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Contact Glen Buehner capt.glen@raptor mailto:capt.glen@raptor charters. com

This is a good group of fellas that are working hard to get at the truth of the Lake Michigans fishery. You can follow them on facebook. They are a non profit org. They are working hard to turn the fishery around and I support them in every way I can.
Please check them out,Great Lakes Salmon Initiative, memberships start at a mere 20 bucks. Money well spent.

What is being said and by who that they believe is not the truth?

A good start to look at is, what has been happening to the situation of bombarding the lake with lake trout, and then reducing kings stockings. There has not been a lake trout yet that is stocked that will not eat alewife over all other bait fish.

Lakers are naturally reproducing now. Julianns reef is reproducing lakers at somewhere between 48-60%. At that rate Julianns reef can produce enough lakers for the entire southern basin, just that one reef. With the natural reproduction of lakers and the fact that not many are actually fished for them how would you keep the numbers down? We now have a tilt in numbers towards lakers. There needs to be a better balance of predators vs bait fish. We can get there but taking the kings is not the only or best way to get there.

That makes sense but I imagine the fishery managers have a reason why they continue to stock Lake Trout if that population can maintain itself through natural reproduction.

Indiana will stop stocking lake trout after 2017. Same with Wisconsin. Because of the numbers and natural reproduction of lakers. Not sure what Michigan is going to do. Only got there with discussions and breaking away from what has been going on for a very long time. Theres alot more going on as the lake is changing. Remember that it was the DNR that had used natural reproduction of kings for reason to decrease stocking of kings. That sword is swinging the same way with lakers naturally reproducing. If you contact Captain Glen from the GLSI and he could bring you up to date on why groups like this are needed and progress that is taking place.

Sounds like a good move by Indiana and Wisconsin. I wonder if the money will be reinvested in other fish stocking or related activity or if it just becomes a budget cut.

Indiana doesn't rear lake trout in its hatcheries so not stocking in Indiana doesn't affect the Indiana Division's budget. The feds stock most if not all the lakers in Lake Michigan and just apportion them to various stocking sites. Don't know if the fish not destined to be stocked in/near IN will not be reared at all (resulting in money not spent) or just reassigned to somewhere else which won't save any appreciable dollars.

Hard to say where the "saved" money will go with the USFWS (feds). As far as I know, they don't have the curbs and restrictions in their budgeting process most states have. Most likely, the $$$ saved by the feds will at least stay in the USFWS budget, maybe in their fish section, possibly will go to fund a ferret project in New Mexico.

Ben can better address this next part. Since the Indiana Lake Michigan program is funded by a sale of trout/salmon stamps, this money won't be spent on bluegill research. The money Indiana won't spend rearing and stocking kings due to the stocking reduction can be switched to rearing and stocking steelheads or cohos or other fish for Lake Michigan, but not for Brookville Lake stripers.

I did see in the latest license license fee increase proposals just starting there is no request to increase the price of trout/salmon stamps. I know most anglers don't welcome license fee increases but remember, not raising the trout/salmon stamp means the Lake Michigan program won't get an infusion of "new money" and will actually be working for less if you factor in cost increases and perhaps fewer stamps sold as a result in the general fishing license fee being increased.

And as far as money spent, it is generally a lot less than you think in terms of reducing fish stocking.

The biggest costs for raising fish are hatchery infrastructure (unchanged), and manpower (unchanged)

In terms of the chinook reductions for Indiana, the cost to feed 140K kings for a few months is peanuts compared to the other costs. We're talking a couple thousand bucks maybe. So it's very very little in terms of saving (remember this next time you see someone spouting conspiracies about king reductions saving the state a ton of money...)

I'm not sure in terms of how lake trout reductions affect the feds bottom line and how they deal with that funding internally.