Here is some numbers I have been looking at and thought I would get some input from others to see if there is any trend building here. There are 3 major areas of Chinook Salmon released that I feel affect my fishing so those are the numbers I use. Those being Muskegon river Grand river and Manistee area. What I did was go to the DNR stocking info and look at 2 year stocking to give me a idea of how many possible returning 3 and 4 year olds we should have. For last years Muskegon class the number was 289,092 for this years class it was 290,568 for next year the number is 156,832. For Grand Haven last year was 786,457 this year was 785,131 and next year is 586,949. For Manistee last year was 1,375,311 this year was 1,281,674 and next year was 1,089,987. So for next year we have a drop of 523,599 in the 3 to 4 year old fish class for those 3 areas based on DNR release info. Now this is raw numbers and does not account for any natural reproduction nor does it account for loss. But I am guessing at around 10% meaning for Muskegon in 07 season we had roughly 28,909 adults to fish for in 08 we had 29,057 and for 09 we should have 15,683. For the 2010 season the numbers would drop to 11,893. This was a strange year for me as even though I caught more total fish for the year than last year I fished a lot more and had fewer limit catchs. I only got skunked a total of 4 times for the year but because of high gas prices I did make some changes to my program and one major change was I began a short program which involved selecting a area I thought would produce and driving straight to it and fishing it. Most of the time completely ignoring what everyone else was doing. A lot of time it worked with decent fishing other times not so good. But the big differance for me this year was that if my program failed I turned and drove back in rather than running to another area and restarting as it was most of the time I got 2 or 3 fish so not a total loss and I cut my fuel expense and got to fish more often. Because of that many of my trips were around 3 hours total now if I had a long drive to the lake this would not work. Also I noticed people were more willing to fish with me as they became aware that they would no longer be stuck on the boat till either the box was full or I ran out of gas ( no I never have ran out of gas but have had to run in on fumes before ). In my old boat it was time to quit when the main tank ran out and I had to switch to the aux tank. Back to the original subject does anyone think I am close to being right about the fish numbers? Perhaps the drop will do as expected and bring in larger fish that would be nice. I don't have any real data on how many boats fish out of Muskegon but I am trying to SWAG ( sceintific wild ass guess) and using 3000 trips a season the 07 and 08 seasons would break down to just under 10 fish possible per trip 09 would end about 5 per trip and 2010 would come down to about 4 per trip. Of course less trip would mean more per trip and more trips would mean less per trip and this is not real accurate numbers mostly SWAG and personal opinion as such feel free to dissagree with them but if anyone else has a thought on this let me know. Tight Lines Jim
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Just my opinion here Jim, but my best SWAG analysis shows that limits of kings will continue to decline, but size should improve. That should make a lot of anglers happy, as there seems to be a movement which desires such a fishery.
Coming from my standpoint, I would prefer numbers of decent kings over size anyday...but that is just me.
I will say this...coming more than 250 miles to catch salmonoids will become somewhat less desirable if catches per trip mirror what I experienced this past season.
I think the guys that want to see the size increase (and subsequently fewer fish) are those who fish 1-2 times per week throughout the season. I can see their point, and I would likely feel the same if I could fish LM that much.
BFG
Official Ohio Delegate to Team Heavy Super-Sized Fishing Specialists bfg@educatedangler.com
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I am about 15min from the boat launch here in Muskegon so is a mixed opinion for me. While my fish per trip dropped this year I did not get as many big fish this year not one fish over 20lbs I did however get more kings this year than last but I made a lot more trips. On one hand bigger fish will be cool to see again and perhaps tougher fishing will thin the herd a bit. This is sad for guys who drive a long ways to fish here. I could not imagine driving that far to end up with a couple of fish and going home with plans on returning. I am also concerned that guys will end up going after the Lake trout to make up for less kings. Next year we will see how it works out. Tight Lines Jim
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Jim, your SWAG is a little out there. Reason being the Muskegon River has the highest natural repoduction of any of the rivers. That is why the plants where really cut. The number I've heard is about 30%-40%. This seems really high to me but, it must be better than 5-10% they origanially thought. This year was way weird. The run lasted about 2 days it felt like. The size of fish was way up this year. We boat that big pig and also had 5 more fish over 24lbs. We also had plenty of 15-20lb fish. In 07 we took 2 fish at around 20. So it was a big improvement in size! It seemed like the catch rate was the same as 2007 but, it took me a lot longer to get our fish. The run has me a little puzzled but, I hope there are plenty of fish out there this year and the size continues to get better. Also, with the lower gas prices guys will fish more and spend more money at there local shops!
I hope you are right Vince the runs the last couple of years have been wierd but this was truely a very wierd run. My personal numbers were somewhat skewed by the cost of gas and changing my program big time this year. While I caught 40% more fish this year than last I made nearly twice as many trips even if I discount the fact that I made a lot of runs to test changes made on the boat which I bought this spring which had me out on the lake a month or better before I usually hit it. I was working on gear location and setups on a much bigger boat than last year so I started doing Gilligans Island boat trips and just going out for a couple hours go out run a program or two and come back in. By mid July my budget was killing me so I stuck to the short program all the way thru the season to keep my gas bill down. So I don't know if I would have done better by sticking it out and looking for more fish or not. As it was I usually was on my way back in by 8 or 9 in the morning with 3 or 4 fish often with just 2 of us in the boat so I decided to just fish peak times and take what I could and save the boat gas for another trip. I will say that the days I was back at the dock by 8am with a limit in the box was cool. Making lots of short trips kept me in contact with the fish pretty much all season as well so very few skunks all year actually only 4 out of 50 trips 2 of them were early in Oct after the water turned over I just could not find fish anywhere. Anyhow back to the reason for the original post After looking at my results for the last 4 years and talking with friends about their results. I thought I would post on a couple of sites and see what others thought. If I did not hope things were going to get better than I sure would not have spent my money on a bigger boat last spring. Tight Lines Jim
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I hope you are right Vince the runs the last couple of years have been wierd but this was truely a very wierd run. My personal numbers were somewhat skewed by the cost of gas and changing my program big time this year. While I caught 40% more fish this year than last I made nearly twice as many trips even if I discount the fact that I made a lot of runs to test changes made on the boat which I bought this spring which had me out on the lake a month or better before I usually hit it. I was working on gear location and setups on a much bigger boat than last year so I started doing Gilligans Island boat trips and just going out for a couple hours go out run a program or two and come back in. By mid July my budget was killing me so I stuck to the short program all the way thru the season to keep my gas bill down. So I don't know if I would have done better by sticking it out and looking for more fish or not. As it was I usually was on my way back in by 8 or 9 in the morning with 3 or 4 fish often with just 2 of us in the boat so I decided to just fish peak times and take what I could and save the boat gas for another trip. I will say that the days I was back at the dock by 8am with a limit in the box was cool. Making lots of short trips kept me in contact with the fish pretty much all season as well so very few skunks all year actually only 4 out of 50 trips 2 of them were early in Oct after the water turned over I just could not find fish anywhere. Anyhow back to the reason for the original post After looking at my results for the last 4 years and talking with friends about their results. I thought I would post on a couple of sites and see what others thought. If I did not hope things were going to get better than I sure would not have spent my money on a bigger boat last spring. Tight Lines Jim
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Not me Clark.. I fish 2 times per week. I like numbers.
