From the Traverse City Record-Eagle:
Kneff Lake is by design a popular fishing spot in Crawford County.
It's a round, 13-acre lake on federal forest land, tucked into the hills southeast of Grayling and designated as a trout fishery. A campground and sandy beach draw visitors all summer, officials said....
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources plans to kill the lake's existing fish with a chemical treatment. The lake then will be restocked with rainbow trout.
The lake's trout population is losing out to a high number of perch and sucker fish, said DNR senior fisheries biologist Steve Sendek.
Officials will treat the lake with two parts-per-million of rotenone, a common agricultural insecticide that is toxic to fish. The chemical is not dangerous to humans or livestock and detoxifies when exposed to sunlight and air, officials said.
"It's very specific. It affects the oxygen transportation system that occurs in the gills of fish," Sendek said. Read it all.
Kneff Lake was stocked with grayling a few years back in an attempt to restore the now-extirpated fish that put northern Michigan on the map as an angling destination. Apparently that didn't work out so well.
I have mixed feelings about these operations. What are the reasons the trout and grayling populations declined? Inadequate habitat? Excessive fishing pressure? Inability to compete with the perch and suckers?
For sure, rainbow trout were not native to the lake.
If Kneff was historically a coldwater fishery, I can see some justification for such an operation. If not, I don't know if these "reclamations" are a reasonable course of action. Much as I love trout fishing, I am skeptical about establishing artificial trout fisheries in waters marginally suited to them. True, trout were not native to many of the streams in lower Michigan where they now live, but obviously they thrive in many of them. I'd rather see fisheries management resources directed toward maintaining and improving those.
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