Smith: DNR agrees to move toward commercial take of lake trout in Lake Michigan

The Wisconsin gray wolf management plan wasn't the only controversial conservation topic on the agenda at the Oct. 25 Natural Resources Board meeting.

Yes, testimony, discussion and voting on the Department of Natural Resources' updated wolf plan lasted for about five hours and dominated the gathering.

In case you missed it, it passed unanimously and Wisconsin now has a wolf plan without a numerical goal but that would likely keep the wolf population in a range seen in recent years, or between about 800 and 1,200 wolves.

But flying under the radar at the same meeting was an item watched very closely by the state's Lake Michigan fishing interests.

It was titled "Lake Michigan Lake Trout Stakeholder Group and associated public input update" and presented by Justine Hasz, director of the DNR's Bureau of Fisheries Management.

But the title left out the most important part. Hasz announced the DNR decided to proceed with the process to allow commercial fishing for lake trout in Lake Michigan.

The process to develop a scope statement, or the preliminary step in making an administrative rule, will take at least a year. And then approval of any rule change would take perhaps another two years.

And also important: no details of a potential rule, such as the number of lake trout allowed to commercial netters, have been announced.

But the DNR's decision to give a "yes" in principle to commercial take of lake trout in Lake Michigan is a significant change for Wisconsin fisheries management.

The native fish has been designated a sport fish for decades and no commercial fishing has been permitted for it in Lake Michigan since the 1950s when lake trout populations crashed, mostly due to parasitism by invasive sea lampreys.

But thanks to intensive lake trout stocking and sea lamprey control efforts, both programs run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, lake trout numbers increased over the last 50 years.

Though the recovery has not met all targets set by state and federal fisheries managers, Lake Michigan now has a good population of lake trout, including stocked and naturally-reproduced fish.

The five-year average sport harvest of lake trout is 32,485 fish in the Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan, according to the DNR. The agency considers the "safe harvest limit" to be 48,443 fish.

Since at least 2016 the Lake Michigan Commercial Fishing Board has asked the DNR to allow commercial netters to keep some of the balance of the allowable harvest.

Those requests gained little traction until, as reported in these pages, earlier this year the DNR led a four-meeting process to evaluate a request to allow commercial fishers to keep and sell lake trout in the Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan.

At the Oct. 25 board meeting Hasz summarized the presentations from the stakeholder gatherings as well as public input. Of the 193 written comments received by the DNR, 154 were opposed to a scope statement to allow commercial take of lake trout, 39 were in favor.

Without a social science study, it's hard to get an objective view of public attitudes on the topic.

But the bottom line is the DNR decided to proceed with the scope statement process.

From my perspective, it had no other choice, partly because of its own actions several years ago to approve more liberal regulations for lake trout.

After many years of protective sport fishing rules, including a months-long closure to prohibit harvest of lakers during their spawning period, the DNR acquiesced to requests by the charter fishing lobby and some sport anglers to reduce lake trout stocking in Wisconsin waters as well as create a year-round lake trout fishing season and increase the daily bag limit from three to five fish.

The reduced lake trout stocking was part of a deal to increase chinook salmon stocking, a species preferred by many charter captains and their clients as well as sport anglers.

But the move opened the door to the push by commercial fishing interests to begin netting lake trout.

If the DNR had continued its protective regulations on lake trout and held firm on its original management strategy until the species was considered fully rehabilitated, the situation would arguably be much different today.

Over the last few years commercial fishers openly asked: If the DNR is encouraging more harvest of lake trout by sport anglers and they aren't hitting the allowable catch, why can't we keep and sell some of the lakers we catch in our whitefish and chub sets?

Current rules require commercial fishers to release any lake trout and other sport fish caught incidentally in their nets, even if the fish are dead or likely to die.

Earlier this year Charlie Henriksen, a commercial fisherman from Sturgeon Bay and chairman of the LMCFB, said his group would probably be satisfied with 10,000 lakers annually.

Despite the DNR's recent announcement, he's frustrated at the slow pace of change on the issue.

"I just think we keep kicking this can down the road," Henriksen said Monday at the LMCFB meeting. "And we'd be better off making an effort to get out there and gathering some real data. Right now we're just spinning our wheels."

If commercial fishers were allowed to keep lake trout they could, for example, provide information on lake trout diets in winter, a topic of interest to fisheries managers. State and federal fisheries assessments typically don't sample lake trout in winter.

Opposition to the commercial take of lake trout has generally come from sport anglers who fear netting could hurt populations of target and non-target species.

Bob Wincek, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Great Lakes Sport Fishing Clubs, is among the cohort of state residents who has been following the issue closely. He also was a member of the lake trout stakeholder group.

"I'm leaning against any scope statement (to allow commercial take of lake trout), but all the facts are not in," Wincek said. "I know this, though. Until a source of funding is found to cover enforcement and management of any increased commercial fishing, I'm 100% against it."

The DNR released figures in May that showed it cost the agency between $537,000 and $736,000 annually from 2019 to 2022 for commercial fishing-related management and enforcement in Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Funding to cover the work comes from several sources, including fishing license fees.

The DNR is now working on the lake trout scope statement. If all goes according to schedule, Hasz said a public hearing on the scope statement would be held in October 2024 and it would be presented to the NRB in December 2024. Then the actual administrative rule change would be pursued, taking perhaps another two years.

As the process plays out, key questions to watch include: how many lake trout would commercial fishermen be allowed to keep? Would the lake trout harvest opportunity result in more nets being set or would effort remain constant? What type of gear would be allowed (for example, would it include gill nets)? Is a new funding source to cover DNR costs being linked to this new commercial opportunity?

Similar to wolves, lake trout are a native Wisconsin species that has come back in recent decades. It's important to keep that big picture success in mind as we work through details of modern-day management and ensure a lasting recovery to benefit multiple interests, including the lake's ecology.

More: Bill would allow the use of airguns to hunt deer and other big game in Wisconsin

Smith: Saw-whets, Wisconsin's smallest owl, are also little known and rarely seen

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: DNR begins work toward commercial take of lake trout in Lake Michigan