Fishermen ensure tomorrow’s catch

now.

Almost 95,000 sport fish — everything from arlee rainbow trout to coho salmon — have been planted in the Port Washington harbor and at Sauk Creek by the Department of Natural Resources during the past couple weeks. 

These fish will be joined in the next month by thousands more coho salmon, bringing the total fish stocked in Port to around 160,000.

And many of these fish will enjoy a short stay in the Port harbor, courtesy of the Ozaukee chapter of the Great Lakes Sport Fishermen, which house these yearlings in net pens for anywhere from a day to two weeks before releasing them into Lake Michigan.

It’s an effort by the group to not only create a sustainable fishery but also to provide fishermen with an enjoyable experience by ensuring there are plenty of sizeable fish to catch.

The fish are typically brought to the harbor in a large tanker truck, then released through a large hose into the lake.

But the young fish often “become a meal for the birds,” said Great Lakes Sport Fishermen President Bob Hammen.  “We’ve got seagulls, cormorants and mergansers that enjoy a fine lunch.”

But by releasing the fish into net pens, they are protected from predators, he said. The fish get their bearings in the pens, which are kept in the channel between the main marina and the north slip marina, before being released under cover of darkness, when the birds can’t see them, giving them a fair chance of survival.

“It’s definitely saved the lives of a lot of fish,” Hammen said of the pens. 

The only fish kept in the pens for more than a day are the chinook salmon, which will arrive in mid-April and be kept in two 21-by-7-by-3-foot pens for two weeks, Hammen said.

Club members tend to the chinook three times a day. Unlike the other sport fish released in Port, the pens are also moved to the main marina during their two-week stay. 

“The DNR delivers the fish. Everything else is done by our members,” Hammen said of the program. “We feed them and we monitor them. This gives them a chance to imprint on the harbor.”

And if all goes well, he said, the fish will return to the harbor to spawn.

Club members have been using the net pens for the past four years, a project inspired by member Dale Backhaus, who heard of them being used elsewhere and thought the time was right for them to be used here, Hammen said. 

Backhaus and other club members designed and built the pens, he said, and the club received a DNR permit for the program.

“We were one of the first clubs here to start doing this,” he said.

The program helps preserve a way of life for so many people and protects the fishery on which the area’s summer economy depends, Hammen said.

“The charter captains, they’re all for this net program,” he said. 

Whether the fish return to spawn is a question that the DNR is researching, Hammen said, but there are indications it may be.

He noted that some fish have returned to a creek that feeds Sauk Creek to reproduce in recent years.

“It’s not a big number, but there’s some,” he said.

And while some people may wonder whether the DNR should stock fish in a lake where they seem to be plentiful, Hammen said it’s essential.

“If they wouldn’t keep stocking, there wouldn’t be a fishery,” he said.