I wanted to update this post with information provided from one of the main DNR contacts for creel surveys in Northern WI. The guy that provided this information was extremely professional, responsive and provided all the information I requested. I never did hear back from the warden in our area when I left a voice message on his phone.
I asked him the following questions in my intitial email.
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I’ve seen the creel clerk out on the lake pretty much every weekend since early May. My dad lives on the lake year round and he also indicated the creel clerk is on the water during the week too. My dad thinks the clerk is putting in close to 40 hrs per week on our lake. On average, how many hours per week do they spend on Big Sand Lake in Barron County? How much is the DNR paying the creel clerk that is working on Big Sand Lake? Are the number of hours and pay for the clerks consistent on all survey lakes? On the DNR website it lists several lakes in the Northern Region that are having surveys done in 2011 and 2012. This list doesn’t contain Big Sand Lake (Barron County). Can I get a list of the updated lakes in the 2011 and 2012 survey?
Here is the link I’m referring to. http://dnr.wi.gov/fish/nor/creel.html
He provided the following response.
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First of all, thanks for your reminder that we need to update the list of creel survey lakes on the DNR website. For the 2012-2013 fishing season, here is the list of lakes where we have creel surveys ongoing:
COUNTY LAKE
Bayfield Diamond
Sawyer Grindstone
Barron L Chetek Chain
Polk Big Round
Rusk Island Lake Chain
Washburn L Nancy
Chippewa Long
Barron Sand
Vilas Snipe
Vilas Plum
Lincoln Nokomis/Rice Chain
Oneida Rainbow Flowage
Vilas Presque Isle Chain
Vilas Papoose
All of our creel surveys are done on a 40-hour per week schedule, which includes all weekend days plus three randomly chosen weekdays each week from May through September (8-hour days). In October, and then through the winter, the schedule switches to four 10-hour days per week. The schedule also includes all holidays. On each of the scheduled days, they work either an early or late shift, chosen randomly.
Our LTE (limited term employee) creel clerks currently start at $9.50 per hour, and in the past that would gradually increase with experience, but we have not been able to give any raises since 2008. Most of our LTEs are in the $9.50-$11.00 range. We do have a few permanent technicians who do creel survey work, among other things, who are paid at a higher rate. I can’t answer specifically about the creel clerk on Sand Lake as I’m not sure who that is. I don’t supervise the creel clerks on the western end of the region.
I hope this answers your questions. We appreciate the cooperation by your dad and yourself in allowing our creel clerk to dock his boat at your place.
I followed up with the following email.
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Thanks for providing answers to the questions I asked. After looking at the list of lakes, it appears 4 of the 14 lakes in the Northern Region are less than 420 acres. Who determines whether it is cost effective to conduct these creel surveys or whether similar information could be captured more cost effectively (online or kiosk at the landing)?
I understand the importance of doing the netting in the spring. Maybe I don’t understand everything the creel clerks are doing. I know they are suppose to survey people that are fishing. I’m more than happy to provide any information when asked. Since the opener in May, I’ve fished 6 weekends on our lake. The only time I’ve talked to the creel clerk was when I picked my parents up on their dock for a pontoon ride. Please don’t take these questions as complaining about the clerk on our lake. I haven’t been using the public landing and have been fishing/trolling from my pontoon every weekend but 1. As a tax payer, I keep hearing about how underfunded the DNR is. I enjoy hunting and fishing and our natural resources are very important to me.
It seems like such a big expense to employ these clerks for 40 hrs a week on a 300 acre lake. Using the numbers you provided, it looks like an average creel clerk would cost about 20K per lake (assuming 40 hrs per week for 10 months with benefits and boat expenses).
His response follows..
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Creel surveys are expensive, no question about it. Before the Voigt decision in 1983 that reaffirmed the Chippewa tribes off-reservation harvest rights, we very seldom ran creel surveys, primarily because of the high cost. But the litigation and federal court decisions of the late ‘80’s changed everything. Now we are legally bound to monitor the non-tribal sport harvest in such a way that we can say with relative certainty that our regulatory system is working, and the fishery is not being put at risk under the combined sport/tribal harvest. Specifically, we need to assure the court, if challenged, that the combined sport/tribal harvest does not exceed 35% exploitation of the adult walleye population in more than 2.5% of cases (one in 40). In doing this, we can’t just survey lakes over a certain size. We need to survey a good cross-section of the lake types that are being harvested – large and small, with walleye populations both naturally reproducing and stocked, and spread across the Ceded Territory.
As for funding, because of the federal court mandates that we operate under, we’ve always gotten pretty solid funding in our program. Our program does not receive a cent of general state tax revenue. The vast majority of it is federally funded through the Sport Fish Restoration program, which comes from the federal excise tax on fishing tackle, boats, motors, motorboat fuels, etc.
But in addition to satisfying the court mandates, the creel survey information is a highly useful piece of the puzzle that our management biologists can use in decision-making on management strategies for individual lakes, and cumulatively it provides useful information for region-wide or statewide analyses of various fishery issues. We try to get the most bang for the buck out of these surveys.
Lastly, we try to hire creel clerks that we think will be good ambassadors for the Department. In their time on the water, they talk to a lot of people and provide a lot of information to the public about the surveys we do and various other fishery issues. Some of them are better than others, of course, especially the more experienced guys. But because of what we expect of these people as responsible and conscientious data collectors, and front-line public contacts, in addition to working in all types of weather on a very irregular schedule, we are willing to try to pay them as decent a wage as we are able to.
I hope this answers you questions and concerns. Good luck in your fishing this season.
My reply was..
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Thank you for the very detailed reply. It definitely answered my questions and concerns. Even though it is federally funded, I still think it is overkill for certain lakes when similar information could be collected more efficiently. Take care.
He concluded our exchange with this reply..
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If we could get similar information in a more cost-efficient way, we would be doing it. We’ve had plenty of discussion about this, because it’s such a big chunk of our budget. Some useful information can be gotten from voluntary reporting by anglers, but the fact is that it’s less reliable and would not get at what we need. Voluntary reporting can provide information about what individual anglers caught, but it is not a way to get estimates of total harvest because that requires getting an estimate of total fishing pressure, which requires angler counts at randomly scheduled times. We would also not get reliable fish length data or be able to examine harvested fish for finclips (which are not real obvious to anglers later in the season), which is critical to our exploitation estimates. Creel surveys and angler surveys are a well-studied science, and we know that without creel clerks on the water or some type of mandatory reporting system, the information that can be gotten is limited.
It just seems like there should be more cost efficient ways to capture fishing/catching information on smaller lakes.
I better go now before I get scalped.