Salmon fishing in Lake Huron, DNR reduces stocking

Was there ever a starker contrast than between this year’s salmon fishing on Lake Michigan and its counterpart on Lake Huron?

Along Michigan’s western shoreline, boaters caught some of the biggest king salmon in recent memory, and lots of them. On rivers such as the Grand, Manistee and Betsie, anglers still marvel at what they’re calling the best runs in 20 years, maybe ever.

Meanwhile, on Lake Huron, salmon fortunes are so bleak that, instead of adding more fish through stocking, the Department of Natural Resources is cutting its plants by more than 50 percent. That’s after they were already cut in half in 2006.

The reason? Quagga and zebra mussels in Lake Huron have turned the lake’s food factory on its head. Species they’ve edged out once fed smelt and alewives (like mussels and salmon, not native to the lake) on which the kings thrived.

No matter how many fish DNR hatcheries pumped in, there was nothing to feed them. The result? An estimated lake-wide catch of just 3,200 chinook salmon last year, the lowest in 25 years.

Jim Dexter, acting chief of the DNR’s Fisheries Division, pulled no punches in a news release Friday.

“Recreational harvest of chinook salmon has virtually vanished in the southern two-thirds of Lake Huron. It’s obvious the forage base is no longer available to support large numbers of Chinooks in Lake Huron.”

Lake trout and walleyes eat different foods – and in expanding numbers they’ve learned to gobble young, freshly-planted salmon, too.

Of Lake Huron salmon that do grow to adulthood, four out of five are naturally, not hatchery, produced.

Biologists say, in fact, that survival rates of planted fish, numbers of wild-hatched fish, and forage supplies have bigger impacts on fishing success than do planting rates.

Now, big plants of kings are just resources poured down the drain.

Next spring, 693,000 chinook salmon fingerlings will be released into Michigan’s Lake Huron waters, compared to 1.5 million this year. Those fish will not be released in southern Lake Huron ports such as Lexington and Harbor Beach, which once hosted booming king fisheries, nor even Oscoda or Harrisville further up the coast.

They’ll go into Nunns Creek, the Cheboygan River and Swan River – Rogers City and north – within the area covered by the 2000 Consent Decree signed with Native American tribes covered by the 1836 Treaty with the U.S. government. It’s plant the fish or re-open the agreement. Nobody really wants to do that. Plus, the DNR values Swan Creek’s status as a back-up hatchery egg source.

Before making the decision, the DNR met with the Chippewa-Ottawa Resource Authority, the Lake Huron Citizen Fishery Advisory Committee, and Ontario fisheries officials, and held three public hearings in the area.

Todd Grischke, the DNR biologist who serves as coordinator of its Lake Huron Basin committee, said biologists will continue tracking king fortunes – but they don’t plan to restore the plants to recent levels soon.

And meanwhile, anglers with an eye for salmon had best look to Lake Michigan.

In the summer, Coho Salmon and Chinook Salmon (King Salmon) are out in the deep water of Lake Huron and are generally only found by people who fish the lake all the time like local residents or professional fishing charters.

In late summer and early Fall, great numbers of Chinook Salmon and Coho Salmon start staging at the mouth of the Spanish River or become more concentrated in the North Channel. Coming from the deep water of Lake Huron, the salmon are a nice color and great for eating. Later they go up the river to spawn. Coho can reach up to 20 pounds with the average size being around 12 pounds while the Chinooks can go over 40 pounds with the average size being about 20 pounds.

Many salmon hunters bring boats, which are geared with downriggers for the big lake. If you came for shallow fishing like Walleye or Pike and have a slow trolling boat, you can use our light-tackle deep-water fishing techniques, which are just as effective as downrigging for Salmon.

Lake Huron is the third largest of the lakes by volume, with 850 cubic miles of water. Lake Huron is hydrologically inseparable from Lake Michigan, joined by the wide Straits of Mackinac, thus Lake Huron, Georgian Bay and Lake Michigan, can be considered one huge lake. Lake Huron has the longest shoreline of the Great Lakes, extending 3,827 miles, counting the shorelines of its 30,000 islands. It is characterized by shallow, sandy beaches and the rocky shores of Georgian Bay. Manitoulin Island is the largest freshwater island in the world. The lake measures 206 miles across and 183 miles from north to south, with an average depth of 195 feet (approximately 750 feet, maximum). Lake Huron's drainage area, which covers parts of Michigan and Ontario, is relatively large compared to the other Great Lakes. The Saginaw River basin is intensively farmed and contains the Flint and Saginaw-Bay City metropolitan areas.

Could you please elaborate on what those light-tackle tehniques might be.