "I'll survive," he said. But, "what we've done in the past hasn't worked. I'm willing to sacrifice business in that early season."
Predictably, his position finds little favor overall among charter skippers, who see the spring jig-and-minnow fishery as their make-or-break time for the year. That is because - again, weather permitting - the fish are in close so the boat-runs are short and fuel bills are lower. The fishing can be fast, and some skippers can cram two, even three trips into a single day. They claim that offsets their costs of long, time-consuming runs for less cooperative fish come midsummer.
"We're very concerned," says Rick Unger, president of the Lake Erie Charter Boat Association, about the depressed walleye stocks. LECBA has 200 members and with affiliates represents most of the 800 captains in Ohio waters of the lake. But Unger said that LECBA does not support spring closure.
"We stand behind the division of wildlife and their science," stated Unger. "Their science says shutting the spring fishing would not improve the hatch. The hatch is weather driven. They can't make the weather."
Contact Steve Pollick at:
spollick@theblade.com
or 419-724-6068.
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