# Manistee Lake @ Little Man River



## riverbob (Jan 11, 2011)

MoJoRisin' said:


> Mark - is there anything in the works on a recovery program for the lost egg take for steelhead this past spring such as getting fish from another state or are we looking at just a missed steelhead plant coming up?


 good question, how about more lake run brown plants


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## M. Tonello (Sep 20, 2002)

MT2MI said:


> I was driving around with the family today and noticed 3 boats in the river almost up to the tubes casting for salmon. With the lake so backed up, its easy for boats to get up in there. I'm curious if anyone knows where the actual river ends and Manistee Lake begins relative to the closure? Mark T. any thoughts?


We communicated with the COs. With the water as high as it is, we're considering Manistee Lake to extend up to the Stronach Road tubes at this point. Caution- there isn't much room to fish from the road there, so I don't recommend people fish there. Somebody could get hit by a car. If it becomes a problem we'll have to reassess.


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## M. Tonello (Sep 20, 2002)

Fishndude said:


> Thanks, Mark, for all you do. Ignore all the naysayers, and mal-contents. On behalf of all the people who enjoy the Salmon, Steelhead, and Trout you help rear, we thank you.


Thanks, much appreciated!


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## M. Tonello (Sep 20, 2002)

MoJoRisin' said:


> Mark - is there anything in the works on a recovery program for the lost egg take for steelhead this past spring such as getting fish from another state or are we looking at just a missed steelhead plant coming up?


Yep, we'll be discussing this at the upcoming Lake Michigan Citizen Fishery Advisor's meeting. Unfortunately, no steelhead are available from other states. Instead, we're looking at the idea of taking some extra Chinook eggs and stocking more chinooks. In terms of predator-equivalents, we would be able to stock an extra 225k Chinooks.



riverbob said:


> good question, how about more lake run brown plants


Probably not brown trout, as our stocked browns have performed very poorly in recent years. We will be discussing the brown trout stocking program at the meeting, but stocking extra browns to make up for the lost steelhead has not been proposed at this point.


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## riverman (Jan 9, 2002)

[QUOTE="M. Tonello, post: 8579663, 



Probably not brown trout, as our stocked browns have performed very poorly in recent years. We will be discussing the brown trout stocking program at the meeting, but stocking extra browns to make up for the lost steelhead has not been proposed at this point.[/QUOTE]. That is refreshing words Marc.


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## AdamBradley (Mar 13, 2008)

Thanks for the insight mark. I know I’m certainly not a biologist, but just curious as always... sorry to somewhat hijack this thread!

With the steelhead that ran wild whereas they would have been stripped of eggs and distributed to other streams: Are you approaching it as though the LM was already at carrying capacity even just with those normal year natural reproducers, and the additional egg drop isn’t going to significantly increase natural repro in the LM and predator load into Lake Michigan compared to an egg take year? Has there been a year in history that there wasn’t a steelhead egg take on the LM? Nearly a quarter million more kings caught my attention - in addition to the recent king stocking additions and Wisconsin running rogue as usual.

Our king and steelhead size has been cool in my eyes the last years. It has certainly attracted attention from out of state guys too which is great economically. Not the southern guys that always come up for kings, but NY guys I know are now skipping trips to Washington to fish Lake Michigan for trophy steel potential. Washington guides themselves are even saying our king sizes are impressive and “on average seem larger than ours apart from our random 40-50 pounders every now and then”.

Again, don’t want to be an armchair biologist by any means, just looking to the real biologist for facts and figures on my thought process - so no offense to you or anyone!


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## M. Tonello (Sep 20, 2002)

Adam- good question. Basically yes. With 4000+ eggs per female, it doesn't take that many females to "seed" the entire river with fry. Remember that most steelhead have to live two years in the river before smolting out to Lake Michigan. Seelbach's research back in the 1980s showed that the smolt production of the Little M was limited by the available habitat for those one year old parr (say 6-8") that will smolt out the following spring. So even if you have a banner year class of fry, the eventual smolt production of that year class is still habitat-limited. 

We shocked the Little M at Johnson's Bridge in August, so we will have some data. Even without the egg take, this year's steelhead year class was within the range of what we've seen in the past, in years when we did take eggs.

All that make sense?


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## Sparky23 (Aug 15, 2007)

M. Tonello said:


> Yep, we'll be discussing this at the upcoming Lake Michigan Citizen Fishery Advisor's meeting. Unfortunately, no steelhead are available from other states. Instead, we're looking at the idea of taking some extra Chinook eggs and stocking more chinooks. In terms of predator-equivalents, we would be able to stock an extra 225k Chinooks.
> 
> 
> 
> Probably not brown trout, as our stocked browns have performed very poorly in recent years. We will be discussing the brown trout stocking program at the meeting, but stocking extra browns to make up for the lost steelhead has not been proposed at this point.


We keep hearing this about brown's but anyone that had a clue how to fish them cought them very good in the lake. And I have seen personally many many cought from sw rivers. Could it be they showed bad returns because they return from August through March? The brown fishing went from world class to not worth fishing in a few years. Why not get more sea forralen strain since they did so much better amd gave us a world class brown fishery that was then discontinued?


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## Fishndude (Feb 22, 2003)

I vote for more Seeforellen Browns, as well. They get HUGE, and provide good sport fishing for boat, and pier anglers for years. None of the other strains of Brown Trout planted in the Great Lakes has provided a better lake fishery for Browns, in my experience.


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## plugger (Aug 8, 2001)

Another vote for Seeforellen!


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## Slimits (Jun 30, 2014)

Not to mention the seaforellon taste amazing


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## MT2MI (Jun 4, 2016)

And another vote for lake run browns! I'm not a fisheries biologist by any means, but they seem successful in WI waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario has a world class fishery. Seems like a perfect opportunity to try it. Is there any opportunity for interested anglers to provide formal comments on the proposal?


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## -Axiom- (Jul 24, 2010)

Some would prefer a lot of huge Browns over King Salmon.


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## nighttime (Nov 25, 2007)

I’m aware we have only so much room in raring pens but how much room is there to do egg take in spring 2021? As a thought about up coming year and steelhead stocking, Are we able to take more eggs and do a heavier fall plant in 2021?


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## riverbob (Jan 11, 2011)

M. Tonello said:


> Yep, we'll be discussing this at the upcoming Lake Michigan Citizen Fishery Advisor's meeting. Unfortunately, no steelhead are available from other states. Instead, we're looking at the idea of taking some extra Chinook eggs and stocking more chinooks. In terms of predator-equivalents, we would be able to stock an extra 225k Chinooks.
> 
> 
> 
> Probably not brown trout, as our stocked browns have performed very poorly in recent years. We will be discussing the brown trout stocking program at the meeting, but stocking extra browns to make up for the lost steelhead has not been proposed at this point.


 a famous man once said, "we go to the moon, not because it's easy, but because it's hard, the old DNR did it once (success at browns) , in my opinion we don't need a 1/4 million more king salmon at the dinner table (LM) people come to mich. to catch a big king salmon, if there were fewer kings out there, the ones that r there would b a lot bigger, beside that, once they hit the river they bring out the worst in some people, then we have trouble, then after the nuts leave, we have a river full of unwanted fish,,,,,,,,,,, what a waste


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## Ojh (Sep 4, 2019)

Anybody out on the Manistee lake today? I'm wondering how packed it is.


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## ausable_steelhead (Sep 30, 2002)

-Axiom- said:


> Some would prefer a lot of huge Browns over King Salmon.


Where do I sign up? My biggest lake run brown is larger than my biggest chinook lol


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## riverbob (Jan 11, 2011)

ausable_steelhead said:


> Where do I sign up? My biggest lake run brown is larger than my biggest chinook lol


 do tell more,, my biggest was a good 15#s, i did see one, years ago, that was caught in sockeye corner, (east side below 6th.st. dam) that was a 20+# hen


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## Northriver Rabbit (Jun 20, 2016)

I would also vote for more browns.
Love spring Brown fishing on the big lake. 
I have always said I’ve never been checked or seen a creek survey person until after Memorial Day on the big pond when it’s usually over. Plenty of people fished for them. 
there’s still some around just very spread out.


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## bborow2501 (Nov 12, 2007)

MT2MI said:


> And another vote for lake run browns! I'm not a fisheries biologist by any means, but they seem successful in WI waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario has a world class fishery. Seems like a perfect opportunity to try it. Is there any opportunity for interested anglers to provide formal comments on the proposal?


Finding a good strain of lake run browns would be amazing, and I'd love to know how we can get our voices heard about this, as stocking priorities seemed to have drifted elsewhere. What strain does Wisconsin stock that does so well, and are there any differences in habitat that possibly account for their better success? Just a question purely out of not knowing the process, but how difficult would it be to establish a new strain from European run browns that would probably be more genetically fit? I read Seeforellen were having a problem with genetic fitness, and Wild Rose/ Sturgeon weren't as much of migratory strains.

Sent from my LG-G710 using Michigan Sportsman mobile app


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