DNR prepares to continue panfish improvements in Gile Flowage

By RICHARD JENKINS

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GILE, Wis. - As the weather warms up, members of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources are preparing for another season of work intended to improve panfish populations in the Gile Flowage.

Included in those efforts is the cutting down around 100 trees, according to Fisheries Biologist Zach Lawson, to improve habitat.

Lawson said about 20 percent were felled in November, "While we still had open water. We were able to squeeze it in between our field season and ice-up."

"We hope to resume that habitat work sometime after spring field seasons slows down, but hopefully before the end of July," Lawson said.

"The primary objective here is to provide a little more complex habitat - tree tops - in deeper water. In the Gile Flowage, when the water drops a little bit, there's not much near shore, complex habitat," Lawson said. "So that leaves very little refuge for small fish. In this case we're targeting bluegills."

The hope is the tree tops will provide hiding spots for the smaller bluegills to escape some of the flowage's larger predators.

Lawson said the project involves dropping the trees and then cabling them to their stumps.

"They shouldn't be going anywhere," he joked.

Habitat improvements are just one of the efforts being done to improve the flowage's panfish numbers, according to Lawson.

"We're trying to bolster panfish numbers out there ... so along with this habitat work, there have been stocking efforts last year (which) hopefully will continue this year," he said.

There are also proposed changes to the regulations for fishing the Gile, including reducing the daily bag limit for panfish from 25 to 10 and establishing a 10-inch minimium bag limit on black crappies, as well.

"All this is kind of happening, in concert, to really try to improve the overall panfishery of the Gile," Lawson said.