Posted on 06/18/2015 11:33:01 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Across Northwest Wisconsin there has been much discussion about the decline of the walleye population.
In response one of Governor Scott Walkers initiatives has been stocking lakes with larger extended walleye versus small fry in the hopes that the larger fish have better chance of surviving and then reproducing.
However, Governor Walker in his proposed biennium budget has also proposed cutting some key Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) scientists in the Bureau of Science Services, scientist behind the extended walleye initiative and who also created the modeling for the three-bag limit of walleyes using length as the critical factor to tweak populations.
Its a really big issue, Joe Hennessy, DNR Treaty Fisheries Coordinator said of the declining walleye population. The decline weve seen is not across the board. There are lakes where walleyes are trucking along just fine and there are plenty of places where weve had problems.
Bit of mystery is how Hennessy described walleye decline in some lakes. Likely culprits, like harvesting rates and predation, have not proven to be that big of a factor.
One unanswered question is what happens to walleye eggs and then small fish (the fry), from spring to the beginning of September. He said something was going wrong, but added its very difficult to study fish at that stage due to their small size.
Hennessy also noted walleye populations in rivers are also in decline.
Another possible factor impacting walleyes is increasing water clarity Northern waters becoming clearer because of better land management (including better septic tanks). Walleyes have sensitivity to light and if that light is penetrating deeper in the water it could upsetting their life cycle.
Climate change has also been brought up as another factor possibly impacting walleyes.
Concerning the extended walleye initiative, Hennessy said, those larger walleyes are intended to stock lakes in decline with the hope that bigger fish can survive and even establish natural reproduction.
The problem is you can't micro control the fishing industry, and to their credit, the respective state DNR's have done a fine job in enhancing the walleye, the salmon, and the steelhead fishing in their respective states.
If one species is diminishing it's due to the predatory influences of the others.
Despite their goals, there is no way man (aka the DNR) can control the outcomes of their good intentions......
> I believe you are referring to walleyes relative the yellow and blue perch.
I know what the perch are like. The walleye is in the same family, but 18 to 30 inches in length. They sometimes call them yellow pike or blue pike.
Then there is this:
It was posted here a few days ago I think.
For something on zebra mussels go to 36:20 of this youtube video;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lWeYa0_5bc
Silt brings nutrients into the waters - walleye, like other fish, ultimately depend on the flora and the flora depend on nutrients.
Be careful with the stats. When I lived in Seattle, the econazis closed down all steelhead fishing in all the waters from the Cascades westward. This because they claimed the numbers were so low.
But they were only counting the “native” fish in the saltwater. As if there is some great nobility to native vs. stocked.
If they’d tallied those that had been stocked, the numbers were fine.
They just wanted to exercise their power.
I say now what I said then: “Second generation IS native.” You stock them one year, they spawn the next and those critters are as native as fish in those waters 150 years ago.
Always good advice because we know that "figures don't lie but liars can figure."
I was talking to one of my grandsons about the invasive zebra mussel awhile back. Their “story” is a very good teaching tool.
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