# Alewife Population



## cowboy48098 (Aug 20, 2015)

Has anybody noticed any increase in the Alewife population or any dead ones washed up on the beaches on Lake Huron? Hopefully so we can get some Salmon stocked again lol.

The West side is having issues with a bigger than normal Alewife die-off. Here is a link:

As alewife deaths rise, Michigan aims to boost king salmon stocking - mlive.com


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## Luv2hunteup (Mar 22, 2003)

I live on Lake Huron within view of the bridge. Yes we are seeing a few wash in. 1 or 2 per 100 yards. Insignificant in my view.


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## cowboy48098 (Aug 20, 2015)

Luv2hunteup said:


> I live on Lake Huron within view of the bridge. Yes we are seeing a few wash in. 1 or 2 per 100 yards. Insignificant in my view.


Yes that's not sounding like much. Must be like that or worse all the way down Huron. Very interesting though.

Actually is that about normal for where you live or greater or worse?

Thanks.


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## ryan-b (Sep 18, 2009)

cowboy48098 said:


> Has anybody noticed any increase in the Alewive population or any dead ones washed up on the beaches on Lake Huron? Hopefully so we can get some Salmon stocked again lol.
> 
> The West side is having issues with a bigger than normal Alewive die-off. Here is a link:
> 
> As alewife deaths rise, Michigan aims to boost king salmon stocking - mlive.com


Bigger then normal? I remember when they would use loaders to clear them off the beaches


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## cowboy48098 (Aug 20, 2015)

ryan-b said:


> Bigger then normal? I remember when they would use loaders to clear them off the beaches


Yes, they still have bait fish on that side of the State.

I remember as well.


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## DirtySteve (Apr 9, 2006)

My son was fishing in mannistee over the weekend and asked me about it. He said there were thousands floating dead and he was seeing massive clouds of them swimming on his sonar. He was in the river channel near the pierhead. 

Sent from my SM-S901U using Michigan Sportsman mobile app


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## Cork Dust (Nov 26, 2012)

Just keep in mind that a handful of years ago the USFWS/USGS used to include Relative Standard Error (RSE) values for each transect. The acoustic sampling effort also included Mysis diluviana estimates along with RSE values for them and forage fish. RSE essentially is an indicator of "patchiness of distribution" for the organism being sampled, thus yielding some guidance as two where the forage was concentrated among the total sampling effort lake wide. They stopped about a decade ago because they were actually doing tows where no alewife were being captured for several years, since the trawl doesn't efficiently catch alewife until they reach three years of age-termed as recruitment to the sampling gear. I also recall Dave Warner mentioning several times in his presentations of the acoustic data that he spent hours looking at an empty screen during sampling...that is how close Lake Michigan came to a collapse of the alewife stocks. 

Adult alewife "tap" body fat stores (somatic energy) in late winter to produce gametes (eggs and sperm). Consequently, post spawn in a Great Lakes where dreissenid mussels were absent, the would drop-out to deeper waters beyond 150 FOW and regain body fat by feeding on Diporeia sp.. amphipods and Mysis diluviana freshwater shrimp, both of whom had reached seasonal maxima for free-fatty acid content from gorging on the inshore sping diatom blooms spiked by seasonal runoff. Now much of the lake lacks and prolonged or substantial diatom blooms. Alewife do better on the western shore of the basin since the shoreline is more rocky and contains higher numbers of Hemimysis anomala. ,bloody red mysis which is an invasive. I suspect alewife physiologically are pretty frail at this time of year and subject to post-spawn die-offs, particularly in upwelling events.


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## gatorman841 (Mar 4, 2010)

Happens in Milwaukee every year , big piles along shore.


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## Cork Dust (Nov 26, 2012)

DirtySteve said:


> My son was fishing in mannistee over the weekend and asked me about it. He said there were thousands floating dead and he was seeing massive clouds of them swimming on his sonar. He was in the river channel near the pierhead.
> 
> Sent from my SM-S901U using Michigan Sportsman mobile app





https://afspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1577/T06-194.1


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## Cork Dust (Nov 26, 2012)

gatorman841 said:


> Happens in Milwaukee every year , big piles along shore.


Yes, alewife are doing "better" on the west side of Lake Michigan increasing yearling salmon survival as well. Largely, this is why Wisconsin opted to break with the Lake Michigan Committee and plant 1.2 million chinook annually. Look for Michigan to move this year to increase their plant values, too.


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## Scout 2 (Dec 31, 2004)

Cork Dust said:


> Yes, alewife are doing "better" on the west side of Lake Michigan increasing yearling salmon survival as well. Largely, this is why Wisconsin opted to break with the Lake Michigan Committee and plant 1.2 million chinook annually. Look for Michigan to move this year to increase their plant values, too.


Are the hatcheries still producing enough for an increase in this years hatch. At one time they said they only took what eggs they needed for yearly plants with a few left over. I am guessing this few was in the thousands or more. This was back in the early years of planting them


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## Cork Dust (Nov 26, 2012)

Scout 2 said:


> Are the hatcheries still producing enough for an increase in this years hatch. At one time they said they only took what eggs they needed for yearly plants with a few left over. I am guessing this few was in the thousands or more. This was back in the early years of planting them


Chnook are planted at roughly six months of age, so while the decision will be made to increase plants, the physical number planted will likely not increse until next spring. Michigan had initially announced they were increasing plants for this year and then scaled-back their targets for chinook since there was not a lot of data on the actual size of the alewife stocks. Now that Lake Michigan is using a multi-species predator-prey model instead of the previous one that only tracked the relationship between alewife and chinook, over stocking will be less of a concern.


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## SJC (Sep 3, 2002)

I have caught fish with alewives in them every trout and salmon trip in the boat so far this year in ne Huron. We have been seeing ales for several years, but usually not many so early. I have heard reports of people finding them way farther south than I have heard of in a long time. Funny thing is the kings I've seen have had smelt and other things while trout from the same trip were stuffed with alewives. So much for kings only feeding on alewives...


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## Cork Dust (Nov 26, 2012)

SJC said:


> I have caught fish with alewives in them every trout and salmon trip in the boat so far this year in ne Huron. We have been seeing ales for several years, but usually not many so early. I have heard reports of people finding them way farther south than I have heard of in a long time. Funny thing is the kings I've seen have had smelt and other things while trout from the same trip were stuffed with alewives. So much for kings only feeding on alewives...


Interesting observation. Two areas with good smelt numbers near you: 1. Northern Lake Michigan east of Manistique to the Bridge. 2. North Channel area of Lake Huron. 

Some data now on chinook eating bloater again in northern Lake Michigan, too, in the area north of Beaver Island primarily.

Have you noticed any declines in spiny water fleas as the alewife stocks have built-back. Fish three YO and up feed on them in Lake Ontario, knockig numbers back, which benefits the other zooplankton stocks since the big one (Ceratopagis sp.) is a predatory cladoceran. Back in the good ole days in Lake Michigan alewife were estimated to eat nearly 80% of the growing season's zooplankton production each year. Now, Ceratopagis sp. is the major consumer of zooplankton, particularly the larger species of fellow cladocerans like Daphnia and Bosmina sp., which are the best nutrition for filter planktivorous fish species.


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## SJC (Sep 3, 2002)

We often find bloater in kings. We used to speculate that some of our fish stay deep during much of the summer eating bloater, and that's why not many are caught during the doldrum time of summer, only to suddenly show up to stage. Our wild kings especially seem to be less selective. We often catch them with smelt, stickleback, bloater, ales, even bugs and young perch at times. Oftentimes with several food items at once. Possibly the Huron wild fish naturally leaned toward less picky eaters than the Michigan side fish? Or maybe they just eat what's available? Anyway, they are quite tasty. 
Water fleas have not been a big problem in years for us.


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## Cork Dust (Nov 26, 2012)

From the pic, I would say just-mature alewife, one sculpin, and June bugs. Back in 2010, we caught kings along the bank east of Big Summer Island just packed full of Hexagenia sp. emergers...hundreds of them per stomach. There was a guy who now charters out of Petoskey who lived down by Hillman at the time. He managed to convince his pregnant wife with a toddler to come with him and sleep on the boat or sit on shore while he fished. Between the two of us, we finally hit on using those nubbin' remains of flies that you normally opt toss run on longer leads behind flashers. If you trolled down the outside edge of the huge mats of filamentous algae that the get scoured off the rocks during storms to eventually get mixed into the scum line you could score fish with consistency, even during mid-day. The scum lines were too thick to "S" troll across them because they would foul the downrigger lines horribly. Karen and I anchored out to avoid the concentrations of hatching mayflies drawn to the marina lights at night. 

Here is Bill and Kelly Artwich's boat from four years ago in July as the hatch started-up. Small guys are tricos, which can just coat a boat completely.







.


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## SJC (Sep 3, 2002)

Cork Dust said:


> From the pic, I would say just-mature alewife, one sculpin, and June bugs. Back in 2010, we caught kings along the bank east of Big Summer Island just packed full of Hexagenia sp. emergers...hundreds of them per stomach. There was a guy who now charters out of Petoskey who lived down by Hillman at the time. He managed to convince his pregnant wife with a toddler to come with him and sleep on the boat or sit on shore while he fished. Between the two of us, we finally hit on using those nubbin' remains of flies that you normally opt toss run on longer leads behind flashers. If you trolled down the outside edge of the huge mats of filamentous algae that the get scoured off the rocks during storms to eventually get mixed into the scum line you could score fish with consistency, even during mid-day. The scum lines were too thick to "S" troll across them because they would foul the downrigger lines horribly. Karen and I anchored out to avoid the concentrations of hatching mayflies drawn to the marina lights at night.
> 
> Here is Bill and Kelly Artwich's boat from four years ago in July as the hatch started-up. Small guys are tricos, which can just coat a boat completely.
> View attachment 839647
> .


This was just a picture of some recent Huron ales, but I think there's also some larvae, a gobie and some really small fish that could be about anything. 

That's a lot of bugs. The area we fish silvers in most doesn't get that big of mayfly hatches, usually. The chironimids are another matter. I've had them so thick on the boat that when a diver went off, it almost slipped out of my hands when I grabbed it. The swarms look like clouds.


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## Cork Dust (Nov 26, 2012)

SJC said:


> This was just a picture of some recent Huron ales, but I think there's also some larvae, a gobie and some really small fish that could be about anything.
> 
> That's a lot of bugs. The area we fish silvers in most doesn't get that big of mayfly hatches, usually. The chironimids are another matter. I've had them so thick on the boat that when a diver went off, it almost slipped out of my hands when I grabbed it. The swarms look like clouds.


 Yeah, the chironomids live in those filamentous algae beds that invasive mussels inhabit. The mussels produce poop in packets called pseudofeces which are quite productive. Chironomid larvae, an invasive amphipod, Echinogammarus ischnus. rotifers all chew on their poop packets to derive most of their nutrition. Invasive mussel beds are actually quite productive, but whatever "leaks-out from on trophic passage to the nest is quickly sucked-up by the algae, keeping all the nitrogen and phosphorus within about a food of the substrate. 

My duck hunting partner lives down by Empire. Each year in late May to early June they can't go out on their deck because the entire lake facing side of the home is covered in midge larvae.


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## Krystalflash (Nov 26, 2021)

For what it worth, I’ve lived on the shores of southern Lake Huron for 60 years. I’m near the water as frequently as anyone. The wife and went for river side walk last week. Some of the younger guys were dipping minnows. They saw me and asked what are these in the bucket? Cus if your under 25 or so you might not know what ale looks like in far south of LH. Well they were juvenile ale’s and a few juvenile smelt. The first concentration of ales and smelt I’ve seen in decades. It was nice to see. I told them when I was a kid, we had to get a burn pile going along the beach to clean up the dead ales. They looked at me like I was crazy lol.


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## Fishndude (Feb 22, 2003)

That makes me very hopeful that lake Huron is recovering from the Mussels. How far south in Huron was that?


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