Michigan Chinook Salmon Stocking Location Options

In my opinion, the king returns have fallen so much that it's not worth planting anything less than 75K at one site, otherwise there's not even a fall fishery worth mentioning. And going to a rotating plant where a port gets planted every 2 or 3 years is going to be even more worthless.

What is the risk of not getting enough king eggs to hit the stocking goal using Medusa/LM weir? Hasn't the DNR had to go to alternate weirs outside of LM to fulfill egg quotas in the last 2 years? If the numbers are reduced even more, wouldn't that increase the risk substantially that there would be a shortage in chinook eggs in a year with a bad run? If a 150K plant is not getting enough kings to sustain the number of eggs we need to have, I think we should increase the plant in rivers that have egg take facilities.

I vote Option 1 because I think it would be better for consistently getting enough eggs, and I don't think a couple roving net pens is going to establish anything worthwhile or lasting in terms of a fall fishery. In the 2017 Option 4 example, St Joe's fall king fishery sucks with a 50K plant the last few years. And that's with 3 year classes coming back in any given year. One year of a 50K plant won't amount to a hill of beans. Same for Option 3, effectively cutting half of a crappy fall fishery is going to leave a worthless fall fishery.

Even though I fish St. Joe and South Haven a fair amount, I would rather have Option 1, to make sure we can reliably obtain chinook eggs to sustain the open-lake spring/summer fishery rather than take even a small risk of not getting enough eggs. How many chinooks even go thru Berrien Springs anymore? It can't be more than 1000

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Michigan Chinook Salmon Stocking Location Options