The Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is partnering for a second year with MyCatch by Angler’s Atlas to conduct a statewide walleye fishing challenge starting May 1 through June 30. The Iowa Chapter of the American Fisheries Society has joined as a research partner for the 2023 challenge.

Anglers will have the chance to win weekly prizes while also contributing to fisheries research, helping improve walleye fishing in the state.

The Iowa Walleye Challenge uses the MyCatch mobile app to record the length of a fish. Participating anglers take a picture of the fish on a measuring device using the app. Once the fish is reviewed by the catch team and meets the rules, it automatically appears on a live leaderboard where anglers can see who is in the lead to win prizes.

Participating anglers are encouraged to report all the walleye they catch in May and June through the MyCatch mobile app. The mobile app maintains anonymous location data, so angler’s secret sports stay secret. DNR fisheries biologists will use the generalized lake and river catch data entered to assess and manage walleye populations across Iowa. Read more

A great number of species make a home in a restored wetland at the former Tidmarsh Farm. Bill Perry USFWS

Brook trout, alewife, warblers and wood ducks dwell where cranberries were once the commodity.

Like any commodity, cranberry production is subject to changes in the markets. Cranberries, a native plant that naturally grows in soggy bogs in the Northeast United States have been commercially farmed on large scale for a century and a half, perhaps longer. But farming the berry is not so economically viable anymore—and that has afforded opportunities to put federal excise taxes paid by fishing tackle manufacturers to work for conservation.

Using funds from National Coastal Wetland Grants derived from the Sport Fish Restoration Act, the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Ecological Restoration, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have engaged in a number of restoration projects in what had been known as the cranberry capital of the world. The group embarked on an endeavor to return a well-used farm into a mosaic of natural wildlife habitat. It’s the largest freshwater ecological restoration project yet to be accomplished in the northeastern United States.

The large Tidmarsh Farm located in Plymouth, Massachusetts, operated since the 1890s. The owners recently dedicated the farm not to development but to conservation, to restore the land to its soggy soils, forests, uplands, and open waters—for fish and wildlife and for people to enjoy.

Some 480 acres of farmland have been converted back to the natural maple-cypress woodlands, lowland bog, and miles of stream. The lands have been reshaped and contoured and revegetated with native trees as well as upland and wetland plants.

Gone are nine dams, dikes, and water control structures that formerly regulated flows and flooded the cranberry marshes on a seasonal basis. Their removal offers unfettered ocean-to-headwater access to upstream spawning habitat for alewife and blueback herring—fishes that spawn in freshwater and live the majority of their lives in salt water. They are a favored fare of striped bass while they too cruise the Atlantic Ocean.

The rivers of the northwest once all belonged to local tribes to fish as they wished, and there were so few of them and so many fish that what they took had no impact on stocks.

That’s assuredly not the case now. From 2014 to 2019, the fisheries were so poor that the Commerce Department last year declared a fisheries disaster for much of the Pacific Coast, including the tribal fisheries in multiple rivers.

Now, with dams, urban and agricultural water use, pollution and reduced water flows in most years due to reduced snow pack and sea lion predation as well as offshore commercial harvest along with limited recreational harvest, many of the salmon runs (but not all) are a shadow of what they were once and there’s concern among anglers that the tribes continue to use gear which captures many of the salmon that make it into the rivers in short order.

Why are the tribes permitted to use gill nets for the salmon when these nets have been outlawed for gamefish throughout most of the country? Read more

To address public safety and infrastructure concerns, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources plans to draw down the impoundment behind the Cornwall Flooding dam in Cheboygan County later this year.

The Cornwall Flooding, owned by the DNR, is in the heart of the Pigeon River Country State Forest and is a popular spot for fishing, wildlife viewing, kayaking and other outdoor activities.

Built in 1966, the Cornwall Flooding dam is classified by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy as a high hazard dam. This means that the dam is in an area where a failure may cause serious damage to inhabited homes or infrastructure downstream, where environmental degradation would be significant, or where danger to individuals exists with the potential for the loss of life. Read more

A state record that was held for 32 years has been broken twice in two weeks.

On Dec. 30 of last year, Scott Skafar broke the state burbot record that had been set in 1990 with a 10.2-pound fish he caught from Lake Michigan. On Jan. 10, Phillip Duracz caught a new state record burbot weighing 11.4 pounds, also from Lake Michigan. Duracz also holds the lake whitefish state record, 9.34 pounds, which he caught from Lake Michigan in 2021. Read more

The Maine Warden Service Dive Team this morning recovered the body of a man who broke through the ice on Seboeis Lake while on a snowmobile yesterday afternoon.

Allen Cole, Jr. age 74 of Bradford, was out on his 2006 Artic Cat snowmobile with his dog yesterday afternoon on Seboeis Lake, looking for areas to ice fish today. Around 2:00 p.m. yesterday, he met another angler at the boat landing, told him he was going to check another area to fish, headed off on his snowmobile, and then never returned.

Cole’s family notified the warden service last night around 7:00 p.m., and the Maine Warden Service began searching the lake and shore. Game Wardens found Cole’s dog, alive and well at about 10:30, and shortly thereafter, found snowmobile tracks then led to an large hole in the ice, with no tracks on the other side.

At daylight this morning, Maine Warden Service Divers, with an airboat and hovercraft, motored out to the open area, and sent divers into the water. At approximately 8:55 this morning, game warden divers recovered the body of Mr. Cole.

“Ice conditions vary throughout the state, and while ice may be safe on smaller lakes and ponds, many of Maine’s larger lakes still have not frozen completely,” said Maine Warden Service Lieutenant Tom Ward. “Please check the ice before heading out onto the ice.”

The 2023 lake sturgeon fishing season on Black Lake in Cheboygan County, Michigan, will begin at 8 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 4. All anglers must register online to participate in the fishing season, and those age 17 or older must have a valid Michigan fishing license.

The harvest limit for the 2023 season on Black Lake is six lake sturgeon. Officials will close the season when one of two scenarios occurs:

1. The sixth fish is harvested.
2. Five fish have been harvested at the end of any fishing day. Read more

Anglers will soon benefit from the 624,205 fish, which collectively weighed 7.8 tons, that were stocked by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources at 85 locations across the state.

“It was another outstanding fall fish stocking season that will provide enhanced fishing opportunities throughout Michigan,” said DNR fish production manager Ed Eisch. “When added to our successful spring and summer stocking efforts, that brings the total for 2022 to more than 17 million fish stocked in Michigan’s waters.”

The number and type of fish stocked vary by hatchery, as each facility’s ability to rear fish differs because of water supplies and temperature. In Michigan, there are six state and three cooperative hatcheries that work together to produce the species, strain and size of fish needed by fisheries managers. These fish must then be delivered at a specific time and location for stocking to ensure their success. Most fish in Michigan are stocked in the spring.

Fall 2022 fish stocking consisted of four species of fish: brook trout, Eagle Lake and steelhead strain rainbow trout, walleye and muskellunge. Read more

It’s ice fishing season and there are a few things you need to succeed, stay safe, and stay warm. Here are a few suggestions. Read more