Agreement leads to perch fishing spike

Thanks to a three-way agreement reached last December, perch fishing off the coast Lake Erie in Lake County has returned in a big way.

The agreement between the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife, sport fishermen and commercial fishermen, protects the Fairport Harbor “Hump” vicinity of the lake. It is a “closed zone” about 9 miles straight out from the lighthouse; three miles west of Eastlake; and 4 1/2 miles east of Fairport — equaling more than 140 square miles.

Commercial fishing is precluded in the area. The Ohio Department of Natural Resource monitors the compliance of the agreement.

A significant drop in what sport fishermen were yielding in harvest rates prompted Chardon resident Don Schonauer, and others, to seek a solution to the problem.

“Perch fishing (here) was virtually dead,” said Schonauer, who is head of the Fairport Harbor/Grand River Yellow Perch Sportsmen Committee. “Commercial fishing was affecting not only sport fishermen, but bait and equipment shops, and the county as a whole.

“This has been a five-year process, and in the beginning, I tried calling everyone and got very little support and many unanswered phone calls. I tried to get help from the county commissioners, but no help was forthcoming.

“The netters were good, they weren’t doing anything illegal, but we knew we had to get to the local level to change things,” Schonauer said. “When (Lake County) Commissioner (Jerry) Cirino was elected, I called multiple times every day and he started working to help fix this. He stirred people up, districtwide. The threat of legislation put extreme pressure on the netters. We sat down and worked it out.”

State Rep. Ron Young, RLeroy Township, had proposed House Bill 356, which would have banned commercial perch fishing altogether in Fairport Harbor and Sandusky.

“Now, with the work Commissioner Cirino has done with Ron Young, the result of the agreement has been fantastic,” Schonauer said. “Charter captains are finding their customers catching their limit in just a couple of hours, and the fish are actually larger.”

Dave Hall can testify to the fact that perch fishing has rebounded. The owner/ operator of Top Flight Sport Fishing located in Grand River is seeing returns he hasn’t witnessed in seasons.

“Collectively, we’ve had to cancel probably 200plus perch fishing charters over the last two years, and that’s a conservative estimate,” he said. “All of last year, I was only able to run one trip and we caught seven fish with six people. I turned business down because I couldn’t honestly take the money and not catch fish. This year, I’ve got a record number of trips already booked because of what’s happened.

“Our very first trip, three clients and I went out and we pulled 120 perch in 90 minutes, dock to dock. Other charters have made about six trips and there’ve been limits on every trip, which is 30 fish per person, per day. This turnaround has stimulated the economy, including hotels and restaurants, like Brennan’s and Pickle Bills. And it’s great because roughly 60 percent of my business is from out of town, places like Pittsburgh, Michigan, Kentucky, West Virginia and North Carolina.”

Mentor resident John Kolenc pointed out that the Fairport Harbor Rod & Reel Association has also benefitted from the agreement.

“They have more members (now) than they did last year due to the restricted area,” he said.

Cirino followed Hall’s and Kolenc’s points, noting that the growth of the economic development in the region, now, is no coincidence.

“This is how this is supposed to work,” Cirino said. “This is what elected officials are supposed to do. This agreement, the work we’ve all done, it’s the domino effect. We’re not just talking fish here. And that’s the purpose — I wanted to use my office to motivate whoever I had to into cooperating and getting things done. The commercial fishermen have their businesses and they have a right to do certain things, but they were choking off the fish for sport fishermen here. This is a huge win, economically, for Lake County.

“This was historic in nature, too, because ODNR is charged with monitoring laws and this is an agreement. I would challenge anybody to find a voluntary agreement with so many parties of this nature anywhere in the state. All the people involved here, they now understand they need to be politically engaged. It’s kind of a lost lesson. We all have to work together to achieve what we want.”

“This is how this is supposed to work. This is what elected officials are supposed to do.” — Lake County Commissioner Jerry Cirino

SUBMITTED Perch fishing harvest rates have spiked recently, thanks to the three-way agreement reached last year between ODNR and sport and commercial fishermen.