As trout season approaches, the Department of Natural Resources wants anglers who fish the Au Sable River from Mio to McKinley to know it will be conducting a large-scale creel survey during the entire season.

Three creel clerks -- two in watercraft and one on foot -- will conduct short interviews with anglers about their fishing success; if the anglers have any fish in possession, they will ask to measure the fish. The creel survey is designed to ascertain the catch rates and harvest as fisheries biologists consider regulations that will maximize the stream's potential to produce large trout while allowing continued harvest.

"We've tried to model what will happen under various management scenarios, but we have to answer a couple of basic questions," said Dave Borgeson, Northern Lake Huron Fisheries Management supervisor. "Those questions are -- how much harvest is there with the current regulations and are catch rates high enough to produce significant hooking mortality?"

Creel clerks will be on the river from Mio to McKinley five days a week, including all weekends and holidays, working random shifts, from early morning to dark. They will attempt to conduct interviews as quickly as possible with as little interference with anglers as they can manage.

The stretch of the Au Sable below Mio currently is being managed with experimental regulations; the DNR has made it a priority to simplify regulations as much as possible. But proposed regulations changes for the Mio-to-McKinley stretch have been contentious with no consensus among angler groups.

DNR Fisheries personnel hope to gather enough information to propose new regulations by next season.