Ohio's Lake Erie walleye bonanza won't mean a larger daily purse for anglers

Even with unprecedented walleye numbers, Ohio’s Lake Erie anglers cannot expect to encounter an increase to the daily bag limit.

Nor is the on-going slide in Lake Erie Central Basin yellow perch numbers going to alter the state’s hard-line stance on allowing sport anglers to take up to 30 fish per day.

The Ohio Division of Wildlife’s lead Lake Erie fisheries biologist says a joint U.S.-Canada Lake Erie Task Force group projects that the predicted population of walleye for the 2020 fishing season is 116 million walleye, with an early projection of 151 million walleye for 2021.

“These astronomical estimates are the result of 2015, 2018 and 2019 providing three of the largest hatches that we’ve ever sampled, all drawing comparisons to the 2003 hatch,” says Travis Hartman, Wildlife Division fisheries biologist in charge of managing Ohio’s stock of Lake Erie fishes.

“In addition to the three big hatches, we also had good hatches in 2014 and 2017. And the 2016 looks small compared to the other hatches, but still provided an estimated 6.4 million fish when it entered the fishery in 2018,” Travis said also.

Travis said as well that last year the state’s Lake Erie sport anglers set a new record with a walleye catch rate of 0.83 fish per hour.

“We are approaching success rates that are nearly double the 1980s harvest rates that were around 0.5 fish per hour,” Hartman said. “This is truly the best walleye fishing that we have ever seen in the 40-year history of our Ohio Lake Erie creel survey.”

The bottom line, however, says Hartman, is that Lake Erie anglers will not see any increase to the daily bag limit on Lake Erie-caught walleye.

“We are at a point where a very small increase in effort, which I expect to occur based on the regional recognition of fantastic walleye fishing, could lead to our angling fishery getting very close to our Ohio total allowable catch,” Hartman says.

Hartman says Ohio’s Lake Erie walleye anglers actually went over the state’s total allowable catch for a few years even with the same six fish daily limit.

“Fast forward to our current fishery and we would only need five million to six million hours of effort to approach our five million total allowable catch,” Hartman says.

Besides, says Hartman, Ohio’s six walleye per day creel limit is accepted by most Lake Erie anglers.

“It provides a legitimate opportunity to achieve your daily limit on most trips, and it extends good year classes to provide world class fishing well into the future by keeping us within total allowable catch compliance,” Hartman said.

Hartman said also that while fisheries biologists are in the final stages of internally completing Ohio’s Lake Erie yellow perch allocations, “we are likely still in a position to ensure a 30-fish daily limit for anglers in all three management units while still allocating 35 percent to our commercial trap net industry.”

Importantly, too, says Hartman, the Wildlife Division is closely watching the designated Central Basin management units “as the population trajectories continue to decline.”

“We are clearly in a time of consistently poor hatches in the Central Basin, and we need some help from spring weather conditions to increase production,” Hartman said.

At least the lake’s Western Basin has produced better yellow perch hatches recently and Hartman says that a good year class entered the fishery in 2018.

“The larger yellow perch story is that, regardless of which basin you are fishing and what the population trajectory is, yellow perch have become extremely difficult to catch even if you can find them,” Hartman says.

Attribute at least a portion of Lake Erie perch angling difficulty, says Hartman, to a changing diet of the species .A higher proportion of invertebrate diet items in yellow perch stomachs - mostly made up of midge larvae and spiny water fleas – is being seen by biologists, says Hartman.

“Reliance upon these recently abundant food sources has likely changed the perch’s feeding behavior, and in the case of the spiny water fleas, is causing the perch to move up into the water column at times,” Hartman says.

Between the perch having shorter feeding windows and often being spread throughout the water column, anglers “have had much lower success rates than we would expect,” Hartman says.

“The Western Basin should have fantastic perch fishing, but the results in the west have been only barely better than results farther east where there are fewer fish,” Hartman says.

- By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net

JFrischk4@gmail.com