Once ice forms in winter, anglers flock to Green Bay to fish for lake whitefish. Although the species had been overfished by commercial netters and had critical spawning habitat degraded over most of the last two centuries, whitefish have rebounded in Green Bay in recent decades. The fish have recolonized former spawning sites, including the Menominee River, and are now the foundation of a very popular winter sport fishery on the bay. Wochit
DYCKESVILLE - The border of Door and Kewaunee counties was just up the shoreline.
But as the mercury hovered at 3 degrees and the northwest wind howled at 25 mph Wednesday morning, the nearby boundary could just as easily have been the Arctic Circle.
Snow whistled across the frozen surface of Green Bay and piled drifts on ice shoves and beaches.
Looking southwest, the hard-scape was flat and white. The only exceptions were a half dozen shanties in the middle distance and one hulking fuel tanker near the horizon.
The ship moved slowly, following a broken path through the ice and out of the bay.
The shacks, fortunately, were holding their ground.
Our trio of ice anglers made its way through the teeth of the wind to the welcome shelters about a mile offshore.
"Home sweet home," said Jarrod Kalmerton, 42, of Howards Grove.
For the next five hours, the comfort provided by these plywood ice fishing houses would not be taken for granted.
Nor would the life force that drew us here - lake whitefish, a native fish that survived two centuries of overfishing and habitat degradation and more recently an onslaught of aquatic invasive species to become a good news story in the Lake Michigan ecosystem.
As the bitter wind blew outside, Kalmerton and Tyler Chisholm, 21, of Plymouth grabbed propane heaters and sparked them to life in the shanties.
Kalmerton is a co-owner of Wolf Pack Adventures, a Sheboygan-based fishing and hunting guiding operation. Chisholm is a guide with the outfit.
Trips on Lake Michigan and Green Bay are a staple of Wolf Pack's offerings and span all four seasons.
They have hard-sided ice fishing structures on the bay this time of year to take advantage of the whitefish bite.
Whitefish were once considered only a commercial species. As the lake changed in recent decades, the fish revealed a different side.
It is now well-known and highly regarded as a sport fish.
"Twenty years ago this wasn't happening," Kalmerton said, nodding at the shanty village of whitefish anglers on the Green Bay ice. "It's an exciting, positive change for the fishery."
We drilled holes through 15 inches of crystal and began our quest to catch the tasty fish on hook-and-line.
For gear, we used light spinning rods to present what has become a standard Green Bay whitefish rig. It features a bare hook threaded on the main line and positioned above a small barrel swivel. Then a jigging spoon or other lure is tied on a leader about 15 inches below the swivel. Wax worms are added to the hook and the spoon.
The baited hook is free to slide up and down the line.
The rig is lowered to the bottom and jigged up and down until a fish hits - or it snags on quagga mussels.
Whitefish were one of the pillars of the Lake Michigan commercial fishing industry through the 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1880, the lake's commercial whitefish catch was estimated at more than 12 million pounds, according to federal statistics.
But populations of whitefish and its cisco relatives generally collapsed during the middle of the 20th century because of overfishing, interactions with invasive species such as alewife and rainbow smelt and loss of spawning and rearing habitat, according to research cited in "Ciscoes of the Laurentian Great Lakes and Lake Nipigon," by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
By 1922, the commercial take of whitefish in Lake Michigan fell to 1.5 million pounds. In 1958, after sea lampreys and alewives decimated the lake, the whitefish catch was just 9,000 pounds.
With less commercial fishing and improved water quality protections, whitefish have since recovered in parts of the lake. Green Bay is a prime example.
The fish have demonstrated a survival capability not found in most other native ciscoes in the region, five of which have disappeared from Lake Michigan.
With their downturned mouths and benthic (bottom) feeding habits, whitefish are taking advantage of the abundance of invasive species, including round gobies.
In fact, whitefish numbers have increased over the last 15 or 20 years in Green Bay, according to the Department of Natural Resources, and the species has recolonized historical spawning grounds in the area, including the Menomonie River.
The comeback of whitefish in Green Bay has prompted fishing guides to open or expand businesses. Thousands of unguided sport anglers also visit the bay each winter.
The upturn of the whitefish population also has attracted the attention of commercial fishermen, who would like to have the quota increased for Zone 1 (lower Green Bay).
A proposal to allow increased netting, including the option of keeping and selling walleyes and other "bycatch," was strongly opposed by the public in a 2016 survey.
To gather additional information on the winter Green Bay whitefish fishery, the DNR initiated a new reporting system for the 2016-'17 season.
Area guides were asked to record details of their ice fishing outings and submit the information to the DNR.
Twenty-four guides provided the information, according to Scott Hansen, DNR fisheries biologist who coordinated the work.
Last winter, sport anglers (unguided) spent 179,991 hours fishing for whitefish, compared to 28,028 hours for guided anglers.
Correspondingly, sport anglers harvested about five times more whitefish than guided anglers (140,255 and 27,557, respectively), according to DNR data.
The catch rate for guided anglers was slightly higher, 0.98 whitefish per hour, compared to 0.78 per hour for sport anglers.
Whitefish was the most caught species, followed by yellow perch and walleye.
The 167,812 whitefish harvested last winter in the sport fishery was second highest on record, behind 190,175 in 2011, according to DNR figures.
Fishing Wednesday in post-cold front conditions, we didn't know what we'd find.
"Sometimes they are finicky and you've got to finesse them," Chisholm said. "And other times there's nothing you can do to keep them off. You'll be pulling your bait up and they just slam it."
The fish weren't aggressive Wednesday, but a propane oven - and a location change of about 300 yards - were the keys to success.
Kalmerton and Chisholm are big fans of a warm meal on the ice to help take the edge off cold anglers. Chisholm fired up the oven in our shack and baked a pan of cinnamon rolls. We also munched on smoked whitefish.
And the men knew a slight bottom transition was found just to the northwest of our first spot. They hooked the shanties to four-wheelers and pulled the structures to the new spots in about 26 feet of water.
The catch rates increased substantially within minutes.
"You can't have too many cinnamon rolls," Chisholm said.
As the wind howled outside, we sat in heated comfort and filled a tub with fish.
The whitefish ranged from 16 to 19 inches in length and were solidly built.
All hit the baited slider hook fished just above the bottom.
A generation ago, the only whitefish caught in these waters were taken in commercial nets. Now thousands of sport anglers are traveling to Green Bay in the winter, fueling the local economy.
And since sport fishing is managed carefully and rarely - if ever - harms a population, the whitefish are likely to continue to provide recreation and food for generations to come.
Leave it to a feisty native to show that even in an era dominated by invasive species some change can be for the better.
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