Lakefront smelters might as well face the music. They can expect another frustrating season with their trolley nets.
A discouraging federal report last week estimated the smelt biomass in Lake Michigan at its lowest ebb since 1973.
“It hasn’t actually dropped that much since 1992,” said Rich Hess, an Illinois Department of Natural Resources lakefront fisheries biologist. “But what we have seen is a steady decline every year.”
He stressed the problem is lakewide.
“They’re not dip-netting in streams up north like they used to,” he said.
Hess speculates a changing food web may be responsible for the smelt crash.
“Since there are still a lot of alternate prey, like alewives and chubs, the cause almost has to be increased competition for food,” he said.
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He cited newly introduced predators such as the spiny water flea, as well as the infamous zebra mussel’s consumption of vital plankton.
“I think we are seeing potentially significant changes in the lower end of the food chain,” Hess said.
He ominously noted how smelt parallel the decline of perch in Lake Michigan “and we know that food is a factor in the difficulties of larval perch.”
While this hardly means no one will catch smelt when the Chicago Park District’s season officially opens Wednesday–as well as at Illlinois Beach State Park, which has been declared safe from asbestos–it does warn us to expect plenty of bleak fishing days. The old prospect of thousands of families and groups of friends hauling away buckets of tasty fish is no longer in the cards until something changes in a positive way.
In the last few years, there have been occasional nights when action was good at certain spots, followed the next evening by catches at other spots. Hess said people who go out religiously usually encounter four or five good nights.
Meanwhile . . .: Keep tuned for other developments in the Lake Michigan fishery. Illinois DNR director Brent Manning–who probably will be out of a job after the forthcoming election–has a hush-hush project in mind for Lake Michigan as a spectacular swan song.
“We aren’t done until we’re out of here,” Manning confided. “And we’d sure like to go out while making a significant statement.”
For the time being, all he’ll say is his project involves engineering the size of certain fish.
Rising to the bait: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials conceded last week that the door still is open to changes in “strict liability” enforcement of federal waterfowl baiting laws–as they apply to innocent hunters.
“If this is a significant issue–if a lot of people are concerned–then let’s get the comments in here,” Kevin Adams, the service’s chief of law enforcement, said of the current 60-day public comment period.
The service is fighting a rear-guard action to preserve its authority to wrap up a case the easy way by ticketing innocent hunters while avoiding tedious investigations to uncover the real perpetrators of baited fields. Adams said such investigations would put too great a burden on his 252 federal game wardens.
In a teleconference with several writers, Adams said he doesn’t see ticketing innocent hunters “as an assault upon the innocent.” He said established policy, as well as case law, puts the burden on hunters to ensure that guides and landowners are performing legally.
In the wake of last week’s uproar over the citation of former Minnesota Vikings football coach Bud Grant for allegedly hunting snow geese over bait in Nebraska, Adams steadfastly denied any effort to target high-profile hunters.
If so, Grant’s situation certainly was fishy. According to Dennis Anderson of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Grant’s party was arrested at noon after hours of idleness near Plymouth, Neb. No shots had been fired and no geese were in anyone’s possession. Grant himself entered the blind 10 minutes before game wardens made their bust. His gun was unloaded and he was eating a sandwich.
The decision to ticket Grant–a prominent spokesman for conservation causes–apparently was made at the highest levels of the Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington. Not that politics was involved in any way, of course. No way, right?
Comments can be sent to the FWS director at Box 3247, Arlington, Va., 22203, through May 26.
Noisemakers: Chip Porter resumes his “Fishing Chicagoland” outdoors gabfest at 5 a.m. Saturday on WSCR-AM 1160 with Spence Petros as “guest host.” Porter suddenly finds himself butting heads with newcomer Chauncey Niziol on WMVP-AM 1000 in the time slot he solely owned in previous spring-summer seasons. Chauncey, with his two-hour “Prairie Sportsman” show, in turn knocks noggins at 6 a.m. with “The Great Outdoors” on WGN-AM 720 featuring Bill Cullerton Sr. and Jr. and this writer. All at once, there’s a surfeit of outdoors babble on the airwaves, and anyone who sorts it out deserves at least a trip to Canada as a prize. What’s really strange is that everyone involved still gets along.
Follow-up: The only noses out of joint over the hilarious threat of secession by residents of Minnesota’s “Northwest Angle” over Canadian fishery management issues belonged to members of the Red Lake Indian Band. They demanded, and got, an apology from Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) for not being consulted. Which only makes us wonder about their sense of humor. . . . Also being urged to lighten up are members of the Illinois DNR hierarchy in Springfield, who reprimanded popular Illinois Beach State Park site superintendent Robert Grosso for his forthright dealing with public concerns over the pileup of waterborne asbestos on his beach. Grosso, who masterfully runs one of the state’s most complex park operations, apparently is not the intimidated wimp that Springfield clearly would prefer in tight situations.