Anglers caught nearly 1.2 million
walleye in northern Wisconsin in 2003
From the WI-DNR website
MADISON – Anglers in northern Wisconsin in 2003 enjoyed some of the best walleye fishing in the past 15 years, catching nearly 1.2 million fish in the Ceded Territory, more than doubling the previous year’s total, according to thousands of recently compiled angler interviews.
Total angler catch was 1,195,268 walleye, exceeding 1 million fish for the first time since 1997, and well above the 530,458 walleye anglers reported catching in the Ceded Territory in 2002. Anglers kept 263,496 walleye, or 22 percent of the total they caught.
Catch rates also were the second best in 15 years, with anglers taking an average of three hours to catch one walleye, compared to the long-term average of four hours for one walleye.
“I think the most striking finding is the total number of fish caught – it’s so much higher than any year since 1997,” says Joe Hennessy, a Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist who analyzed the angler reports. “That total reflects the fantastic natural reproduction of walleye in 2001 and 2002, and that those fish were becoming catchable size in 2003.”
Hennessy says the total catch – which exceeded by hundreds of thousands the total in each of the previous five years — perfectly illustrates the boom and bust cycle of walleye populations.
“Right now, I think we’re hitting the peak for one of the booms and we should have excellent walleye fishing again this year. But it’s not something people should expect to last for years on end because we know that walleye populations are notoriously unstable.”
Hennessy said that the other really striking statistic to emerge from the more than 5,000 angler interviews, which are part of DNR’s creel survey program, was how much the excellent fishing was due to natural reproduction, not stocking.
“The second thing that’s really striking is, of the 1.2 million fish caught in 2003, just over 1 million of them came from lakes sustained by natural reproduction,” he says. “That underscores that stocking isn’t a magic bullet – it’s not what leads to a strong fishery, habitat is. There has to be good spawning habitat, good habitat for the larval stage of the fish, and a good food supply and hiding places for their critical first year.”