Lake Erie's Expectations

[Lee Borgersen]

       :fishing2:  No boon or bust for walleye, perch hatches 

 

  Sunday September 14, 2014 6:01 AM


Lake Erie .......
The gobies that plague you. The water fleas that afflict you. The zebra mussels that rob you. The sea lampreys that dog you. The algae that trouble you. The white perch that pester you. The carp that foul you. The storms that roil you. The summers that scald you. The winters that smother you. The dead zones that torture you. The humans that degrade you.

Given the insults and the abuse, how do you, Lake Erie, keep spitting out the yellow perch and walleye? What exactly goes on out there?

“That’s the million-dollar question,” said fisheries biologist Jeff Tyson, administrator of the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s Lake Erie programs.

Considering the money spent annually on Lake Erie by fishermen in the pursuit of walleye and yellow perch, the answer is worth multiple millions. Not counting connected costs for such things as travel, lodging, food and licenses, charter trips alone generated almost $10 million in gross revenues for charter captains during the 2010 fishing season, Ohio Sea Grant estimated.

Fishing trips by recreational boaters annually generate many times $10 million.

Smallmouth bass being a distant third choice among anglers, just about the whole economic apparatus hangs together on the availability of two members of the percid family. Walleye are prized for their size and tastiness, the smaller yellow perch for their ubiquity and tastiness.

Consequently, walleye and yellow perch populations are closely watched, highly regulated and much-studied. The scrutiny includes keeping tabs on the annual hatch of each species. The success, or lack thereof, of each year’s class offers a strong indication of how many catchable walleye and yellow perch will be swimming in the lake in future years.

Part of what turns fishermen on or off is “expectation,”

In general, the more fish the better, at least in the matter of stoking angler enthusiasm. Lean or less-than-average hatches, which have occurred a number of times since the turn of the century, produce pessimism and threaten to curtail catch limits, producing more gloom and less motivation.

Late-summer trawl surveys completed, results of the 2014 hatch became available last week. The news is OK.

“Walleye look to be at or slightly higher than the long-term average,” Tyson said. “Yellow perch appear to be about average.”

Average hatches in 2007 and 2010 have helped sustain a Lake Erie walleye population of about 23 million as determined by what Tyson termed “sophisticated models.” That’s quite a plunge from the estimated peak population of 80 million, though 23 million represents “a lot of fish,” he said.

The average catch rate during the summer of 0.5 walleyes for each hour of fishing is considered high, Tyson said. What’s more, anglers not infrequently latched on to 30-inch fish, most of them remnants of a spectacular 2003 hatch that continues to provide a backbone to the walleye fishery.

The 2003 hatch, not close to being repeated since, remains something of an enigma. Eleven years of additional research on walleye habits and preferences has led Tyson to one conclusion about what happened:

“I don’t know,” he said. “How a hatch turns out depends on a combination of factors. There are a ton of variables.”

For example, the winter of 2013-14 produced the most expansive ice on Lake Erie since 1994. Evidence suggests that ice cover contributes to walleye and yellow perch hatch success when spring arrives, Tyson said.

The fact that ice cover persisting into early April seems not to have made anything special out of this year’s hatch suggests that some other factor or factors might be involved.

“We had a relatively high warming rate,” Tyson said. “People were walking on the ice in late March. A week later, fishing boats were going out.”

In the meantime, limit catches of 30 yellow perch per day can be had in a couple of hours in places where the autumn schools are thick. Lorain and Cleveland were producing big catches of 7- to 9-inch perch, the smaller fish graduates of the 2012 hatch.

A few anglers experienced catching perch on bare gold hooks in recent days.