Celebrating 75 Years of Wisconsin’s Northern Highland Fishery Research Area: The Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

On June 20, 2021, the Northern Highland Fishery Research Area (NHFRA) celebrated its 75th anniversary of continuous fisheries population monitoring and compulsory angler creel census on five lakes in northern Wisconsin. In 1946, five lakes were designated as experimental fisheries research lakes and all anglers have been required to adhere to the compulsory creel census to record catch information. We review the history of the NHFRA, its role in evaluating experimental regulations, how data derived from the NHFRA were paramount in developing a critical Walleye Sander vitreus management plan for a joint tribal subsistence and recreational angling fishery, discuss the NHFRA as a training ground for early career fisheries professionals, and speculate on its future. By learning from the past and adapting to new challenges and emerging fisheries research needs, the NHFRA is poised to add to its 75‐year legacy of research and training to inform science‐based decision making and to prepare generations of new fisheries professionals. The 75‐year history of the NHFRA exemplifies the importance of adaptation, long‐term data, establishing sentinel lakes for observations of environmental change, field stations, and partnerships for successful fisheries management.

Black Crappie Influences on Walleye Natural Recruitment in Northern Wisconsin Lakes

“…Quist et al (2003) found that predation of age-0 Walleye by White Crappie was the most important mechanism explaining this negative interaction. In addition, for three CTWI lakes with no or limited Black Crappie populations and a long-time series of Walleye data, natural recruitment of Walleye has been consistent in the long term (Sass and Shaw 2018;Sass et al 2022b). Although our findings have only revealed negative associations between species and are unable to provide mechanisms, several explanations may exist to explain our results, including predator-prey interactions (Quist et al 2003), potential competition between adult Black Crappie and age-0 Walleye for zooplankton, lake surface area or morphometry limiting resource partitioning between the species, climate change and centrarchid abundances (Hansen et al 2015b(Hansen et al , 2017Rypel et al 2016), regulations favoring centrarchid abundance increases (Rypel 2015;Rypel et al 2016), the harvest-oriented nature of Walleye fisheries (Gaeta et al 2013;Hansen et al 2015b), and known depensation recruitment dynamics in Walleye .…”

“…2015a, Sass et al. 2022a). To this point, attempts to rebalance fisheries in favor of Walleye have been mixed, likely due to the effort involved with whole‐lake fish removals (but see Sikora et al.…”

“…2021); the inability of stocked Walleye to reestablish natural recruitment, potentially due to skewed sex ratios towards females (Sass et al. 2022a); climate change favoring warmwater species; and a lack of Largemouth Bass harvest despite liberalized regulations (Hansen et al. 2015b).…”

“…2019), stocking (Sass et al. 2022a), and their interactions (e.g., cultivation/depensation; Walters and Kitchell 2001; Sass et al. 2021) have been shown to negatively influence natural recruitment (Hansen et al.…”

A perspective on the ecological and evolutionary consequences of phenological variability in lake ice on north-temperate lakes

“…Following our conceptualization of the potential influences of phenological variability on the ecology and evolution of north-temperate lake ecosystems, we present evidence of the influences of phenological variability from long-term datasets available from Escanaba Lake, a northtemperate lake in northern Wisconsin where ice phenology and biological data have been extensively monitored for the past 75 years (Sass et al 2021). We focus on altered ecosystem dynamics in early and late ice-off years and build the case that increasing variance in ice-off dates is likely to decrease ecological resilience and evolutionary rescue capacities in aquatic systems facing climatic change.…”