The Michigan Department of Natural Resources again this year is encouraging Great Lakes anglers who catch marked and tagged fish to report them. The DNR has used the coded-wire tag program to mass mark various fish species in Michigan since the 1980s. Mass marking provides critical data as fisheries biologists look to determine the value of naturally reproduced fish versus stocked fish, and lakewide movement of fish.

The coded-wire tag program involves implanting a small, coded-wire tag, which is invisible to the naked eye, into the snout of a fish. A fish containing a coded-wire tag can be identified because its adipose fin (the small, fleshy fin between the dorsal and tail fins) has been removed. An angler who catch a tagged fish then can record needed information about the fish, remove and freeze the fish’s snout, and drop it off at a designated location.A statewide list of dropoff locations can be found on the DNR website.

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Michigan: home to outstanding fishing, more than 3,000 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, 11,000 inland lakes, and tens of thousands of miles of rivers and streams.

There’s no shortage of recreational opportunities to explore – and what better time to do so than the 2017 Summer Free Fishing Weekend!

The 2017 Summer Free Fishing Weekend will be held Saturday, June 10 and Sunday, June 11. Read more

Thornapple Lake is a 409 acre lake that lies in eastern Barry County, about five miles west of the village of Nashville. It is a popular recreation lake with two boat launches and shore fishing opportunities.

The lake originally supported a native Great Lakes-strain muskellunge population until it declined in the 1950s. Stocking of Northern-strain muskellunge in Thornapple Lake began in 1964, and the lake was used as a muskellunge broodstock source from the early 1970s to 2010.

Each spring, Department of Natural Resources biologists collected eggs from muskellunge in Thornapple Lake and then reared the offspring of these fish at Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery in Mattawan.

In the fall, these fish were stocked throughout the state to support muskellunge fisheries. Recently the DNR implemented a program to stock only native Great Lakes-strain muskellunge in waters connected to the Great Lakes to reduce the potential for negative genetic effects on naturally reproducing muskellunge populations.

Currently, the Great Lakes muskellunge eggs for Michigan’s state fish hatcheries are collected from fish located in Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River. There are two disadvantages with the current system. The muskellunge are hard to locate in such a large system, and the late spawning period for fish in these Great Lakes connecting waters reduces the rearing period in the hatchery and, thus, the size of the muskellunge at the time of stocking into other waters. (Please note, 2017’s egg collection efforts have been cancelled due to a disease outbreak.) Read more

The Northern Lake Huron Management Unit includes most of the St. Marys River, a large international boundary water connecting Lake Superior to Lake Huron.

River management is coordinated by the St. Marys River Fisheries Task Group, which has representatives from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority and member tribes, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Lake Superior State University, Sault College, and Algoma University also participate as resource members.

Member agencies will be conducting a fish community survey of the entire St. Marys River during the month of August 2017. During that time fisheries biologists and technicians will be setting survey nets at predetermined sites in the river and capturing a variety of species to collect information on abundance, growth, mortality and size structure of fish populations and compare this latest information against the data collected in previous surveys. Read more

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources today announced it will not collect eggs from Great Lakes muskellunge in the Detroit River this month due to recent fish kills in Lake St. Clair that are attributed to a confirmed, widespread infection of viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSv). Read more

WASHINGTON, DC, – In a letter sent today to the Trump administration and Congress, a coalition of recreational boating and sportfishing interests urged action to fix America’s broken ethanol policy. The American Sportfishing Association (ASA), Boat Owners Association of The United States (BoatUS), National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) and Marine Retailers Association of the Americas (MRAA) on behalf of the nation’s 12 million recreational boat owners, 46 million recreational anglers and 35,000 recreational boating businesses respectively expressed concern with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).The RFS is the 2005 law that mandates the blending of biofuels such as corn-ethanol into our gasoline. When written, it was assumed that America’s use of gasoline would continue to rise. However, US gasoline usage has actually dropped steadily since 2005 and now the law forces more corn ethanol into fewer gallons of gasoline.

Boaters and anglers need access to safe and approved fuels. The letter said the RFS “…has discriminatorily affected the boating public – groups of boaters and anglers who purchase fuel for their boats… We write to ask that you to set a new course for the RFS – one that takes into account the objective concerns expressed by the boating community.”

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Each year the Michigan Department of Natural Resources receives numerous reports of unique species showing up in waterbodies throughout the state. While oftentimes these reports consist of a single animal being found, occasionally they point to large populations of non-native species where you wouldn’t expect to find them.Screenshot ofHow these species got into the water can be a mystery, but there is one method that’s often the culprit and it’s 100-percent preventable.

Pet and aquarium owners often face the dilemma where they no longer want to keep their various organisms, so they sometimes opt to release them into the wild. Read more

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources Monday announced that test results on fish collected in the ongoing fish kill event on Lake St. Clair were confirmed to be positive for viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSv). Fish were collected during late March and early April and included gizzard shad, bluegill, and black and white crappie.”A total of 165 fish have been tested thus far using pooled samples of five fish, and of the 33 pooled samples, 31 of them have been positive for VHSv,” said Gary Whelan, research program manager for the DNR’s Fisheries Division. “Ten gizzard shad were tested individually and all were positive for the virus. These results confirm what we initially suspected, given the external signs on the fish, species involved, and timing of the fish kill, all strongly implicating VHSv as the cause of this fish kill.” Read more

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources recently jaw tagged 3,000 walleyes in a number of Saginaw Bay tributary rivers. Anglers who catch any tagged fish are asked to collect information from the fish and report it to the DNR.

The DNR has tagged more than 100,000 walleyes in the Saginaw Bay area since 1981. Jaw tagging is part of a long-term research project to monitor survival and harvest rates and to learn about walleye movement. The program depends on anglers to report when they catch a tagged walleye, catch location, as well as the fish’s length, weight (if known) and tag identification number. Once reported, anglers will receive a letter back detailing the history of their fish.

This year about 20 percent of the tags include a $100 reward for reporting the tag. Read more