DNRE Boosting Walleye Stock

If you love to fish, and you’ve had a hard time getting a bite the last few years, you’re in luck.

The DNRE is boosting production of one of the fish you’re most likely to catch.

For 2007, the DNRE stopped all walleye production at its fish hatcheries statewide.

That was a preventative measure intended to stop the spread of the fish virus VHS.

Jan Vanamberg, manager of the Thompson Fish Hatchery, says the agency stopped U.P. walleye production for 2008 as well, but he says the numbers are on the way back up.

And that should make it easier to get a nibble.

VHS — viral hemhorragic septicemia — is harmless to humans.

But in fish, it causes internal bleeding that often leads to fatal organ failures.

Vanamberg says some new research the DNRE conducted found walleye don’t conduct VHS well, so by next year, walleye production should be back where it was prior to the VHS concern.

The Thompson Hatchery in Manistique handles the U.P.’s walleye production.

Vanamberg expects about a million walleye to come out of there this year, and more than 3 million statewide.