Juvenile sturgeon in a colander The Michigan Department of Natural Resources, together with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and dedicated volunteers took on a unique project this past August to protect juvenile lake sturgeon from sea lamprey treatments conducted on the Big Manistee River.

Across Michigan, rivers are treated every few years with a chemical that aims to kill sea lamprey larvae – an invasive species that preys on salmon, trout and whitefish. The Big Manistee River is treated every three to four years in an effort to reduce sea lamprey populations. Read more

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources will offer free tours to the public and school groups this fall at the Boardman River Weir in downtown Traverse City, the Little Manistee River Weir in Manistee County and the Platte River Weir in Benzie County. Tours are available through the end of September and throughout October.DNR interpreter offering tour at Little Manistee River WeirWeirs are dam-like structures that block upstream fish passage on a river. A weir is used on the Boardman River each fall by the DNR to harvest Chinook and coho salmon that otherwise would create significant river congestion between Union and Sabin dams. One is used on the Little Manistee River at the same time to harvest Chinook salmon to support the DNR’s fish production efforts. Read more

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For nearly a century, the Pigeon River in the northeast Lower Peninsula has been a beautiful, blue-ribbon trout stream scarred with a flaw sometimes fatal to fish – a dam situated about 15 miles downstream from the river’s source.

Now, after a collaborative effort and litigation involving the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the dam – located near Vanderbilt in Otsego County – has been removed from the landscape, an important accomplishment that has been a long time coming.

The river was first dammed in the late 1800s by a timber company to help transport logs downstream. Later, the earthen dam was rebuilt by a group of sportsmen known as “The Lansing Club,” with the waters behind the dam maintained as a fishing pond. Read more

Man holding a smallmouth bass

Michigan’s existing state record for smallmouth bass was broken Sunday by Robert Bruce Kraemer of Treasure Island, Florida.

A longtime angler with a cottage in Indian River, Cheboygan County, Kraemer said he’s been fishing Michigan waters since 1965, but this is his first state-record catch. Using night crawlers for bait, Kraemer landed a 9.98-pound, 23.10-inch smallmouth bass while out on the Indian River.

“I usually spend June through the end of September up here at the cottage,” Kraemer said. “I’ve got some great fish stories and some nice fish, but nothing like this.” Read more

Tiny pieces of harmful plastic, called microplastics, are prevalent in many rivers that flow into the Great Lakes, according to a study published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Results are also illustrated on a new USGS microplastics website.Microplastics fall off decomposing bottles and bags, wear off of synthetic clothing and are manufactured into some toothpastes and lotions. Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey and State University of New York at Fredonia studied 107 water samples collected from 29 Great Lakes tributaries in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and New York, and found microplastics in all samples. Together, these 29 tributaries account for approximately 22 percent of the total river water that flows into the Great Lakes. Read more

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources recently launched a new web-based mapping tool – the Inland Lake Habitat Viewer – to provide the public with information about the state’s inland lakes. The tool, available at michigan.gov/fishing, is ideal for those interested in learning more about habitat conditions in an individual lake or how habitat conditions vary among lakes in the state.Michigan’s 11,000 inland lakes are incredibly diverse and vary in depth, productivity, thermal stratification, oxygen, alkalinity, shoreline armoring, docks, woody habitat, housing density and other characteristics. The DNR routinely collects data on these characteristics, which are critical for sustaining populations of fish, frogs, turtles, birds and other wildlife. Read more

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources today announced that so far in 2016, no bighead and silver carp environmental DNA (eDNA) has been found in Michigan waters.Asian carp swimming underwaterThe eDNA surveillance program – a collaborative effort between the Great Lakes states and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) – samples high priority locations for the presence of bighead and silver carp genetic material. Read more