The Insane Cult of the Lake Erie Walleye

However this time there’s no marlin or cash at stake. I’m preventing a walleye. Or not less than, I believe I’m preventing a walleye. There’s 150 toes of monofilament, a banana weight, and an enormous planer board between me and the fish. It feels barely heavier, I suppose; the rod is bent a bit deeper than it was whereas simply dragging the planer on the troll. If I do something however reel steadily whereas standing like a statue, I’ll be hollered at once more.

I get that walleye tastes good, however until the only goal is meat on the desk, I’ve by no means understood why folks do that. Not when you might have smallmouths, muskies, pike, lake trout, and steelhead swimming in the identical waters. All I can assume when the 15-incher lastly hits the web is, Why do folks put a lot effort right into a fish that fights like a moist paper towel?

However they do. Hundreds of them. The fishing tradition round Lake Erie is so closely pushed by walleyes that the zealotry helped launch some of the superior migration research in fisheries science historical past. Extra is understood concerning the actions of those fish in a single physique of water than about every other sport fish within the nation. It’s the fisheries model of Massive Brother, however the fixed eye within the sky—or, on this case, ear to the water—is tuning in to assist the walleye addicts get their repair extra successfully for many years to return.

Raised in Walter World

Robertson and I’ve been mates for years. Our relationship is rooted in fixed ballbusting, so even when he’s snappy and curmudgeonly, I take pleasure in it and fireplace proper again. On the way in which to the bar after that lengthy, rocky day on the lake, I cease to admire the 20-foot walleye mounted on a trailer parked smack in the course of downtown Port Clinton—the Walleye Capital of Ohio. It’s able to be hitched up at a second’s discover for any parade, competition, or carnival that requires a large dose of walleye pleasure.

“I’m fairly certain this was constructed to point out folks precisely how massive a walleye would must be to interact the drag,” I say with a smirk. Robertson hits me with a couple of expletives and off we go.

“There are such a lot of individuals who walleye fish alongside the lake that it’s like a dialog piece,” he tells me. “Even should you’re probably not that into it, you may nonetheless speak about walleyes. And since there are such a lot of walleyes in Lake Erie, I believe much more folks fish for them right here as a result of it’s simpler to have these lights-out days. With all due respect, I’d say that lots of people who fish Erie would have a tough time catching a restrict in Minnesota or North Dakota as a result of there simply aren’t as many fish.”

Some 2.5 million kilos of walleye have been harvested from the lake in 2021, in line with the Ohio Division of Pure Sources and its Division of Wildlife. Ten years earlier, that quantity was simply 417,000 kilos. Step again to when Robertson was born, and the quantity was dismal. Within the Nineteen Seventies, Erie was tormented by industrial air pollution. By the mid Eighties, cleansing efforts have been starting to point out optimistic results, and the walleye inhabitants roared again.

“Once I was a child, I don’t assume the bass inhabitants had actually come again but. Or possibly we simply didn’t know methods to fish for them, however all you heard about was walleyes,” Robertson says. “So while you’re attempting to grasp what makes the locals so walleye obsessed, I believe it’s only a product of rising up with unimaginable walleye fishing in your yard. It’s no completely different from a child rising up on Lake Okeechobee being obsessive about largemouth bass.”

Now that it has reached that standing and change into such a boon for the financial system, it’s the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s job to keep up Erie’s high rating. However the lake covers 9,940 sq. miles. Inside these depths, walleyes observe migration patterns which might be, in some methods, extra advanced than these of well-known vacationers which have a whole ocean at their disposal, like Atlantic salmon and striped bass. So how do you successfully monitor the well being of a species that has 241 miles to roam east to west, and 60 miles north to south? You crank up the quantity.

Sounding Board

Lake Erie boasts the most important naturally reproducing inhabitants of walleyes within the U.S. In contrast to in numerous our bodies of water throughout the nation that depend on hatchery fish to bolster numbers, no walleye stocking has ever occurred in Erie. Due to this, it’s much more essential that state companies and the Canadian authorities work collectively to maintain tabs on the largest moneymaker within the lake. Everybody does their half, however the cost is squarely being led by Ohio.

Matt Faust, a fisheries biologist with the Ohio DOW, has been entrenched within the state’s walleye acoustic telemetry research for the final eight and a half years. At this second, there’s a listening gadget positioned each 7 to fifteen kilometers alongside the lake backside, plus some in Lake Huron for good measure. (Erie walleyes can transfer between the lakes through the Detroit River.) They obtain pings from walleyes implanted with micro acoustic tags 24 hours a day, twelve months a yr. In different phrases, a tagged walleye can’t swim wherever in Lake Erie with out being tracked.

Getting so far, nevertheless, was an extended street with humble beginnings.

“We’ve been inquisitive about realizing extra about how the walleyes transfer across the lake since this fishery first began being closely managed,” Faust tells me. “So within the late ’80s, that began with jaw tags. A number of state companies have been concerned, and a whole bunch to 1000’s of fish can be netted and tagged each spring. It was one of the simplest ways on the time to take a look at not solely the place they’re shifting, but additionally to estimate their survival and exploitation charges from start to maturity.”

“I caught one round Halloween fairly near Port Clinton, so I known as the DOW and skim the quantity,” Robertson says. “My buddy over there requested me to learn it once more. It was like he thought I used to be screwing with him. The fish had solely been tagged in September, nevertheless it had been tagged in Thunder Bay on Lake Huron.”

In that brief time, that walleye had coated roughly 260 miles, navigating the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and the Detroit River, to wind up again within the Western Basin of Erie and in Robertson’s web.

’Eyes on the Knowledge

The percentages of Robertson catching that fish are virtually as little as successful the lottery. However that’s the great thing about the acoustic telemetry research: The DOW can get higher monitoring knowledge quicker, whereas bodily tagging far fewer fish than it did throughout the jaw-tag marketing campaign.

Ohio’s acoustic telemetry research received off the bottom in 2010 as a direct results of the Nice Lakes Restoration Initiative, a program began throughout the Obama administration that offered an enormous inflow of funding to all of the Nice Lakes. Fortunately for the DOW, each the Trump and Biden administrations upheld the initiative, permitting the telemetry research to develop and thrive. However the trick to creating it a hit, in line with Faust, was determining which fish to tag.

“Simply whereas I used to be on the lake up to now this yr, I tagged round 70 fish,” he says. “However final yr I tagged virtually 200. Because the program began, I might estimate roughly 2,000 fish have been implanted with acoustic tags, and we tag roughly 50 to 100 fish a yr on common. Whereas we’re tagging fewer fish, we’re doing every part we will to ensure these fish are consultant of the bigger lake populations. So after we began tagging, we have been going out throughout April or early Might. In the future possibly you’re getting smaller, youthful males, so we fish a unique place subsequent time to get the larger females. It’s not like we’re simply tagging each fish that we catch, attempting to ensure a sure variety of tags are deployed.”

Because the program goals for quite a lot of different-size fish from completely different areas of the lake, a ping from a tagged fish or two is sufficient to let the DOW extrapolate that they’re possible shifting with an even bigger physique of like-size walleyes. Within the early days of this system, there have been solely a handful of receivers, positioned at strategic pinch factors the DOW thought a big proportion of walleyes would go by way of over the yr. Now, with so many extra receivers underwater—together with proper in the course of the lake—there’s little or no lag in knowledge.

“In the course of the jaw-tagging days, we have been used to, say, 100,000 traces of cumulative knowledge in a yr being loads,” Faust says. “Now, contemplating the acoustic tags final a few yr and a half inside a fish, you may doubtlessly get one million detections from a single tag.”

The research, in essence, has given Lake Erie’s walleyes no place to cover. The query is, Now that the DOW can discover them and monitor them, the place precisely are they going? And extra importantly, how is that this benefiting the legions of walleye-hungry anglers across the lake?

Twists and Turns

In 2014, there have been 682 licensed fishing guides on Lake Erie, per the Ohio DOW. In 2022, there are 900. The spike can, in no small manner, be attributed to the 2015 walleye spawn, which was some of the profitable within the historical past of the lake. In line with Faust, whereas no one can say for sure what generates very best spawning situations, good ice protection in winter coupled with elevated water ranges in spring appears to assist. It’s estimated that the 2015 class alone added thousands and thousands of recent walleyes to the system. The spawns the next years have been virtually pretty much as good. The extra fish there are within the lake, the extra possible it’s you’ll catch one, and, due to this fact, the extra folks resolve they’re ok to make a buck placing paying sportsmen on them. The draw back to those epic spawns, nevertheless, is that now there are many small fish that want time to mature—and that anglers like Robertson must sift by way of to seek out the giants.

“Ninety % of the constitution boats are within the Western Basin of the lake, however the telemetry research has confirmed that a lot of the yr, solely about 10 % of the fish are there,” Robertson says. “That research has confirmed what dialed-in walleye guys have recognized for years. After the spawn, the larger fish are all the time shifting east all the way in which to New York waters, chasing cooler temperatures and baitfish. Nevertheless it’s additionally proven that a number of the smaller fish from all these profitable years aren’t making that run. So should you’re a constitution captain within the Western Basin, come summertime, you’re going to be hanging your lures in entrance of primarily small fish.”

When Robertson was in his 20s, he’d assume nothing of hauling his boat for hours to Erie, Pennsylvania, or farther to remain on trophy fish. Nowadays, with assist from the telemetry research knowledge, he’s capable of get a greater understanding of the place to focus on massive fish nearer to residence, as a result of even when a lot of the fish are doing one factor, there’ll all the time be outliers that don’t observe the group.

By the ebook, Erie walleyes spawn within the rivers of the Western Basin, dangle round offshore from the river mouths for a time, after which transfer to the Central Basin, to the Japanese Basin, or north to Lake Huron in summer season earlier than migrating again within the fall. What has been most shocking to Faust is the nonlinear nature of these actions.

“In late October, for instance, typical angler knowledge says a lot of the fish are going to be off Cleveland and frequently pushing west,” Faust explains. “However we now know that’s not the case. They might be in Cleveland one week after which the subsequent week, for no matter purpose—like maybe they’re following forage fish—they’re again east off Erie, Pennsylvania, the place Ohio anglers aren’t going to catch them. The info actually factors out these exceptions. Like 75 % of the fish are doing what you anticipate them to do, however 25 % are doing one thing utterly completely different.”

Despite the fact that the telemetry research knowledge is public data, Faust admits one shortcoming is the lag in packaging it for fishermen. It’s tough to current findings in actual time, which forces the DOW to launch knowledge compiled after a yr of monitoring.

Robertson agrees that proper now, not sufficient anglers are utilizing the telemetry research to their benefit. However even when your common Erie walleye angler is paying the migration knowledge no thoughts, they need to be grateful that the DOW cares a lot about supporting what they love. As Faust put it, “All the things we’re doing is to attempt to higher enhance or inform fisheries administration on Lake Erie. It’s not like excessive science. There’s no ivory tower facet of this.”

I nonetheless keep that until you’ve received a jar of tartar sauce simply burning a gap within the fridge, there are extra thrilling fish to catch than walleyes. However that doesn’t imply I don’t have a deep appreciation for the work Faust and his staff are doing. Frankly, I’m jealous, as a result of I’d give something to have this degree of monitoring knowledge on species like striped bass and smallmouths nearer to residence. Extra impressively, the longer the research continues, the extra conclusions will be drawn about why fish transfer, not simply the place they go.

“I believe patterns are already rising that begin to allow us to reply questions we couldn’t earlier than,” Robertson says. “As this research expands, we’d have the ability to decide if our fish are shifting from one location in a given yr as a result of there’s not sufficient meals, or are they simply scouting out a brand new space that they might by no means return to once more? As soon as we will use this research to reply extra of the why, it’s simply going to be much more useful. The extra you may get your head across the massive image on any physique of water, the extra fish you’re going to catch.”