Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By RICHARD JENKINS
MERCER, Wis. — When the Wisconsin walleye season opened this weekend, it was likely the beginning of the last season of fishing on the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage before regulations change regarding the type of walleyes that anglers can keep.
Under the current fishing regulations for the flowage, a person can keep up to three walleyes a day with no restrictions on size.
The proposed rule would maintain the three-fish daily bag limit, but would require they be at least 12 inches and only one fish over 15 inches is allowed.
The proposed change was approved at the state’s recent spring hearings and will likely be put into effect in the 2020 season.
“It (passed) with flying colors, locally and statewide, so that should be on track to be implemented next year,” said Zach Lawson, a fisheries biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
The measure still needs to be approved by the Natural Resources Board and the state legislature, but Lawson said the local and state-wide support are good signs it should pass.
The change is ultimately designed to give anglers more opportunities at the kind of fish they are seeking.
“People care about how many walleyes are out there and they also care about how big they are — what kind of opportunity the fishery is providing folks,” Lawson said.
“We have a fisheries management plan for the Turtle-Flambeau that puts benchmarks and goals down for targets that we want the fishery to be exhibiting,” Lawson said, explaining two of the targets are adult population density and the fish size.
“We want the adult population densities to be between four and eight fish per acre,” Lawson said. “Historically, from 1975-2009, when we go in and do a population estimate … they fall within that range.”
“When we were in there in 2016 and 2017, the population we estimated was around 2.8 fish per acre,” he continued.
There are similar issues with the size of the flowage walleye, according to Lawson.
The DNR wants roughly 30-50% of adults to be over 15 inches, he explained, and the fish surveys done in 2016 and 2017 indicated only 23 percent of the population was over 15 inches.
“We know — through looking at some of the other population characteristics — that we need to one, reduce overall harvests; and two, reduce harvests on juveniles,” Lawson said. “To take it a step further, we wanted to reduce harvest on females as well, and currently 50% of the fish that over 15 inches out on the (flowage) are actually females.”
The proposed regulation will ideally address all three concerns with a single change.
There are several factors that explain the declines in size and density.
With high harvest rates, Lawson said the walleye need to reproduce enough to offset the fish lost as the result of fishing and other causes and Lawson said the flowage had some very poor age classes in the years 2010 and 2013-15.
“You’re feeling the effects of all these things and it’s just really hard for that population to rebound when you have holes in those different age classes,” he said. “That’s your bread and butter of the population right now and it’s hard for the population to recover when it’s still being harvested at the same rate and you don’t have quite as much coming up to support the population.”
The rule is expected to go into effect in 2020, but Lawson said anglers are free to voluntarily adopt it this fishing season.
“It’s totally legal for people to still go out there and take their three fish of any size, that’s totally legal. The person that’s really interested in trying to get a jump start on change out there, might consider it. It’s only going to help,” Lawson said. “If you want to do your part, that’s totally fine and dandy. But again, its still legal right now to go out and harvest three walleye of any size out there.”
