Once there was a fishing hole in the upper midwest that fell on very hard times. Too many fishermen had taken too many fish out over the years, and then a newly installed culvert let some aggressive fish from other ponds in and they started taking over. Before long practically nothing was swimming in the old fishing hole but ugly foreign fish, some big and some little, and hardly anybody wanted to fish there.
The conservation officers are caught in the middle. Can the old fishing hole ever get back to what it was? And if it can, should it? And if it should, how to do it? And is there any way that won’t make a whole lot of folks unhappy?
Back in the 1950s the states around the Great Lakes had established, with the blessing of the federal government, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission to try to find some answers. The commission’s researchers soon found a weapon against the sea lamprey, a chemical that could kill their young in spawning streams without poisoning everything else in the water. Annual “lampricide” efforts began, and by the mid-1960s lamprey were on the decline.
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While that may be “an awfully expensive way to run an ecosystem,” as Illinois state aquatic biologist Ellen Marsdon has put it, sport fishermen argue that our tax dollars are being well spent, given all the economic activity inspired by the large “trophy” salmon. The states also get some of the money back directly: while the Illinois Department of Conservation spent $330,000 on salmon stocking in the fiscal year that ended June 30, it realized almost $200,000 in the Chicago area alone by selling special $2 “salmon stamps” on daily fishing licenses.
Federal researchers have documented that toxic pollution kills some newly hatched trout fry. “But it’s not clear that it’s enough of a problem to be the problem,” Marsdon says.
Restoring naturally reproducing lake trout is a high priority for those who believe the lake’s ecosystem should be moving toward restoration. Terry Yonkers says, “We definitely would like nothing better than to see a sustaining population of lake trout. There are signs of movement that way, and it’s critical.” Only if the lake trout are on the way back, he adds, can we credibly talk about phasing out the exotic salmon stocking.
