A fundamental requirement for sound management of Michigan's Great Lake and inland recreational fisheries is understanding the response of fish stocks to fishing and the contributions of various fish species to those fisheries. The success of the state's fishery resources depends on current management efforts.

"It is essential that decisions are based on a sound scientific knowledge of the history, current status and dynamics of fish communities," said Tom Goniea, fisheries biologist for the DNR, based in Lansing. "Angling statistics are needed for stock assessment and to identify a fish's distribution, movements and contribution to various sport fisheries."

In order to accomplish this, Michigan's Great Lakes and inland sport fishery has been monitored with a Statewide Angler Survey Program (SASP) since the 1980s.

"The program's basic objective is to obtain a continuous record of sport catch, catch rates and catch composition for the Great Lakes while rotating efforts on inland lakes/streams from year to year," Goniea added.

This effort augments the traditional biological fish sampling techniques used by the Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Division. Data collected from the SASP program have been used to develop, test and improve decision models which help discern management strategies for Great Lakes fish communities and fisheries, while inland surveys help to assess stocking and growth rates of the popular sport fish species.

Widely known as the creel program, DNR Fisheries Division personnel (referred to as creel clerks) interview from 50,000 to 75,000 anglers annually. Approximately one-quarter of these anglers (12,500 to 18,750) are contacted during the winter ice fishing season (January through March).

In 2007, after a slow start due to unseasonably warm weather in early January, six winter creel clerks currently are working the Great Lakes on Lake Michigan's Little Bays de Noc; Lake Huron's Les Cheneaux Islands and Saginaw Bay and Lake Superior's Munising Bay.

An additional five inland clerks are out collecting information from the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers, Hubbard, Kent, Charlevoix and Cadillac and Mitchell lakes.

"In the winter, working five days a week, including three random weekdays and every weekend day, interviews are conducted by contacting as many anglers possible when they are either on the ice or at the access site as they return to their cars," Goniea said.

Interviews are initiated by the clerk but are completely voluntary on the part of the angler. However, most anglers are more than willing answer a few questions, especially if they have been lucky enough to have a good day catching fish on the hard surface. Often times the survey protocol for a given lake or port will require some biological data to be recorded from the catch of the person being interviewed. What is collected may vary from site to site but usually includes length and weight measurements and sometimes taking scales, fin rays or vertebrae in order to determine age.

"This can be accomplished because fish, like trees, will lay annual growth rings called annuli in their scales and boney structures every year," Goniea said. "After collection, these are taken back to one of the state's research stations where growth rings are counted using a microscope."

This is an important technique because growth often is an indicator of how healthy the fishery is and can help biologists make management decisions for that particular lake. For example, slow growth often results from not having enough food and in a species like walleye, fisheries personnel might be able to adjust the stocking rate of juveniles in order to influence growth and hopefully result in a size distribution more desirable by anglers.

If growth is very faster than normal, it probably indicates an abundance of food and the number of fish planted might be increased in an attempt to raise the catch rate. An angler's creel information aides in balancing act of managing between the size of fish caught and the total number available for harvest.

In addition to the direct angler contact, winter creel clerks also travel the lake either on the hard surface by snowmobile if conditions allow or around the shoreline by car to various places that provide an adequate vantage point for them to count every angler on the ice.

Depending on the size of the lake, one or two counts are performed each day and usually take between 30 minutes and an hour to complete. The count on all but one of this year's surveys are conducted in this manner; however, the Saginaw Bay survey area is simply too big for DNR clerks to effectively interview and count in one day. Therefore, a plane is utilized to count the anglers on Saginaw Bay. What would take multiple clerks several hours on the ground to accomplish can be done by plane in a matter of minutes, thereby allowing the ground efforts to concentrate on conducting angler interviews.

"Counting every angler at random times throughout each work day over the course of the season allows the DNR to estimate total number of anglers that fished on that particular lake," Goniea said. "This can then be combined with the information from angler interviews to estimate the total harvest and catch rate per species, in other words, how many fish are caught per hour."

This information then is used in management decisions and provided to the public for private use. A lot of times the creel program's information is used by popular outdoor magazines and newspapers to feature the opportunities available at different lakes or ports around the state.

So if you are out this winter at one of the areas mentioned above, you could see your license dollars at work in the form of the DNR's Statewide Angler Survey Program. A clerk may just stop by and ask "How's the fishing?"