Fishery bulletin of the Fish and Wildlife Service - NOAA

WHITEFISH FISHERY OF LAKES HURON AND MICHIGAN 317
was good agreement between conclusions as to the course of the fishery based on statistical
data and on the testimony of the fishermen themselves.
WHITEFISH,FISHERY OF LAKE HURON, 1929-1939
In part I attention was called to the general increase in the abundance and production
of whitefish that occurred in the waters of the Great Lakes in the late 1920's
and early 1930's. Emphasis was placed on the fact that the increase in yield in Michigan
waters of Lake Huron was relatively much higher than in other waters. The
average Michigan catch in Lake Huron in the two peak years, 1931 and 1932, was 3.67
times the average annual production over a period of earlier years, and the years 1930,
1933, 1934, and 1935 had yields well above normal, whereas in other waters the average
annual productions during the recent maximum were only 1.26 to 2.86 times the earlier
averages (p. 309). The excessive catch in Lake Huron was attributed'to the widespread
use of the deep trap net in that lake. The detailed data that will be presented for the
six statistical districts in the State of Michigan waters of Lake Huron fully support this
earlier position. In fact, the origin and expansion of the deep-trap-net fishery dominate
the recent history of Michigan's whitefish fishery of Lake Huron so completely that a
summary of the 1929-1939 statistics constitutes in reality little more than a study of
the effects of this new gear.
The deep trap net was introduced into Lake Huron off Alpena, Mich., in district
H-2 in July 1928, and continued to be fished in the same area in 1929. The rapid
expansion qf the deep-trap-net fishery got under way in 1930. In this year the net was
fished extensively not only in the neighborhood of Alpena but also in H-l (especially
in Hammond Bay) and in H-3 (mostly from Au Sable-Oscoda) ; a few deep trap nets
were used also in 1930 on the "Middle Grounds" off Saginaw Bay (H-4). No new statistical
districts were added to the deep-trap-net grounds until 1932, in the latter part
of which season the net was introduced into the waters of southern Lake Huron off
Harbor Beach (H-5). The expansion into H-6 in 1933 completed the coverage of the
Michigan waters of the lake. This sequence makes the history of the deep-trap-net
fishery, in a sense, discontinuous as the major "scene of action" shifted from year to
year.
FLUCTUATIONS IN THE PRODUCTION OF WHITEFISH
IN LAKE HURON
The production of whitefish in Lake Huron 22 increased phenomenally in 1930 and
1931 (table 3). The catch of 2,879,000 pounds in 1930 was nearly twice the 1929 yield
of 1,456,000 pounds, and the 1931 production of 4,140,000 pounds represented an additional
increase of 1,260,000 pounds above the 1930 level. The decline from the 1931
yield was relatively insignificant in 1932 (decrease of 89,000 pounds). The reduction in
the catch was large, however, in the succeeding years, averaging 719,000 pounds per year
for the 3 years, 1933-1935, 446,000 pounds for the 3 years, 1936-1938, and 303,000
pounds in 1939. Despite these large decreases the catch did not return to an approximately
normal level until 1936. The subsequent declines carried the production far
below normal. The 1938 yield of 558,000 pounds was only a little above the lowest
catch recorded for any previous year (555,000 pounds in 1900), and the 1939 production
of only 255,000 pounds was less than half the previous all-time low. The 11-year
period (1929-1939) saw, therefore, a remarkable cycle in the yield of whitefish in Lake
Huron. From a nearly normal level in 1929 the catch increased suddenly to the, unprecedented
height of more than 4 million pounds in 1931 and 1932 only to decline
rapi.dly to an unprecedented low yield in 1939.
Much of the increase to the 1931-1932 peak and of the high production in 1933-1935
can be traced to the new gear, the deep trap net. The catch by this gear jumped from
87,000 pounds in 1929 to 871,000 pounds in 1930 (a ten-fold increase), 2,080,000 pounds
in 1931, and 2,764,000 pounds (the peak production for the gear) in 1932. The catch
of deep trap nets did not fall below 2 million pounds in the 4 years, 1931-1934.
n In this and the following section the terme, "Lake Huron" and "the entire lake," refer to the State of Michigan waters only.