Status of Les Cheneaux Fishery To Be Topic Wednesday

An informational meeting about the Les Cheneaux Islands fishery and cormorant control in the area will be presented Wednesday, March 12, at 7 p.m. at the Les Cheneaux Sportman's Club on M-134, just east of Cedarville. It is open to the public.

The Les Cheneaux Sportman's Club will host this public meeting, where Dave Fielder, fisheries biologist with the Department of Natural Resources' (DNR) Alpena Great Lakes Fisheries Research Station, will report fish survey findings from 2007.

A fisheries biologist from the DNR's Northern Lake Huron Management Unit is also expected to come, as well as Tony Aderman of the United States Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services. Mr. Aderman will report progress on the 2007 cormorant control project.

Included in the report will be the results from the annual fall netting survey Mr. Fielder leads each October, and creel survey reports from local anglers. DNR Creel Clerk Bill Schroeder interviews anglers about their catches from April through October.

The netting survey is a staple of local fisheries research, and has persisted in the Les Cheneaux Islands since 1969. Mr. Fielder told The St. Ignace News the 2007 survey revealed the catch rate dipped somewhat, showing "fishing effort has not yet returned to what it was in the 1980s." He added that yellow perch populations have been increasing, and may have reached a plateau.

"We've established there is a connection between perch and cormorant control, but there are definitely other factors, including recruitment and angler predation and pressure, that impact populations," he said.

Angler pressure or predation means sport and commercial fishing; recruitment means how many young perch fry survive to join the perch population.