Lake Trout intelligence and its relatives

[Spiel]

Lake Trout intelligence and its relatives

 

 

Sept. 7, 2009 / www.great-lakes.org

 

 

Lake Trout are a favorite once native species for fisheries managers who opine for the restoration of the Great Lakes to their original once glorious status – whatever that may be.

 

Well known fisheries managers, supervisors and biologists like Ebner, Eshenroder, Gorenflo, Hansen, etc. make no bones about their desire to re-establish lake trout to its original status as the top predator of the Great Lakes. And get rid of the enormously successful Pacific Salmon program because of alleged biological conflicts.

 

Others, like Krueger, McLeish, Newman, Smith, Johnson, Goddard and other equally well known scientists who feel it would make their jobs of managing Great Lakes fisheries programs so much easier, less costly and reduce manpower secretly would like to also see lake trout re-established and crash the alewife population. It’s not clear whether these folks have really thought this scenario thru and understand the economic ramifications of their secret desires.

 

Most anglers - and that is in the high 90 percentile, like things the way they are – a nice five species mix of Chinook salmon, Coho salmon, Steelhead, Brown Trout and Lake Trout - all top predators they can target at different times of the day or year, in deep or shallow water, in the open lake or related streams. Versatility and diversity is what drives this multi-billion dollar economic machine, eight billion dollars by some accounts, and the lowly alewife plays a key role in the whole scheme of things. This is what sells fishing licenses and salmon stamps. This is what generates excise taxes on fishing tackle for the Sportfish Restoration Act. This is the hard currency that goes right back to state fishery agencies, for management programs and salaries.

 

One of the biggest problems with today’s fisheries managers – and the college programs they signed up for to secure their degree, is their lack of any education in economics, what really runs the money energy machine in the Great Lakes region. They never took Economics 101. It is a simple course that should be a requirement in their quest for their degree at Michigan State, or Wisconsin or the other state supported universities that carry prestigious Natural Resource curricula, but it isn’t.

 

Guys like Bill Taylor (Dr William…) just don’t get it; and Taylor is a commissioner of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and chair of Michigan State’s Natural Resource program.

 

Now these fish aren’t all that smart either. Lake Trout are known to eat their young, spawn in the open lake so passersby can feed on those tasty hi-protein morsels, and pass up a dinner of native herring for a non-native Alewife - a fatty diet of thiaminase and high protein. Admittedly, it is a diet that doesn’t do much for the Lake Trout reproductive process, but then remember they aren’t very smart. A favorite angling lure with a high success ratio is a shiny silver spoon emulating an alewife. As I said, not too smart, huh?

 

Interestingly, the thiamine thing doesn’t inhibit Pacific salmon from having a good time and reproducing in our once polluted lakes.

 

Steelhead will often hit a piece of pink yarn, simple fluff we once stole from our grandmas knitting basket. Chinooks and Cohos will hit most anything you tie on to the end of line, so long as you run it in front of their nose and make them angry. Open lake Brown trout think they’re being cagy by feeding at night in the shallows where boating anglers can’t get at them. Sure.

 

Angling is really more sophisticated than that, we spend a lot of money and time pursuing a great recreational sport and aren’t always 100% successful, but you get the idea, huh?

 

Resource managers are looking for a stable ecosystem, elusive for over 70 years, and we can’t fault them for that. It would make their lives and jobs much easier but that doesn’t come without consequences. By some accounts it’s like walking a tightrope. Just for starters they have millions of anglers and charter captains to contend with. Then they also have the economy created by this vast fishery. Some say they created this problem, thru ignorance, indifference and bad management. Others call it a stroke of luck. Maybe we aren’t so dumb after all.