Anglers fishing Lake Michigan’s open waters and tributaries for chinook and lake trout are being asked to donate the heads of the fish they harvest to aid research critical to keeping fishing strong. “With the help of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, more tagged fish are being stocked now than ever before,” says Cheryl Masterson, a Department of Natural Resources fisheries technician. “The tag in the fish’s snout has a number that tells us when and where the fish was stocked. To learn as much as we can about the behavior of the fish in the lake, we would like to collect heads from tagged sport-caught fish.”
Only those harvested fish missing the small back top fin, known as the adipose fin, are being sought, because the missing fin is a sign that the fish likely received a tag in its snout. For several years now, federal and state natural resource agencies have been marking hatchery-raised chinook and trout by safely implanting a tiny steel tag etched with a number relating to where and when the fish was hatched and stocked. Now that the fish are growing large enough to be kept by anglers, researchers are collecting chinook salmon and trout heads to look for the steel tags.
DNR has partnered with local businesses in most major ports along the lakeshore where anglers can drop off fish heads, Masterson says. Each business has been given a supply of forms for anglers to fill out and bags to use for freezing the head. Anglers should include the following information with each head – date of capture and capture location, along with the fish species, length, weight, and gender, she said.
Nick Legler, DNR fisheries biologist in Sturgeon Bay, said the information associated with the number on the tag in the fish can help answer how many fish are in Lake Michigan, how many are wild instead of raised in a hatchery, and where they are caught in relation to where they were stocked. Data also will be used to measure fish growth and age at capture and to evaluate hatchery and stocking practices.
Preliminary findings from the fish that anglers provided last year suggest that during the summer months, salmon roam all over lake, which at 22,300 square miles is the second largest of the Great Lakes and is the largest lake within U.S. borders. Fifty-nine percent of the hundreds of wire tags recovered from chinook caught by anglers over the summer in Wisconsin’s open waters of Lake Michigan in summer 2012 had been stocked by Michigan, Illinois or Indiana, preliminary results show.
In contrast, initial results from fish heads recovered during the fall spawning runs at DNR egg collection facilities suggest that the fish tend to return home to the water where they were first stocked to complete their spawning run.
This year, DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have been collecting fish heads and biographical data from anglers during the summer fishery and will continue to collect more data into the fall, Legler says.
DNR has partnered with local businesses in most major ports along the lakeshore where anglers can drop off fish heads, Masterson says. Each business has been given a supply of forms for anglers to fill out and bags to use for freezing the head. Anglers should include the following information with each head – date of capture and capture location, along with the fish species, length, weight, and gender, she said.
Algoma – Algoma True Value, 410 2nd St., 920-487-3374
Green Bay – Department of Natural Resources, 2984 Shawano Ave., (Hours – Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. – 4 p.m.) 920-662-5100
Kenosha – Gander Mountain, 6802 118th Ave., 262-857-3757
Kewaunee – Accurate Marine and Storage, 203 Dodge St., 920-388-2326
Marinette – A&K Feed, Seed, & Bait, 1616 Shore Dr., 715-732-6100
Milwaukee area – R&R Sports – Fishin’ Hole, 3115 E. Layton Ave., Cudahy, 414-481-6888
Milwaukee – DNR, UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, 600 E. Greenfield Ave., (Hours vary – Monday-Thursday – call ahead), 414-382-7929
Peshtigo – Peshtigo Shell Gas Station, 815 French St., 715-582-3681
Peshtigo – Department of Natural Resources, 101 N. Ogden Rd., (Hours – Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.), 715-582-5000
Port Washington – The Bait Box, 215 E. Washington St., 262-284-9355
Racine area – Turk’s Bait, 2950 93rd St., Sturtevant, 262-886-3061
Racine area – Department of Natural Resources, 9531 Rayne Road, Suite 4, Sturtevant, (Hours – Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.), 262-884-2300
Sheboygan – The Wharf, 733 Riverfront Dr., 920-458-4406
Sheboygan area – Department of Natural Resources, 1155 Pilgrim Road, Plymouth, (Hours – Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.), 920-892-8756
Sturgeon Bay – Howie’s Tackle, 1309 Green Bay Road, 920-746-9916
Sturgeon Bay – Department of Natural Resources, 110 S. Neenah Ave., (Hours – Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.), 920-746-2860
Two Rivers – Seagull Sports Marina, 1400 Lake St., 920-794-7533
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Nick Legler, 920-746-5112; Cheryl Masterson 414-382-7923