Photo Credit - Susie Q Fish Market
A local fishery is supporting a question proposed by the Wisconsin DNR Conservation Congress.
The question would allow the Congress to create a commercial lake trout fishery, which businesses like the Susie-Q Fish Company in Two Rivers can’t keep.
Jamie LeClaire with Susie-Q says creating a commercial fishery would allow them to keep about two trout from the lake, which they could sell.
She also says sport fisherman are allowed to keep trout they catch, and this issue is something they don’t support.
“It’s very hard to get two groups to see eye to eye,” she said. “That’s because there’s so much backlash from way back when and a lot of the sport fisherman think we’re going to fish out all of the trout, which isn’t true.
The issue she’s talking about goes back to when invasive sea lamprey invaded the lake and started to lower the trout population.
The population drastically fell, which is why the two trout per fisherman limit was put in place.
But overtime and with trout rehabilitation efforts, the DNR says there are about 2.5 million trout in the lake.
LeClaire says if they can keep a couple of trout, they won’t have to buy the fish from outside groups.
An in-person meeting of the congress was held on Monday, but online meetings about this and other issues are happening today (April 10th) through Saturday.
