Hi, everybody.
Again, the fishing on the Bay has stayed steady and productive
with limits still being the norm. With so many fish being taken
out of the system this summer, I E-mailed my DNR buddy to see
if he had any idea just how many walleyes are being taken by fishermen
this year. His E-mail reply to me is written below. My last trip
out (7-19-08) produced some bigger fish, with one being 31 inches
long. The surface temps have stayed on the cool side the whole
month of July and is keeping even some of these bigger fish in
relatively shallow waters. My hope is that the fishing will stay
this good through August as it did last year. Got pleanty of weekend
charter dates left for August if you want to get in on this fishery.
Heres some pictures for your viewing enjoyment. Stay safe, fish
smart and tight lines. Capt. Dan.
Dan:
Yes we have that data via our annual creel survey study. But we
won't have the results for 2008 until like March 2009. But I can
tell you that last year (2007) that there was an average of 1,792
walleyes harvested per day in the month of July. My hunch is that
that value will pale compared to this years harvest. As this is
just the July value. June is very high too but the rest of the
year is not as great. All tolled, last year's harvest was 286,607
walleyes from Saginaw Bay. By most estimates, this is about 10%
of the harvestable total number, so a crude way of estimating
the total number of walleyes (15" and larger) in the bay
in 2007 would be 286607/0.10 or 2,866,070. Remarkably we believe
that this is still shy of our recovery objectives. Put another
way, this is still somewhat less than what the bay historically
sustained on average. As you know, the vast majority of these
walleyes now are all naturally reproduced (not many hatchery fish
remaining in the population any more).
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