An enraged angler called last week because a local tournament bass fisherman on southern Lake Michigan caught a 10-pound walleye, then brought it back for a harbor worker. At the same time, the tournament angler preaches catch-photo-release for bass.
I understood the caller’s rage. I have yet to catch a walleye from southern Lake Michigan, and the walleye fishery there is in its infancy. I would love to see walleye on southern Lake Michigan protected. Or become a trophy fishery, maybe allowing anglers to keep a walleye of 30 inches or longer. But I also understand those who, if they catch the rare 3-pound walleye on southern Lake Michigan, want to take it home and eat it. Those are prime eaters.
It’s a dilemma because the fishing community isn’t homogenous, despite what the non-fishing community thinks.
Years ago, Mike Conlin used the term ‘‘social regulations,’’ which has stuck with me. Conlin, Illinois’ longest-serving fisheries chief, meant regulations put on certain species not for biological reasons but to satisfy requests by anglers.
It might have been when I asked him why the Illinois Department of Natural Resources had a put a broad and confusing no-take regulation for months on smallmouth bass in river systems, despite smallmouth being one of Illinois’ strongest and growing fish populations. The regulation was requested by an organized group of smallmouth anglers for the period broadly around the spring spawn.
Listen, I’m catch-and-release on smallmouth. When I was younger, however, I ate them when holed up in a cabin and living off the land. Smallmouth are good table fare because they are muscled swimmers that come, generally, from cleaner water.
The same dichotomy exists for northern pike on the Chicago lakefront, except I don’t think pike on Lake Michigan are a fishery in its infancy. They’re here in number and size, but some anglers argue for protecting pike on Lake Michigan or at least for making it a trophy fishery. I don’t have a personal opinion, but I suspect the biological data doesn’t support the need for protection. It would be a social regulation.
Then there is the snagging of salmon, a decades-long tradition in Illinois. Last month, a very organized push to end salmon snagging in Illinois was unveiled at a rare night meeting of the Chicago Fishing Advisory Committee.
I favor the end of salmon snagging not for biological reasons but because criminals who snag outside of legal areas give the fishing community a bad name. And snaggers definitely alter the relationship between boaters and shore anglers when snagging hooks damage boats.
But the biological reality is that snagging is focused on salmon about to die at the end of their spawning (though there is collateral damage with other species, too). When another angler texted in support of snagging, I told him he had better get organized because the push is moving forward to end snagging.
The fishing community is almost as varied as our native and introduced species.
Wild things
Squirrels do their fall nut thing, giving credence to a ubiquitous Snoop Dogg advertisement. . . . The migration of sandhill cranes seems behind, but Tom Jurich emailed Monday from Munster, Indiana, that 14 were southbound that morning. ‘‘No doubt en route to Jasper-Pulaski [Fish and Wildlife Area],’’ he wrote.
Stray cast
After last week, I dived into Jeanine Cummins’ ‘‘American Dirt’’ like I was learning to free-dive a shipwreck on Lake Michigan.