The Department of Natural Resources recently stocked 27,449 muskellunge fingerlings into 17 water bodies located throughout the state, in an effort to further enhance Michigan’s world-class fisheries.

Michigan is home to two strains of naturally producing muskellunge: Great Lakes and northern. The DNR has reared muskellunge in its hatcheries since the 1950s. While the hatchery program initially focused on the northern muskellunge strain, it has shifted focus in recent years to the Great Lakes strain, as it is native to Michigan and widely distributed in water bodies throughout the Lower Peninsula and eastern region of the Upper Peninsula.

Since 2011 the DNR has collected eggs and milt (sperm) from adult muskellunge in the Lake St. Clair/Detroit River system. The offspring then are reared at Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery in Mattawan. This hatchery is the only facility in the state currently capable of rearing this species. After hatching, the muskellunge are started in hatchery tanks and then transferred to outside ponds after a few months for grow-out. Read more

Some years back, when Michigan’s Chinook salmon program was in its greatest glory, some anglers suggested the Department of Natural Resources abandon raising the smaller, less spectacular coho salmon and put more emphasis on the kings. The DNR demurred, preferring a multispecies approach.

It appears to have been a wise strategy; Chinook salmon populations are down significantly, largely because of stocking cuts necessitated by a diminishing alewife population in Lake Michigan.

Chinooks depend almost entirely on alewives for their diet. Cohos are more adaptable. As a result, the coho population remains strong. It helped fill out the catch this past summer, as there were fewer Chinooks available to anglers.

Now, the DNR stocks nearly as many coho salmon as Chinooks. A decade ago, it was a quarter as many. Read more

The Department of Natural Resources has been working hard this fall, and will continue to this winter, to gather necessary eggs to maintain the production of hatchery fish to support management objectives for Michigan’s world-class fisheries. Fall egg-takes have been completed or soon will start for wild Chinook and coho salmon and for captive broodstocks of brown, rainbow, brook and lake trout.

Chinook salmon eggs were collected during the week of Oct. 5 at the Little Manistee River weir and earlier this week from the Swan River weir near Rogers City. Coho salmon eggs will be collected at the Platte River State Fish Hatchery weir starting Thursday. Read more

The Department of Natural Resources and several partners released more than 6,300 juvenile lake sturgeon into various public waters across Michigan this summer and fall in an effort to rehabilitate this culturally significant fish species.

The table below shows which agencies stocked fish, how many fish were stocked, and the date and location of each stocking effort.

All juvenile lake sturgeon were collected from the wild last spring and reared in streamside facilities until they reached at least 7 inches or larger in size. All fish are tagged prior to being released into their respective rivers. Read more

The Michigan Natural Resources Commission Thursday approved several fishing regulations at its meeting in Cedarville. Many of these regulations immediately went into effect. They will remain in effect for the 2016 fishing season (which begins April 1).

All of the changes are highlighted below and also are reflected in the online version of the 2015 Michigan Fishing Guide, available at michigan.gov/fishingguide. These regulation changes are part of Fisheries Order 215. Read more

A relatively new technique for stabilizing eroding stream banks is showing great promise in Michigan, as a demonstration project on Highbank Creek in Barry County has not only repaired a damaged creek, but has provided excellent fish habitat as well.

The technique, called “toe wood,” has been around for about a decade but hasn’t been used much in Michigan until now. Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist Chris Freiburger learned of the technique and thought it had applications for some of the issues facing Michigan streams.

The area Freiburger chose for the demonstration project involved a stream that had been dammed for a mill more than a century ago. The dam had been partially removed in the 1920s, but the abutments were left in place until the landowner knocked them down into the creek out of safety concerns. The debris formed a partial dam that not only impeded fish passage, but also contributed to erosion on the stream. A significant amount of sediment was swept downstream, silting in about an acre and a half of Thornapple Lake.

The Barry Conservation District applied for a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fish passage grant, as well as a DNR aquatic habitat grant to remove the dam and restore the stream. Read more