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Walleye Fishing -> General Discussion -> Scientific data can help shape your fishing strategy?
 
Message Subject: Scientific data can help shape your fishing strategy?
walleye express
Posted 3/2/2005 9:17 AM (#28879)
Subject: Scientific data can help shape your fishing strategy?



Member

Posts: 2680

Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay.
After rereading my DNR buddies E-mail to me about the fisheries assessment meeting for Saginaw Bay, I started thinking about what a few things he stated actually meant, as far as what I have personally noticed about the change in the walleyes feeding and migration habits the last couple of years. Here is the most important part of what I'm talking about from his E-mail to me.

{Quote}Why the reduction in perch and walleye year class strength? There are two reasons I think. First alewives and gizzard shad were largely gone from the bay in 2004 and everything seemed to be feeding on young perch and even young walleyes. This is fairly rare as you would expect under the circumstances so some of the loss was to predation. There was even some cannibalism going on with walleye which is not unheard of but unusual for Saginaw Bay. {un-Quote}

This is the most important part to me, that may explain many things that have changed on the Bay in the last 2 years. Remember the old days, when suspended walleyes meant feeding walleyes. All you had to do was find some suspended baitfish, and you were in business. Yet, the last 2 years all you hear on the radio is, "I got fish from top to bottom" "But nothing will bite".

Alewives are notorious schooling suspenders and foragers, and the preferred baitfish for walleyes on the Bay since their reintroduction in the mid 70's. Loosing these baitfish, no matter how much it helps the natural reproduction of other species, may be the wake up call for changing the way we fish for walleyes on the Bay.

Think of all the patterns and places you consistently found fish last year alone. The shallower waters off all the sand/gravel/weed Bars along the Bays shorlines, were hotter last year than in any years I can remember. These are the places that juvenile perch and walleyes would stay, take refuge and try to grow bigger. And if they have now become part of the forage base to mature walleyes, it makes sense more of them would hang out in these places.

How about the other consistent hot spots last summer? That deeper 26 to 30 FOW, where smelt and juvenile herring or white fish might be lounging around. And I'd say in general last year, that staying close to bottom in all depths, produced more fish for me than trolling the upper layers of the water column, where the alewives are now vacant. And lets not forget the Goby factor. These little rascals are also fast becoming the preferred forage, and we all know where they hang out, and it isn't in the upper water column. I guess this is why I always stress to anybody asking, that learning about the ecosystem and environment that the fish live in, is the most important part of becoming a better fisherman.

Edited by walleye express 3/2/2005 9:28 AM
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butch
Posted 3/2/2005 9:30 AM (#28882 - in reply to #28879)
Subject: RE: Scientific data can help shape your fishing strategy?


Member

Posts: 701

Location: upper michigan
That is exactly how i sse it Dan. Bay DeNoc is undergoing alot of change to and many people are frustrated that they cannot catch fish as they used to. The problem is in my belief that the forage base has changed and so the techniques used to catch walleye needs to change also. Those who adapt to the change continue to catch fish and those that fish memories strugle and complain about the fishery.
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