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Yellow perch in Lake Erie might face trouble
Sunday, September 02, 2001 By The Associated Press
ERIE -- The round gobies are coming. The sculpin are leaving. Whether that's bad news for the yellow perch population in Lake Erie and other Great Lakes remains to be seen.
John Jannsen, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, believes round gobies feed on sculpin eggs and drive the fish from their spawning shelters.
That has caused a decline in the Great Lakes' sculpin population, which could be bad news for yellow perch -- a popular sport and dinner-plate fish that feed heavily on sculpin in some regions.
"After 1997, when we started to commonly find gobies in our trawling samples, we stopped seeing sculpin," said Chuck Murray, a Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission biologist. "I think the last time we saw a sculpin was in 1998."
Jannsen's research was sponsored by the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program, which focuses on Great Lakes ecology, and was fueled by concerns about the goby's possible effect on perch and other larger fish.
Murray said the invasion of the round gobies might not harm yellow perch in Lake Erie as much as they will in other Great Lakes. That's because sculpin were less common in Lake Erie and perch were probably feeding more on other types of forage fish.
But there is evidence that gobies are also displacing other forage fish in Lake Erie, meaning the yellow perch population might be threatened nonetheless
If there has been an impact on the perch, it isn't showing up in Lake Erie this year or last.
"We're having the best yellow perch fishing anyone can remember," said Ed Kissell of S.O.N.S. of Lake Erie, a fishing advocacy group. "It began about Aug. 15 last year and lasted through September into October with tremendous catches and it's back this year."
But Murray said this year's bunker crop of perch was the result of a successful breeding season six years ago.
That's how long it takes perch to grow to at least eight inches -- the length at which it becomes legal to catch them.
That means the effect round gobies are having on perch in Lake Erie and elsewhere might not be known for several years.
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