Wildlife officials propose drop in yellow perch limit

[Spiel]

Wildlife officials propose drop in yellow perch limit

 

Steve Pollick / Sunday, January 27, 2008

toledoblade.com

 

 

A reduction of the sportfishing creel limit for yellow perch in western Lake Erie from 30 to 25 a day and closure of the western basin to commercial trapnetting of yellow perch is under consideration by the Ohio Division of Wildlife.

 

The proposals are necessary now, fisheries managers contend, because of an anticipated, further reduction in Ohio's perch catch-quota for 2008 and because anglers in the basin exceeded their share of the quota by more than 20 percent in 2007. Ohio's daily sport creel limit of 30 yellow perch would remain in effect in the central basin of the lake, or roughly east of Huron.

 

The reduction and closure could be in force for just one fishing season, the state said, but consideration of the plan now is necessary because of the time-lag in rules-making procedures.

 

The Lake Erie Committee of the Ann Arbor-based Great Lakes Fishery Commission is set to consider lowering the lakewide yellow perch quotas on March 18. The committee consists of fisheries representatives of Ohio, Ontario, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York.

 

If enacted the new restrictions would take effect for the commercial trapnetting season opener on May 1. The creel reduction for sport catching would take effect July 1, which is well ahead of the major perch fishing activity in the western basin, which usually cranks up in August and continues until late fall.

 

The proposals come on the heels of a contentious but newly enacted Amended Senate Bill 77, which took effect Oct. 10 and was aimed at ironing out some issues with commercial catch-reporting and monitoring after a perch net-industry racketeering scandal.

 

A task force, formed under the law to recommend ways to implement it, completed its work in late fall but the Strickland administration has not signed off on it.

 

"It couldn't have come at a worse time," said Jim Marshall, assistant chief of the wildlife division, on the prospect of a reduced perch lakewide quota and a need for more restrictions.

 

Marshall said he expects a quota reduction for the western basin of about 20 percent on March 18 from the GLFC. That means the proposals must be presented to the rules-making Ohio Wildlife Council on Feb. 6. The Council will have to decide the issue at its April 2 meeting, after district and statewide open houses and a hearing, to complete the rules process in time for a July 1 effective date.

 

"If it looks like it's going to be better news in March, we could change," Marshal said. But he advised, "we are sensitive about the management of this basin." That, he added, "is where the vast majority of sport fishing pressure occurs."

 

It appears that Ohio anglers overfished the perch quota for the western basin in 2007 by about 20 percent, likely because of a long stretch of favorable fall weather allowed them to keep fishing. "It's very important that we comply [with quotas], because we have the same expectations of the other states and Ontario," Marshall stated.

 

"Probably the silver lining to all this is the 2007 year-class [of yellow perch] looked pretty decent, so we are hoping that this should be short-term - a one-year deal."

 

Roger Knight, Lake Erie program manager for the wildlife division, echoed the concerns. "The best science says that the stocks are declining, quotas will be lower, and we have to accommodate it."

 

He said that the last of the data has not been compiled, but it is likely that the 2007 catch-quota for basin, 833,000 pounds, was exceeded by 20 percent, with the excess coming from the sport angling sector.

 

"We're going to take one million pounds," Knight stated. Commercial trapnetters were "just under" their allotted share of 216,000 pounds and sport fishing alone took some 800,000 pounds of perch. "So the overage was the sport fishing. If we had not gone to 30 [creel limit] in '07, from 40, we would have been way over."

 

Knight acknowledged that sport fishing pressure "is so weather-driven. The fishing took off in the fall and we were over."

 

The perch fishery still is riding on the back of the massive 2003 year-class, with some help from the solid 2001 year-class and a few fish from other good years, 1999 and 1996. A minor contribution is coming now from a fair 2005 year-class, but a decent 2007 class will not be entering the sport fishery at a minimum until 2009 and generally not until 2010.

 

Knight said that managers are unsure about the why of the perch declines. "We don't know." He said, however, that perch reproduction and survival tends to be better during periods of higher lake levels, in contrast to the current low-level regime. Invasive species also may have an impact, including forage competition principally from the invasive white bass. Walleye compete with perch to a lesser degree.

 

Even pollutants and farm and urban runoff in the plume from the Maumee River may have an effect on reproduction. So may global climate change, which affects lake temperature and winter ice cover among other things, the biologist said. "Also, despite what we do as humans, it could be a random cycle."

 

None of which may be much comfort to fishermen of all stripes. With more management maneuvering room afforded by Senate Bill 77, state fisheries administrators are trying to make some changes that may be unpalatable to netters - who state lawmakers in shaping the bill indicated - that they want to keep in business in any event.

 

A buyout of netters, for example, was summarily nixed.

 

"We're trying to move the [commercial] fishing to where the stocks [and quotas] are healthiest," Knight said of the plan to temporarily close the western basin to perch trapnets. That would divert pressure to the larger central basin, where the quota had some stock available in 2007.

 

Lake Erie basically has four distinct yellow perch stocks - west, west-central, east-central, and east. The latter lies beyond Ohio's border, so is not at issue. The two central stocks split around Fairport Harbor, but only the west stock appears in direct jeopardy from fishing pressure.

 

The wildlife division in the late 1980s established a policy granting priority to sport fishing over the remaining commercial fishery, which now includes only 18 trapnet licenses owned by 12 individuals, plus some seine licenses. Deadly gillnets were banned in the early 1980s, as was commercial taking of walleye in Ohio waters, unlike Ontario.

 

But the policy was superseded in practice by a provision in a law that emerged from a 1974 fisheries task force that agreed to use a "rolling five-year-average" on allotting catches to commercial and sport interests.

 

The quota system for allocating catch actually was not instituted until 1996. Until then, such rules as commercial size minimums on perch [now 8 1/2 inches] controlled the fisheries such that netters would not have been exceeding quotas.

 

"When the yellow perch stocks bottomed out in the early 90s, there was a total 'buy-in' to strict adherence to quotas," Knight said.

 

When the quotas initially were set up for 1996, 70 percent of the perch catch was allocated to sport anglers and 30 percent to netters, reflecting the two fisheries' performances in the prior five years.

 

For the next 10 years, however, the commercial net-share grew to 40 percent and the sport share fell to 60 percent based on the legal requirement to use the rolling five-year average. Netters are not nearly as weather-dependent as sport anglers for their fishing, plus "they get paid for all the pounds they catch," Knight said.

 

In short, the rolling five-year average created an incentive for netters to catch all of the quota every year "almost at all costs." Catching less than quota would mean a lower allotment in the next year as the rolling average catches up with a subquota year.

 

Senate Bill 77, however, did away with the rolling five-year-average as the basis for commercial allocations so now, Knight said, "we have more flexibility to address the problem." Which in turn has enabled the proposed net-closure for the western basin.

 

Some initial reactions to the division's proposals have been less than enthusiastic. "I don't believe it. Why would they do it?" asked Rick Ferguson, who runs Al Szuch Live Bait on Corduroy Road in Jerusalem Township. His shop and Butch and Denny's Bait down the road are two of the major perch-cleaning businesses in the area.

 

"Thirty [perch a day] was a great idea," said Ferguson. "Our numbers now are no different fishwise," he added, referring to the state contention about over-quota perch catches by sport anglers in 2007.

 

"The way fuel prices are going, who is going to go out for 25 fish?" Ferguson asked. As it is, he added, anglers are more careful about what they keep in regard to size because of the 30-limit, and often that has meant they do not even keep 30 as it is."

 

Frank Reynolds, a veteran commercial fisherman from Oregon, was among netters who attended a state information session on the proposals on Friday.

 

"Everybody is pretty well disgusted with the whole proposition," he said, accusing the state of "doing nothing to control the sport fishery." He complained that state law enforcement of sport angling limits and licensing is nothing today like it was 30 or 40 years ago, when he claims more on-lake enforcement and checks of sport boats occurred.

 

Later he added, "we're not happy at all with them or their management philosophy or policy." He said that netters could help, for example, with cutting down on numbers of such competitive invaders as white perch, but the wildlife division will not cooperate by setting cooperative rules that netters can live with.

 

Reynolds, who already is leading a federal lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 77, vowed that additional suits are in the works. He noted that Ontario commercial netters are equally upset with the GLFC's quotas on Lake Erie and are pursuing lawsuits on the Ontario side of the lake as well.