1mainiac

Salmon are not Great Lakes fish never have been never will be they were planted to wipe out the Alewife. Now they need to be maintained to keep Alewife in check. That said the Lake Trout planted by the Federal Government is also not a natural fish so that is also a dumb idea since they cannot reproduce in our waters. I have not seen or caught a Lake MI lake trout in well over 40 years. The fact is nearly everything we fish for on the Great Lakes is imported Perch Walleye and Sturgeon are about all that is left of Lake MI fish other than Whitefish which are seldom caught trolling. We have almost no rivers that Salmon can spawn in on a regular basis which is why we have poor returns on natural fish. Now and then we have some river stretches that spawn well but they are the exception not the rule. Salmon were brought here in the late 1800's and failed badly due to nothing to eat and no place to breed. The Alewife explosion of the 50's and 60's wiped out our Perch and Walleye fishing and our Lake Trout as well because when the Trout ate them it made them sterile. So our trout died off and we had beaches covered in stinking Alewife. So once again we brought back Salmon and even though they still could not breed with much success they would however eat Alewives and get big and fat. And a sportfishing industry was born now we want to save the very fish the salmon were brought in to remove. The only way to keep this going is remove as many Salmon as we can less Salmon means more Alewives and bigger fish. The faster we yank them out the more they will have to plant. Who knows maybe someday we will have a better Walleye and Perch fishery back here like the other side of the state.