26th Annual "FREE" Ice Fishing Clinics for Kids

Sponsored by: The Wisconsin Council of Sport Fishing Organizations, Hunger Task Force Fish Hatchery, the Waukesha  and Milwaukee County Parks and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Additional public feedback and information sought on commercial and recreational whitefish harvest

STURGEON BAY, Wis. - To address concerns expressed by stakeholders during initial meetings on the commercial and recreational management of Lake Michigan whitefish, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is hosting meetings Jan. 10 and 11 to find areas of agreement through which a sustainable harvest framework can be developed.

David Boyarski, DNR eastern district fisheries supervisor, said efforts to begin developing new harvest rules will be put on hold until additional public feedback and information can be gathered. Results from stakeholder meetings held in May and subsequent comments collected by the department showed the need to gather more data on whitefish populations, explore the potential for new methods to monitor harvests and find ways to improve dual use of waters where both sport and commercial fishers pursue whitefish.

The January meetings to help find a balance between recreational and commercial interests represent a separate process from the December effort to initiate harvest reporting by Green Bay ice fishing guides who target whitefish. Both efforts by DNR reflect the growing public appeal of whitefish and demonstrate the department's commitment to gathering data and involving stakeholders in the decision making process.

"Whitefish populations in Lake Michigan and Green Bay represent an incredible recreational, economic and biological asset and we appreciate stakeholders' strong interest in our management of the resource," Boyarski said. "We would like to reach consensus on the information needed and a management framework that all stakeholders can accept to help sustainably manage this shared resource. This next round of meetings on January 10 in Green Bay and January 11 in Sturgeon Bay will focus on finding areas of agreement that will allow us to develop an agreed-upon framework to sustain this critical species for current and future generations."

Whitefish populations have changed drastically over the past two decades. Green Bay whitefish populations have increased with many younger year classes present while certain Lake Michigan populations have decreased. Presently, fewer young fish appear to be returning to northeastern Door County to spawn, which may indicate future challenges for that population.

Currently, the commercial whitefish harvest for Lake Michigan and Green Bay is set at 2.88 million pounds, a level established through calculations based on a sustainable harvest of 35 percent of the population's most vulnerable age class. Approximately 12.5 percent or 362,185 pounds may be taken from Zone 1 in Green Bay south of Chambers Island; roughly 75 percent or 2,166,329 million pounds may be taken from Zone 2 in Chambers Island north around the top of Door County to Kewaunee; and 12.2 percent or 351,487 pounds may be taken in Zone 3 south of Kewaunee.

Commercial fishers are now bringing in substantially less than the overall quota due to reduced populations in Zone 2 and other factors such as overall effort and environmental conditions. However, a strong recreational whitefish fishery has emerged in Green Bay with an annual harvest of well over 100,000 fish for each of the past four years.

DNR annually monitors whitefish populations through netting and electrofishing surveys and also monitors harvest from commercial fishers and recreational anglers. Over the next few years DNR biologists will also be working with university researchers and commercial fishers to examine adult whitefish movement, larval production and recolonization of historical spawning grounds.
"It was clear from the feedback we received that many stakeholders are not comfortable moving forward with specific rule changes at this time but they do want to know more about the commercial fishery, sport fishery and changes in whitefish populations," Boyarski said.

Both meetings will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. The Jan. 10 meeting will be at the DNR Green Bay Service Center, 2984 Shawano Ave., Green Bay, 54313 in the Lake Michigan Room. The Jan. 11 meeting will be at the Door County Government Building, 421 Nebraska St., Sturgeon Bay, 54235.

Boyarski said stakeholders also will be encouraged to participate in an online survey identifying preferences for management of the fishery. The survey will be launched following the first meeting with a link accessible through dnr.wi.gov and the search "Lake Michigan whitefish management." Information presented at the May stakeholder meeting also is available on this webpage.

What Happens When a Lake Trout Survives a Sea Lamprey Attack?

Study will help fishery managers understand more about Great Lakes lake trout populations

October 13, 2016
By Marie Zhuikov

Despite close attention by fishery managers, the lake trout population in the Wisconsin waters of Lake Superior has been declining in the past decade or so. Recently, this led to emergency limits on the number of lake trout that can be harvested by anglers and commercial and tribal fishermen in Wisconsin waters of the lake.

In an effort to get a better handle on population stressors so that more accurate fishing quotas can be set, fishery managers are looking at a variety of factors that might stress this important population. One of those things are attacks by sea lamprey – the eely vampire of the fisheries world.

Although the number of lake trout deaths by lamprey rank behind those from commercial fishing, natural causes and angling, it is estimated that more than 50 percent of lake trout attacked by lamprey survive. It’s long been assumed that lamprey-attack survivors suffer from impaired growth and reproduction rates, but this has never been studied in the lab.

Tyler Firkus, a fish and wildlife Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University (MSU), plans to change that. However, first he has a few obstacles to overcome for this unique project. For instance: how to catch lamprey that are in the relatively short feeding stage of their life cycle, how to keep the lamprey alive until they can be introduced to lake trout, and how to expose the trout to lamprey parasitism just long enough so that it’s not lethal.

“It’s a major project with a lot of moving parts,” Firkus said. “There’s different hurdles and different things that keep popping up because nobody’s ever done this before.”

Of the various types of lake trout, Firkus is studying the siscowets (the fat ones) and lean lake trout. They were chosen for the study for comparison purposes. “There’s some evidence that the siscowet are more prone to parasitism from lamprey and they might actually be buffering the lean lake trout from parasitism,” Firkus said.
Why lamprey seem to prefer siscowets could be because lamprey like their fattier taste, or because they live in the same deepwater habitat that feeding lamprey prefer, or it could just be a numbers game because there are more siscowets in Lake Superior than there are lean lake trout, by a ratio of 15:1 (based on 2006-2011 data).

Firkus is conducting his research at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility (UWSP NADF), a Wisconsin Sea Grant partner organization located in Red Cliff, Wis. The facility currently holds a mature broodstock of both trout types from previous research projects. The UWSP NADF is the only facility in the world that has domestically reared siscowets available. Firkus is just beginning what he suspects will be a four- to six-year project.
As for catching the lamprey, Firkus is getting help from commercial fishermen in the Bayfield area and from the Hammond Bay Biological Station in Michigan, which specializes in lamprey collection and research. So far, he has about 20 lamprey in their feeding stage, with hopes of capturing 30 to 40 total.

As for exposing the lamprey to the research fish, Firkus plans to do this is in a controlled manner, with one lamprey parasitizing one lake trout per tank. For scientific comparison, other lake trout will go into tanks without lamprey.

“We want to look at the sublethal effects of parasitism, “Firkus said. “If the lamprey parasitize longer than five days, it’s likely that the lake trout will die. We will remove the lamprey around three or four days to avoid mortality.”

After the lamprey are removed, he plans to study a number of physical parameters of the fish over the long term. These include growth, reproduction and immune response. He will divide his time between UWSP NADF and MSU depending on whether he needs to collect data, process data or teach.

“The data will be an important tool to refine current physiological and bioenergetics models to better predict how sublethal sea lamprey attacks can affect the lake trout population,” said Greg Fischer, UWSP NADF operations manager. “The information will be vital for proper management strategies in all the Great Lakes.”


Funding for the project is coming from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Project leaders are Cheryl Murphy, Michigan State University; Fischer, UWSP NADF; Rick Goetz, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Northwest Fisheries Science Center; and Shawn Sitar, Michigan Department of Natural Resources Marquette Fisheries Research Station.

We [Heart] Actinobacteria

Backed by funding from Wisconsin Sea Grant, UW-Madison researcher Trina McMahon has become the worldwide authority on the key bacteria in freshwater lakes.

October 11, 2016

By Aaron R. Conklin

Every ecosystem has a top dog, a species that out-evolves and outcompetes everything else to survive and thrive under a wide range of conditions. In freshwater lakes, that champion is a special group of actinobacteria, small microbes—like, really, really tiny —that make up a superabundant group of bacteria that’s involved in most of what goes on in the freshwater universe.

Nobody knows more about freshwater actinobacteria than University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of environmental engineering Trina McMahon. With the support of Wisconsin Sea Grant, McMahon’s laboratory members have spent the last five years studying the little critters from every imaginable angle—and in the process have become the pre-eminent experts on the topic. What they’ve found has enlarged our understanding of how freshwater lakes function and exist.

“If you think of the lake as an entity, a living breathing thing that cycles nutrients, these bacteria are responsible for half of it,” said McMahon. “They’re very, very tiny, but because of their numbers and their level of activity, they’re driving huge amounts of the carbon cycling and nutrient regeneration,” said McMahon. “We’ve had a special place in our heart for a long time for the freshwater actinobacteria.”

The relationship began back in 2007, with Ryan Newton, one of McMahon’s first Ph.D. students. Newton, who’s now an assistant professor with the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, developed a baseline bar code of actinobacterial RNA sequences that allows researchers to track, classify and enumerate bacteria in lakes. Using that code, Newton and McMahon demonstrated that actinobacteria are the predominant species in inland lakes. 

In 2012, McMahon’s lab used a cutting-edge method to take a single cell of the actinobacteria and sequence its genome. What they found was that the actinobacteria have a rhodopsin protein similar to the protein in the human eye that allows it to sense light. In the actinobacteria, however, the rhodopsin almost certainly does more—converting the light into energy. (Those findings were recently published in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal.)

In a 2014-16 funded project with Wisconsin Sea Grant, McMahon and UW-Madison structural biologist Katrina Forest took it further, revealing something even more surprising about freshwater actinobacteria.

“Actinobacteria have the retinal found in most opsin proteins that allows them to harvest light, but we think they also have another light-harvesting structural molecule that allows harvesting of a different wavelength of light, amplifying the energy that gets harvested in a way that not many other bacteria have.”

That extra method of acquiring energy helps explain why they’ve shot to the top of the ecosystem ladder like a supercharged bullet. Currently, a graduate student in Forest’s lab is charting the actinobacterial cell’s biochemical machinery to definitively identify the structure of this second light-capturing molecule. McMahon suggests it might be possible that different groups of actinobacteria harvest different wavelengths of light.

In addition to the light-harvesting mechanism, McMahon’s lab has noted that the actinobacteria also interact extensively with the gunky-green cyanobacteria and algae that often overtake freshwater lakes during the summer months.

“They have in their cell wall/membrane all this machinery to suck up other dead organisms’ parts,” McMahon explained. “We think of them as vultures or scavengers—they wait for other organisms to die and then they eat up their parts. Then they recycle the atoms into carbon dioxide and also into new cell material. They are the foundational recyclers of the lake.”

McMahon said the interactions take a variety of forms—everything from the actinobacteria eating the dead cyanobacteria to sucking up molecules excreted by the cyanobacteria during periods of rapid growth.

“They’re super in one sense but they’re also crippled in another in that they depend on being able to scavenge what they can’t make themselves,” she said. “What’s fascinating is that we haven’t figured out if the actinobacteria help fuel the cyanobacteria blooms or keep them in check,” said McMahon. “There’s some early evidence that maybe they’re actually partners with the cyanobacteria in certain roles, which would mean that understanding actinobacteria might help us control cyanobacteria blooms better.”

McMahon’s well aware that she faces a strong ewwww factor associated with her research—who wants to talk about gross bacteria and smelly, potentially poisonous blue-green algae in our lakes? To get around that, McMahon has begun talking about actinobacteria using the same language people use to talk about the bacteria that live in humans’ guts, performing helpful tasks like digesting our food and bolstering our immune systems.

“People start to feel a little less scared about the bacteria when they think about it that way,” she said. “If we can understand how the actinobacteria function, and all the different ways they get energy and support the ecosystem, then we have that much deeper an understanding of the lake system. Then we can either do some kind of intervention to improve lake quality or at least make a prediction about what’s going to happen if we do make an intervention.”

McMahon’s research focus will now shift to determining how special each of the strains of actinobacteria are. Armed with genome sequences from the Great Lakes, Lake Mendota, lakes in Sweden and other countries around the world, McMahon’s working to determine whether the bacterial strain she’s studied in Madison’s Lake Mendota is endemic to all lakes or has adapted to its specific environments.

“Maybe the cell in Lake Mendota gets carried to a lake in northern Wisconsin, but maybe it can’t live there because it depends on its friends who are in Lake Mendota,” she said. “We would actually prefer if they weren’t too endemic, because we’d like to take what we’ve learned and apply it to all lakes.”

NEWS RELEASE - Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

101 S Webster, P.O. Box 7921, Madison, WI 53707

Phone: 608-267-2773 TDD: 711dnr.wi.gov | wisconsin.gov


DATE: July 13, 2016
CONTACT: Ben Bergey, Wisconsin State Parks director, 608-266-2185
SUBJECT: Peninsula State Park Eagle Tower deconstruction delayed
http://dnr.wi.gov/news/releases/article/?id=4006

FISH CREEK, Wis. - The deconstruction of Eagle Tower at Peninsula State Park originally scheduled for mid-July will be delayed until mid-September due to challenges the Department of Natural Resources experienced obtaining a contractor and necessary equipment. The tower will remain closed until deconstruction begins.

The park closed the tower to public use in May 2015 to protect public safety after an inspection report raised significant concerns over its structural integrity and an inspection by the U.S. Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory found considerable deterioration of the structural and non-structural wood members.

Current plans are to deconstruct the existing tower and rebuild a new structure to look as similar as possible to the existing tower, while complying building codes, Americans with Disabilities Act requirements and taking into consideration new technologies.

The Friends of Peninsula State Park in cooperation with interested community members has formed a subcommittee, the Eagle Tower Fund Committee, which is raising funds to rebuild Eagle Tower.
The tower will be taken down in sections making all practical efforts to minimize destruction of tower members.. Staff from the Forest Products Lab will assess all remaining wood elements to determine the existing structural integrity and level of deterioration.

The deconstruction and assessment work will require a temporary traffic rerouting of a section of Shore Road within the park close to the tower, as well as some trails near the tower.

Peninsula State Park staff will be coordinating outreach programs during the tower deconstruction and wood assessment, with presentations by park staff and Forest Products Lab engineers.


The kiosk at the entrance station/park office and the kiosk located at Eagle Tower will be updated regularly with information regarding ongoing work. People can also sign up to receive email updates on tower progress by searching the DNR website, dnr.wi.gov, for "Eagle Tower" and clicking on the "subscribe for Eagle Tower updates" email icon.

Connect With Wisconsin Fish, and Their Fishers and Growers

Eatwisconsinfish.org website relaunches 

June 21, 2016

Eatwisconsinfish.org relaunches today. Newly simplified navigation, bright images and plenty of recipes are in evidence. The site is part of a Sea Grant initiative that educates consumers about the health benefits of seafood consumption, and how to evaluate the safety and sustainability of the seafood they buy.

More than 90 percent of the seafood eaten by Americans is imported from other countries. Sea Grant launched the Eat Wisconsin Fish project in 2014 to help consumers learn more about local fish that are available to purchase in Wisconsin, a state rich in both fishing heritage and water resources. Generations of families have commercially harvested Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior since the 1830s, and Wisconsin fish farmers are leaders in aquaponics, cultivating fish and plants together to efficiently recycle nutrients said project lead Kathy Schmitt Kline, an education specialist.          

The relaunched website has six major areas: fish, why eating local fish is a healthy and delicious choice that also keeps dollars in local economies, and providing a detailed list of Wisconsin’s commercially caught and farm-raised fish; producers, which introduces Wisconsin’s fishermen and fish farmers; recipes; resources, which offers a seasonal buying guide and a Wisconsin map indicating where to get the most fresh fish; events; and about the Eat Wisconsin Fish initiative.

Funding for Eat Wisconsin Fish has been provided by the Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin grant program from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and by the National Sea Grant College Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. 

DNR seeks feedback on Lake Michigan management strategies

MADISON, Wis. - The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will convene three public meetings in late June to discuss management strategies and opportunities for Lake Michigan in light of continued challenges facing salmon populations and the alewives they feed on.

The meetings will focus on a variety of potential management actions to ensure continued diverse opportunities for sport anglers. Topics for discussion will include finding the right species mix, use of net pens, hatchery production, habitat restoration and the potential to increase focus on species with the greatest chances of thriving given the record low levels of open water forage fish such as alewives and rainbow smelt.

The initiative represents part of an ongoing effort by DNR to ensure anglers' voices are heard as ecological changes continue to alter Lake Michigan's food web. The meetings follow announcement of a proposal by the Lake Michigan Committee, a multistate organization charged with managing the Lake Michigan fishery, to reduce lake-wide stocking of chinook salmon by 61.5 percent from current levels, beginning in 2017.

This proposed reduction would equate to a 56 percent chinook salmon reduction (from 810,000 to 355,000) for Wisconsin. The other states that border Lake Michigan would also take significant chinook salmon stocking reductions through this proposal. Michigan would go from 560,000 to 200,000, Illinois would go from 230,000 to 90,000 and Indiana would go from 200,000 to 45,000. The fisheries managers across Lake Michigan believe that these reductions are necessary to maintain quality growth rates and healthy chinook for the fishery and to avoid a crash of the alewife forage base of the lake. Stocking has been a critical management tool to control alewives and provide a fantastic fishery over the years and while we have had to make reductions in the past, Wisconsin is still a leader in chinook salmon stocking.

"Since 2011, Wisconsin DNR has held more than 40 meetings, public input opportunities and attended sport and commercial meetings to work with anglers in developing a shared vision for management of our prized Lake Michigan fishery," said Todd Kalish, deputy director of DNR's fisheries bureau. "Recent data, including acoustic and trawl surveys, shows a continued decline in alewife populations and the predator-prey ratio has reached the tipping point. By working with anglers, we hope to preserve the salmon fishery to the greatest extent possible while developing and accessing options to enhance and maintain a diverse fishery. There is a framework in place that informs managers on the appropriate level of salmon and trout stocking numbers in Lake Michigan. This level can go up and down based on the available information that we are continually evaluating and upgrading."

Kalish said economic hardships caused by collapse of the salmon fishery in Lake Huron starting in 2003-04 offer a cautionary tale for Wisconsin given the more than $114.3 million in annual retail expenditures by Great Lakes sport anglers here. By working to preserve Lake Michigan's salmon fishery, DNR and its partners in surrounding states aim to navigate through the current predator-prey challenges to preserve and protect this economically important fishery into the future.

"We are particularly concerned about the many charter fishing operators on these waters and will be working to identify new opportunities to promote the diverse Lake Michigan fishing opportunities," Kalish said.

If this proposal is implemented, Wisconsin fishery managers would continue efforts to ensure a fall salmon run in Lake Michigan Rivers and streams in 10 counties. Anglers attending the upcoming meetings will be asked to provide feedback on Wisconsin's plans to distribute chinook salmon at locations including Strawberry Creek Rearing Facility, Green Bay and Lake Michigan tributaries or ports in Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Kewaunee, Door, Oconto and Marinette counties.

Brad Eggold, DNR southern Lake Michigan fisheries supervisor, said that while chinook salmon would remain an essential part of the diverse Lake Michigan fishery, going forward, species that show more adaptability in their feeding preferences may play a larger role. In addition to chinook, each year DNR stocks hundreds of thousands of coho salmon, brown trout and rainbow trout at more than 40 locations along the Lake Michigan coast. The Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan also receive about 800,000 lake trout produced by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"Working with anglers, we intend to use a variety of techniques to optimize survival of stocked trout and salmon," Eggold said. "At the same time, we will continue to work with stakeholders on projects to enhance the salmon and trout fishery on Lake Michigan. We also intend to review our management practices to ensure we are able to respond quickly as new information becomes available."

The three meetings are set for 6 to 8 p.m.:

• Monday, June 27, Lakeshore Technical College, Centennial Hall West, 1290 North Ave., Cleveland, WI 53015
• Wednesday, June 29, Brown County Library, Auditorium, 515 Pine St. , Green Bay, WI 54301
• Thursday, June 30, UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, Ballroom, 600 E. Greenfield Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53204

To learn more about Lake Michigan fisheries management including historic stocking trends visit DNR.wi.gov and search "Fishing Lake Michigan." More information about the meetings can be found here:  http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/fishing/lakemichigan/LakeMichiganSalmonandTroutMeetings.html