On the run: Salmon spawn off to slow start

Oct. 1—TRAVERSE CITY — They've started late, and warm water in Grand Traverse Bay has them slow to head up the Boardman River, but the salmon spawn has started in earnest, and the Department of Natural Resources is anticipating seeing more fish than last year.

Heather Hettinger, a DNR fish biologist, said she has already seen a decent number of chinook salmon — commonly referred to as king salmon — with even more coho salmon coming in.

Crews at the James P. Price Trap and Transfer Harvest Facility counted 233 chinook salmon and 1,037 cohos, according to numbers posted there.

There were plenty of salmon at the Little Manistee River weir west of Manistee, where Hettinger and others went to take eggs for the Wolf Lake and Platte River state fish hatcheries Wednesday, she said. They were set to go back Thursday and probably needed to take eggs two more days after that.

The spawn has only just begun, Hettinger said.

"The snotty fall weather that everybody kind of thinks about, the big north-northwest winds, lots of rain, that's what kind of homes those fish into moving into these river systems, and we really didn't have that until about a week ago," she said.

Most fish harvested at the weir in Traverse City will be sold to a Wisconsin company to be made into liquid fertilizer, while eggs will be sold either overseas for caviar or to a few local businesses to be used as bait, as previously reported. The DNR gathers salmon eggs for its hatcheries at both the Little Manistee River weir as well as one on the Platte River south of Empire.

While the Boardman River (also known as the Ottaway) typically sees a surge of fish followed by a slow-down, Hettinger said she expects to see salmon consistently entering the river, she said. That is, once more of them decide to make their way up — she figures more nights with temperatures in the 40s will convince them.

Numbers should be better than in 2020, when the weir saw one of its lowest returns of chinook salmon in its history, Hettinger said. That was the result of the DNR switching over to stocking the Boardman River with king salmon every other year.

Numbers posted at the weir show a total of 3,167 salmon came through that year.

"It was kind of the first year we saw what pans out from when we go to an alternate-year stocking, which is what we're currently doing on the Boardman," she said.

The DNR stocks 72,000 to 75,000 chinook salmon in the Boardman every other year, and around 75,000 coho every year, Hettinger said. Those numbers, while not yet final, are set to increase in 2022.

More alewives mean Lake Michigan has a better forage base to support higher stocking levels, Hettinger said. A precipitous drop in alewife levels prompted the department to drastically cut salmon stocking in recent years to avoid putting pressure on the introduced species' food source.

Now, higher lake levels and higher rivers have resulted in more nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen entering the Great Lakes, making for better productivity and better alewife survival, Hettinger said.

"Another thing I heard pretty consistently all year, I heard more from anglers in East (Grand Traverse) Bay but I did hear from anglers in West Bay, they saw noticeably larger batches of bait out there this year than they had in years past," she said.

Alewives aren't the only species faring better, with native species like smallmouth and largemouth bass and yellow perch taking advantage of submerged vegetation along flooded shorelines to spawn, Hettinger said. That's having ripple effects throughout the Great Lakes food web.

It's a bit early to tell, but Hettinger thinks anglers can expect good chinook salmon fishing in Grand Traverse Bay in 2022. That's based on the young fish anglers have been reeling in from deeper waters, and with baitfish numbers. Cohos can be more elusive in Grand Traverse Bay, although anglers were catching decent numbers this year. And those who modified their trolling methods to target them near Frankfort were seeing good results from doing the same in the bay, she added.

The Boardman River weir, just east of Hall Street, should be in place until around Oct. 20, Hettinger said. The DNR isn't doing as many tours as before, but people can still stop by to see the fish, and interpretive staff will be there on the weekends.