Lake Erie’s walleye population is very strong.

[Red Childress]

An article from Target Walleye I was reading the other day discusses the absolute amazing Lake Erie walleye “situation”:
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Should folks be releasing all those HUGE, egg-filled walleyes on Lake Erie?
As an outsider looking in, it has always perplexed me seeing folks stuff their livewell with as many of THE BIGGEST Lake Erie walleyes as they legally can each trip. Like what in the world?!

It goes against everything I’ve ever seen/heard/learned about ‘selective harvest’ these last few decades here in central MN.

> In-Fisherman proposed the concept of selective harvest in the late-80s. It encourages keeping more numerous smaller fish for the table while releasing less abundant larger fish to sustain good fishing.

Matt Foley agrees:

Lol!

BUT...apparently Lake Erie is a whole different fishin’ world.

I recently came across a FB post from guide Lance Valentine who said he tracked down “a REAL look at keeping big pre-spawn females from the Detroit River and Lake Erie from someone who actually knows....”

That someone is Travis Hartman, who has been a fishery biologist with the OH DNR for close to 20 yrs and is currently the Lake Erie Fisheries Program Administrator for the OH Division of Wildlife, where he leads all of the state’s fisheries work on Lake Erie and also represents the State of OH on the Great Lake Fishery Commission’s Lake Erie Committee.

Lance posed the question:

Q: “With the number of walleye in Lake Erie how much does the harvest of 8-12lb females from the Detroit River and the Western Basin hurt the population?”

Here is Travis Hartman’s take:

> You can apply this question to all areas; I don’t believe it is specific to the Detroit River. We really don’t believe, and don’t have a single scientific indication, that the number of females spawning (or lack thereof due to recreational fishing harvest) has ANY impact on the resulting year class. The 2003 year class is the best example, as we were hitting fairly “low” population numbers and got our biggest hatch ever.

> We truly believe the real factor is survival of the fish that hatch, not how many eggs are laid or how many larvae hatch. We have enough hatching every year to have a mega-year class. We just need them to get transported to nursery areas by prevailing currents and need them to have food when their yolk sac is used up.

> History says that prevailing inshore current flow when the fish hatch gives us big year classes, and prevailing offshore current flow at hatching gives us bad year classes. Timing of plankton hatches is critical, but if the newly hatched fry aren’t where the plankton is it doesn’t matter.

> I will also default to my standard answer, which is “why does it matter if they are harvested in spring?” We harvest more females in the summer (about 6 to 1) than we ever do in the spring, especially young females. If we were getting bad year classes because of too few females we would have significantly changed harvest strategies years ago. It makes no difference if a female is harvested in July or the following March. She isn’t spawning either way.

> I really wish that closing spring harvest would make a difference, but there is NO scientific data to prove that it would. We would close the spring to fishing today if we had any proof it would improve year classes. We learn new things every year, but many of the things that I outlined above stay consistent.

> As a side note one small egg mat set on Locust Reef as part of an Ohio State research project had 14,000 fertilized, live eggs on it yesterday. The mat is simply a furnace filter in a frame. Can you imagine that? Think how many eggs are out there on the reef complex right now if one tiny egg mat caught 14,000 in about a week.

Wild! So basically it sounds like they have SO many walleyes in the system that it just doesn’t matter. What folks are keeping is a fraction, of a fraction, of a fraction of a percent of the walleye population.

I fish some 300-acre lakes around central MN that I swear only have like 17 walleys in ‘em and I thought that number was more like 4 or 5 until I spent hundreds of hours snooping around it with FFS hahaha!

Btw we released everything we caught when I was just over at Lake Erie (video here w/ captain Ross Robertson). I totally get that me keeping a few walleyes might not have any impact on that fishery, but I just love putting those big girls back.

I actually caught my new length PB walleye on that trip with this 31-incher! And I wanted to release her to give someone else the chance to catch her when she’s even more bigger-er.