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Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay. | The E-mail I sent to my DNRE Biologist buddy from yesterday 9-27-10 and his answer to it. Remember, these are just the preliminary results. These findings and results IMO may also contain the key to this years poor late summer fishing on the Bay proper after late July. Having caught walleyes in water temps as hot as 90 degrees myself, I Kinda figured both the inner bay abundance of baitfish along with the Northward migration of prefered (BIG FISH) baitfish, drew them out into the outer bay this summer for this bigger/better prey. This short trawl results data Kinda confirms that to me. And with the water temps this summer (even in the outer bay) being the 5th warmest on record, the colder water baitfish species (Shiners/Smelt) living there, headed even further North drawing the walleye even farther out into Lake Huron and away from us on the inner bay.
Question I sent:
Did you do the trawl survey yet? Man, this has been the worst summer for walleyes on the inner bay I can ever remember. My last good day this summer was July 17th. Since then it has been DEAD. Not even any smaller ones to throw back. The guys on my board are irate and blaming everything and everybody, including the DNRE. They forgot about the VHS scare since they have not heard a thing about it in the last 2 years. So they wonder why the plantings are still on hold. The Bay temps are back down to 58 degrees. The brother and I fished today for over 2 hours and never had a bite. Something did happen this year IMV that changed the scheme and fishing on the bay that I believe amounted to more then just warmer water temperatures. If you have any ideas or facts that could explain this let me know. Dan.
His answer:
Dan.
We just completed the survey so these are just first impressions, we have yet to work up any of the data. Walleyes age 1+ were scarce at the time of the survey on the west side of the bay (unusual) but were very plentiful in the inner bay and on the thumb side. Some of the heaviest walleyes catches we've seen in some time for age 1 and older walleye.
The YOY or age 0 walleye were caught in every tow and the highest catches were in the Au Gres area. They were running about 20 or 30 per tow which is about average under the new conditions (average but very good by long term standards). It appeared that there was lots of forage out there so I wonder if folks are not catching walleyes cause they are simply not biting well. We have more to do in the analysis but I can't imagine any man assisted re-stocking renewing anytime soon. We have lots of walleye out there and the reproduction is remaining very strong.
There is evidence that smelt are making something of a comeback in the main basin and we suspect that some of the larger walleye have out migrated into the main basin for the summer to feed on smelt. They usually come back to winter in the bay.
Yellow perch also looked the best we've seen in a long time.
We have a new study starting up where we'll be surgically implanting radio transmitters in about 150 walleye in the bay next spring and 150 in Lake Erie walleyes to study movement. We have over a 100 receivers deployed around Lake Erie and Lake Huron (many in the bay) to detect movement. It should be interesting. We'll keep you posted. Probably no results from that until next summer. |
Saginaw Bay 2010 Trawl results and Catch rate theory.