HURON, Ohio –October 16, 2013 — By 8 a.m. on an unseasonably warm, sunny October day, wildlife officials are speeding across fairly calm water toward gill nets they’ve set near Huron and Vermilion.
Ohio Department of Natural Resources workers expect the nets, which they set on Lake Erie the previous evening, to yield a catch of walleye and white bass, among other species, that they plan to count and study to determine adult population numbers and health during ODNR’s annual October fish survey.
Ultimately, the information they obtain from studying these fish will help ODNR and wildlife agencies from Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario set how many walleye can be harvested — by commercial and sport anglers — from the lake next year, said Chris Vandergoot, fisheries biologist supervisor at ODNR’s Sandusky Fish Research Unit.
Walleye are one of the most economically important fish on Lake Erie and one of the most sought-after game fish. White bass are included in the survey because they tend to be in the water column with walleye and are an important open-water predatory fish.
When the ODNR boat reaches its first destination — a net about a mile offshore from Vermilion — fisheries biologist Travis Hartman and lab/boat technician Brian Schmidt start reeling in the net full of fish while Capt. Jim McFee keeps the boat steady in the slight roll of the lake.
Up come white bass and walleye with some gizzard shad, catfish, suckers and sheepshead mixed in. The gill nets trap the fish by their gills, or in the case of walleye, their teeth.
A few skip out of the net, but most of them are successfully caught and put into large plastic tubs.
Huron is what ODNR considers the boundary between the Western and Central basins. It’s a good spot to nab walleye because they’re returning from their summer trip to the deeper, cooler waters of the other basins and are headed back to the Western Basin, Hartman said.
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