Little Bay de Noc Fishing Reports

Courtesy of the Grand Rapid Press

Video: http://video-embed.mlive.com/services/player/bcpid619329490001?bctid=1219447758001

MANISTEE -- Salmon anglers are having a banner season on Lake Michigan and its tributaries.

Catch numbers are good and the chinook salmon big. State officials say that is largely due to a banner crop of alewives for them to eat.

Those salmon began coursing up northern Lake Michigan tributaries as early as August looking for somewhere to spawn. Thousands appeared in the Little Manistee River, six miles upstream from its mouth where the Michigan Department of Natural Resources operates its salmon weir and egg-take facility.

The streamside complex with its concrete raceways full of fish has been a hive of activity for the past two weeks as DNR staffers and private contractors worked to collect 6.5 million salmon eggs -- including this year’s quota for Michigan hatcheries and those out of state. Without those hatcheries, the Lake Michigan salmon fishery would be less abundant.

"We would still have a salmon fishery, but it would be much smaller," said Mark Tonello, a DNR fisheries habitat biologist based in Cadillac. "Right now, we estimate that half of the fish in Lake Michigan are wild, so we would have just half the catch."

Tonello was one of the dozen slicker-clad crew members handling the wet and slimy fish after they were mechanically pushed up a raceway into the processing building. Once dumped on a metal table, they are sorted by gender, then inspected to see whether they were ready to spawn -- killed if they are and returned to ponds if not.

Ripe females are processed for eggs and males for milt to fertilize them. Eggs are then disinfected and hardened. The fish are inspected for signs of illness such as bacterial kidney disease, the condition that wiped out the Lake Michigan salmon fishery in the 1980s.

Eggs from sick fish are rejected. Those that pass muster are loaded on the truck that delivers them that day to one of several state hatcheries where they are to be incubated, hatched and cared for.

The tiny fry that emerge would grow to become the young salmon that stock Michigan rivers and streams next spring.

"Michigan’s quota is 5.3 million eggs," said Scott Heintzelman, the DNR egg-take operation supervisor. "The rest go out of state to Indiana and Illinois. This is next spring’s stocking effort." Heintzelman said the Little Manistee River salmon run will top 10,000 this year -- a banner year for the facility.

His crew met Michigan’s quota last week and plan to finish the out-off-state quotas this week before shutting down the facility. That would also involve removing the weir barriers that stop fish passage and allow any remaining salmon to continue to migrate upstream.

While this year’s run advanced like clockwork, that isn’t always the case, according to Heintzelman. He worries about things like power outages that would jeopardize the fish.

The facility’s electric pumps push fresh water into the fish-packed raceways where thousands of finning salmon ripen for spawn. The absence of fresh water would mean the oxygen would be depleted quickly. That, in turn, would cause a high percentage of salmon to die within 15-20 minutes.

"It’s been years since that happened, but we were worried about the big blow the other day and losing power and having a big mortality issue the week before egg take," Heintzelman said.

Fall runs can be unpredictable. If salmon have little to eat they may not mature as quickly as those that have plenty, and fewer fish might swim upstream to spawn.

Runs also can be delayed when water temperatures get too high. That was the case in 2010 when the Little Manistee River run barely materialized. And when done, it amounted to 5,700 chinook salmon, "the second smallest run in history," Heintzelman said.

The run this year, however, might better be known as "Salmon Gone Wild," but it is also the first time the state has put all of its salmon eggs in one basket.

The egg-collection facility on the Little Manistee is now the sole provider of eggs to the Platte River, Thompson and Wolf Lake hatcheries. The state’s Swan Creek weir at Rogers City played a role in the past and provided a million eggs last year to the LMW, but it has since been reclassified as a back-up-only facility. Salmon returns there have been meager and poor quality since the Lake Huron salmon run collapsed.

"Right now we have enough fish that we could open the weir (on the Little Manistee), but we don’t have enough manpower to pull the buoys downstream," said Matt Hughes, a fishery biologist with the state’s Wolf Lake Hatchery in Mattawan where 1.2 million chinook eggs were to be delivered.

"Last year things were dicey. We didn’t have the luxury of passing up on any of the fish. Every green female (not ready to spawn) was put back in the ponds to maximize the egg count. Where we normally go one male to one female, we had to double up and quadruple the males (use them to fertilize two to four batches of eggs) because didn’t have enough fish to go around."

The banner run this year also will mean a banner cleanup effort for Larry Froncek, of Manistee, part of the contracted crew that is responsible for managing outside the facility and staffing it 24 hours a day through the egg take to assure fish are not stolen.

"This year the number of fish is overwhelming," said Froncek. "Last year they had 5,700 fish. We will pass that many today alone."

Froncek is employed by American-Canadian Fisheries Products, a Washington state company that handles marketing and disposal of fish remains in several states. It also handles cleaning out the raceways.

Michigan DNR pays American-Canadian Fisheries $200,000 a year to handle the process. The company is allowed to keep profits it makes on salmon by-products. The salmon carcasses may be ground up and sold as fish meal for cat food. The meat may be smoked where quality allows and sold to lakeshore or other gas stations who sell it to consumers. Any surplus eggs are processed and sold to bait dealers.

"It would cost the state far more to do that job ourselves," said Gary Whelan, the DNR’s fish production manager. "It would cost $400,000 or more and it would divert all of our division staff just to this job.

"We tried it back in the 1970s and it was a disaster. We tried giving fish away one year and the Health Department closed us down. Doing this created massive traffic jams. It was an absolute circus."