Perch: Emails about females
Targeting of jumbos not having adverse effect on the fishery
The run of yellow perch on the Chicago lakefront has been jumbo in more ways than one.
So I asked Vic Santucci, Illinois’ Lake Michigan Program manager, if targeting jumbos would have an impact on the fishery.
“As you know, there is sexual dimorphism in yellow perch, where females tend to grow faster and reach a larger ultimate size than the males,’’ Santucci emailed. “Because the largest perch in the population tend to be females, anglers targeting ‘jumbo’ perch are probably harvesting more females than males. However, I don’t believe the targeting and harvest of jumbo perch is having a negative effect on the perch population or fishery in Lake Michigan for a couple of reasons:
“First, recent creel data from the Illinois Natural History Survey indicates that the jumbo perch make up a relatively small percentage of the overall perch harvest in Illinois. Many anglers probably target jumbo perch, but as a whole, the harvest is made up of perch from a wide range of sizes, averaging about 10 inches in length during the summer months and even smaller during the fall-winter fishery.’’
Most perch fishermen I know would agree with that division between summer and winter perch fishing.
“We also track the percentage of female yellow perch in our annual spring gill net assessments,’’ Santucci noted. “In recent years, we are not seeing the extremely skewed sex ratios that we observed back in the mid- to late 1990s, when proportions of females were less than 10 percent of the perch sampled. If anglers were overharvesting female perch today, I think it would show up in our annual population assessment data as very low female percentages.’’
That’s good news and eases my mind.
On another note, Santucci emailed, “The Illinois Natural History Survey has been collecting photographs of perch urogenital pores and using them to determine the sex ratio of harvested perch in the Lake Michigan creel.’’
I’ll tackle that another day. On other perch matters, the Illinois Conservation Police are well aware that perch are in. The daily bag is 15 perch. That is not 15 from Navy Pier, 15 from DuSable Harbor and 15 from Steelworkers Park; it’s 15 total.
As to the small fishermen’s parking lots at DuSable and Burnham harbors, if the spots are filled, find other parking. Some jerks are double-parking and blocking in other fishermen who woke up early enough to get legitimate parking.
Perch are in to stay. Let’s enjoy it, not destroy it.
Hunting
The weather forecast looks a bit damp but otherwise passable for Illinois’ second firearm deer season Thursday through Sunday. I am curious to see second-season harvest numbers.
♦ At Heidecke Lake, office coordinator Audrey Cravens emailed that 543 hunters have bagged 615 ducks and three geese so far in duck and goose hunting. She noted, “Hunting peaked the fourth week of the season and has been holding pretty steady.’’ . . . Wildlife/ hunter heritage biologist Nicky Strahl emailed that 12 ducks and two geese were harvested over the weekend at Wolf Lake.
Wild things
Richard Anzalone and “Conservation Mike’’ Echterling sent notes about seeing a whooping crane mixed with sandhill cranes on recent visits to Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area, southeast of Valparaiso, Indiana. The crane count on Tuesday was 29,661.
Stray cast
Of the mayoral candidates, Garry McCarthy most reminds me of an alewife.