ERIE, Pa. -- Since the season’s May 1 opening, Lake Erie walleye haven’t been where anglers think they’re supposed to be. Speculation abounds.
It’s global warming. It’s the state Fish and Boat Commission. It’s an international cabal that sets fishing quotas. In some quarters, the culprit is the Canadian commercial fishing industry that’s taking walleye away from Pennsylvania sport anglers. Perhaps by design.
“They’re just not there,” said Walter Bennet of Crawford County, as he docked last week in Presque Isle Bay after a half day on the water with few blips on the sonar. “They blame it every year on the weather -- the winter was too long, the spring is too cold -- but I don’t believe it. I think our walleye are going into Canadian nets.”
That was not the consensus, however, among anglers returning to the dock with few if any fish. Most seemed disappointed and a little tired.
“Blaming it on Canada is going too far at this point,” said Steven Edwards of Butler, an hour later on the same dock. “There are other things -- temperature, population cycles. … I think it’s about figuring out what’s going on. The guys who adapt are eventually going catch walleye.”
Evidence suggests that native, non-stocked Lake Erie walleye are thriving, somewhere. In March the Lake Erie Committee, with members representing fishery managers from Michigan, New York, Ohio, Ontario and Pennsylvania, recommended that the lake’s total allowable walleye catch be increased 20 percent since last year. The decision, they said in a joint statement, “reflects a stable adult population and a moderate-to-strong hatch in 2014. The 2011, 2010, 2007 and 2003 year classes continue to contribute to the stability of the walleye fishery and allow for the increase.”
Due to a natural population spike, the 2003 year class was the largest in monitoring history pushing Lake Erie walleye numbers to an estimated 80 million. At the time, wildlife agencies were worried the huge year class might dominate the fishery, but healthy hatches in subsequent years quelled those concerns. In 2013, half the walleye harvested in the lake’s Pennsylvania waters were hatched in 2003. This year, walleye from that landmark year class are expected to top 25 inches.
Chuck Murray, the state Fish and Boat Commission’s Lake Erie biologist and member of the Lake Erie Committee, said a 2016 estimate of 33 million walleye age 2 and older suggests their numbers have increased as much as 30 percent over 2015 levels. Yet a 17-year Pennsylvania study showed that just 6 percent of the state’s Lake Erie anglers limit out on walleye. Murray said the species remains at "maintenance levels,” and weeks ago Fish and Boat announced that 2016 size and creel limits would remain unchanged from 2015 at 15 inches and six per day.
“A very good walleye hatch in 2015 should provide [for] even better walleye fishing in 2017,” said Murray.
It’s reasonable to harbor suspicions about commercial angling on Lake Erie. In 2006 five fishing companies and a dozen of their employees were busted in an Ohio sting operation and convicted of racketeering and theft after illegally netting an estimated 40 tons of yellow perch valued at $1 million.
Commercial walleye fishing is banned on the U.S. side, but in Canada nearly 200 licensed operators participate in a $300 million commercial fishing business on Lake Erie, which supports the largest commercial fishery in the Great Lakes. A small number of companies are licensed to use gill nets, which are notorious for high bycatch rates of non-target species. But the main complaint of sport anglers is that during the 12-month open commercial fishing season, large schools of traveling walleye are scooped up in Canada’s deeper, cooler waters before they return to Pennsylvania waters.
“It’s set up that way for the commercial industry to make money,” said Bennet, who suspects corruption in the oversight process.
But Edwards said he thinks it’s all about water temperature.
“I’m more likely to believe the fish are following a temperature level,” he said. “Last year it took a while -- they were everywhere except where [we] thought they’d be -- but eventually we found them.”
Recent weeks of stormy northeast winds have kicked up waves, encouraged boaters to stay in bed and held water temperatures below seasonal averages.
Unlike many freshwater game fish, walleye move in large schools from mid-lake to the shoreline, from the bottom to the top of the water column, in search of food and the right temperature. In an acoustic telemetry study, researchers from Ohio’s Division of Wildlife submerged some 600 receivers throughout the Great Lakes, including 80 in Lake Erie. Walleye were tracked on a journey from the lake’s western basin through Lake St. Clair and into Lake Huron.
On the east side, walleye are believed to follow 50-55 degree temperature lines wafting over the ancient Presque Isle to Long Point moraine, parallel the New York shoreline and enter the shallow early-to-warm waters of Presque Isle Bay. From May 13 to Friday, the Regional Science Consortium’s Near Shore Buoy north of the peninsula charted a water temperature increase from 48.7 to 53.7 degrees.
First Published: May 22, 2016, 4:00 a.m.