{"id":173123,"date":"2016-07-03T12:41:36","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T12:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpms.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/outdoors-michigan-has-no-plans-to-cut-stocking\/"},"modified":"2016-07-03T12:41:36","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T12:41:36","slug":"outdoors-michigan-has-no-plans-to-cut-stocking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/outdoors-michigan-has-no-plans-to-cut-stocking\/","title":{"rendered":"Outdoors: Michigan has no plans to cut stocking walleye in lower river"},"content":{"rendered":"

Outdoors: Michigan has no plans to cut stocking walleye in lower river<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Veteran walleye anglers have contended for years that walleyes always have reproduced naturally in the St. Joseph River.<\/p>\n

While there might be some of that in Indiana waters, Hoosier biologists say they have yet to find very many.<\/p>\n

They know this because they do young-of-the-year surveys every fall while assessing how previous stockings have gone. They encounter fish they have stocked but no additional youngsters.<\/p>\n

The situation must be different in Michigan\u2019s lower St. Joe waters.<\/p>\n

Michigan DNR studies conducted the past couple of years reveal a growing number of naturally produced walleye in Michigan\u2019s section of the St. Joe.<\/p>\n

In fact, the most recent observation indicated as much as 50 percent of the fish biologists captured have been naturally reproduced.<\/p>\n

How can fish managers tell the difference?<\/p>\n

Every young walleye stocked since 2012 has been marked. Each fall the biologists conduct an electro-shocking study to assess how that year\u2019s stocked fish are surviving. Each fish is examined for marks that would indicate what year they were stocked.<\/p>\n

Samples are taken below the Niles and Buchanan dams and four different sites on the Berrien Springs stretch down to where the river empties into Lake Michigan.<\/p>\n

Of the walleyes Michigan captured last year, only 47 percent were marked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew there was some natural reproduction, but certainly didn\u2019t know there was that much of it going on,\u201d said Michigan fisheries biologist Brian Gunderman.<\/p>\n

Gunderman confesses that a few of those fish might be young fish stocked by Indiana. Indiana also marks its fish, but there were a couple of years that were missed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we had enough movement from Indiana to influence study,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to say 50 percent were wild fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biologists also discovered that the majority of the naturally produced walleyes were captured in the tailwaters below the dams.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would imagine that\u2019s due to the rocky habitat,\u201d said Gunderman.<\/p>\n

He also noted that the year class of naturally produced fish paralleled years of good survival of stocked fish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat tells me that environmental factors (weather, high water, etc.) are a big factor to young walleye survival,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The research also proved what biologists have known for years \u2014 a lot of fish stocked in one impoundment get swept over the downstream dam into the next impoundment.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, it\u2019s usually the 1- and 2-year old fish that get carried off in the current. Gunderman surmises that the young of the year fish tend to hang tight to cover during their early months in the river before they start wandering and get swept over dams.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on the marked fish we saw, at least 59 of the marked walleyes we found below Berrien Springs dam came from impoundments above there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That could explain why Berrien typically produces the best walleye fishing on the river. But there\u2019s another factor, adds Gunderman.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe noticed the fish below the Berrien Dam grow significantly better,\u201d he said. \u201cWe think it\u2019s because of the immediate access to Lake Michigan and a lot of food moves into the river from the lake. That\u2019s not to say that walleye growth in impoundments above Berrien isn\u2019t good. It is. It\u2019s just considerably better in the lower river.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with the discovery of natural reproduction, Michigan has no plans to cut its biennial stocking on the lower river.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that a cut in stocking would have a noticeable impact on fishing and we don\u2019t want to do that,\u201d Gunderman said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a pretty good river walleye fishery and we want to keep it that way. Any natural reproduction we\u2019re getting is enhancing that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outdoors: Michigan has no plans to cut stocking walleye in lower river Veteran walleye anglers have contended for years that walleyes always have reproduced naturally in the St. Joseph River. While there might be some of that in Indiana waters, Hoosier biologists say they have yet to find very many. They know this because they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[699,44,697],"class_list":["post-173123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-outdoorsfirst","tag-walleye","tag-walleyefirst","post_format-post-format-link"],"acf":[],"youtube_video":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsfirst.com\/walleye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}