ISHPEMING – Brook trout and Negaunee’s Teal Lake are part of the upcoming changes on the local fisheries scene.

George Madison, fisheries biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ Western Lake Superior Management Unit, discussed some of the changes this week at the Ishpeming Township Hall.

Madison called the Great Lakes area the “Saudi Arabia of the world for fresh water,” with 3,000 miles of Great Lakes shoreline and 11,000 miles of inland waters in Michigan alone.

“We’re unique worldwide to what we have, plus it’s all clean water,” Madison said. “It’s something that people forget about as we drive around.”

Levels of that fresh water, though, fluctuate over the years.

Lake Superior, he said, is expected to be pretty close to its 2014 water level, but Lake Michigan and Lake Huron will be about 14 inches higher than last year. That will help the shipping industry, he said, since boats have had to carry lighter loads because of the lower water.

World weather data indicated that 2014 was the hottest year on record, with Michigan a notable exception, Madison said. However, that cool period benefited Upper Michigan’s trout fisheries, particularly brook trout.

A temperature of 68 degrees in July is the benchmark for good trout waters, he said, and in 2014, local temperatures were below that mark.

“While we remember it was just a horrible year for swimming and picnicking and things like that,” Madison said, “it was a good year for our fisheries and our aquatic resources here.”

To foster trout catch rates for people in the area, Madison said the DNR has reduced the legal size for brook trout in some local bodies of water.

When these waters are stocked, often it takes a year for the trout to reach a 10-inch size limit, he pointed out, but if the fish are stocked at 8 inches, people can start to catch and keep the fish right away.

Madison said these will be good spots for kids and families to harvest fish.

Some waters, called quality waters, have high size limits and maybe one-fish bag limits, Madison said.

“Then we want to have waters where people can go if they want to catch smaller trout,” Madison said. “They’ll have their family members catch trout, bring them home and fry them up.”

The 10-inch to 8-inch size requirement will be effective April 1 at Baraga County’s Alberta Pond and Ontonagon County’s Paulding Pond.

Big Trout Lake, located east of K.I. Sawyer in Marquette County, will see, effective April 1, a reduced in the size requirement for brook, brown and rainbow trout from 15 inches to 8 inches.

At Keweenaw County’s Lake Fanny Hooe, the 15-inch minimum size limit for lake trout and 12-inch minimum for splake will be reduced to 8 inches, also effective April 1.

This year, three more rivers are being added to the daily 10-fish bag limit for brook trout, he said: the Presque Isle River in Gogebic County, Bryan Creek in Marquette and Dickinson counties and the Lower Rock River in Alger County. The changes, he said, are not expected to negatively affect the fish populations.

Possessing invasive rusty crayfish, found in Big Bay’s Lake Independence and other lakes, had been prohibited to keep people from unintentionally transporting them to other waters, according to Madison, but now that’s not the case.

“A lot of lake owners wanted to catch them and have fish boils in the summertime,” Madison said, “but technically they were prohibited to catch, so we’ve modified that regulation to allow them to catch them for consumption purposes.”

Teal Lake, he said, will be surveyed this summer.

Madison acknowledged stocking efforts at the lake have been controversial.

“We just stocked them with muskies in there to diversify that fishery,” he said. “There’s been a lot of concern on that. People are afraid they’re going to eat the walleye and the perch.”

Teal Lake, however, has many white suckers for muskellunge forage, plus many muskie-walleye-perch lakes are found in the western U.P. as well as Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the three species can co-exist, he said.

Lake Independence also has been surveyed for the last three years, according to Madison, with good news for walleye anglers.

“We’ve found that’s got a nice walleye population, just over 2,000 adult walleye in there,” Madison said.

The DNR plans to expand urban trout fishing opportunities with the experiment of adding brown trout to the Lower Dead River in Marquette County, Partridge Creek in Ishpeming and the Montreal River in Ironwood.

The local brown trout fishery, Madison said, will be expanded above the Tourist Park Dam behind the Marquette Board of Light and Power.

“There’s a nice little foot trail along the river, so we’re working to stock that,” he said.

The DNR has added more “boots on the ground” with a new fisheries biologist in Crystal Falls, Jennifer Johnson, plus more staff will be added for the Upper Peninsula to perform lake and stream management, Madison said.

According to a memo from Nick Popoff of the DNR’s Aquatic Species and Regulatory Affairs Unit, the DNR plans to establish a two-year fishing guide for April 1, 2016, which includes the 2016-17 fishing seasons, so regulations may be changed this fall and not again until the fall of 2017.

The DNR still is seeking public input, though, on fisheries management.

“Statewide we’re trying to figure out how to engage the public more into having comments on what they want to see,” Madison said.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250.