Scratch that popular 10-day early-nuisance Canada goose season we`ve enjoyed around Chicago the last few Septembers.
The Department of Conservation was unable to convince federal waterfowl honchos that the paltry 2,000 or so geese taken in northeast Illinois do not include more than 10 percent migrants.
The feds are so afraid that local hunters will kill too many migrants in the early season-even though there is no evidence migrants arrive here before October-that they elected to pull the plug on the entire hunt.
This logic, of course, is the kind of stuff one has come to expect from the bureaucratic morass of Washington. To save perhaps 250 lesser Canada geese (which probably have set up residence and joined our burgeoning flocks of Giant Canadas, therefore ceasing to be migrants), they choose to stop a hunt designed to reduce a nuisance flock that now approaches 40,000. And they do this to save some 250 geese in a state that fell 45,000 short of its goose harvest quota last fall.
So this is how they optimally manage flocks?
Illinois wildlife chief Jeff Ver Steeg said there is a chance the feds may ”compensate” Illinois by extending the regular fall goose season to 100 or even 107 days, up from 90 last year. But that won`t bring back the popular early season, which focuses on those nemeses of parks and golf courses and corporate parking lots. Those hunts meant a lot to local sportsmen, even though there weren`t many places they could hunt around the metropolitan area. It gave them something to do, and it made an ecological contribution.
For some reason, states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio got to keep their early seasons, having been able to convince the feds they were not killing too many migrants. Michigan did so even though its Southern James Bay goose flock is declining, as opposed to the booming growth of Illinois`
Mississippi Valley flock. Michigan convinced the feds to extend its early hunt for two years while it conducted a study of the early harvest. Illinois did not offer to make a study, saying it didn`t have the money. C`est la vie.
Michigan, incidentally, hopes to win approval for a daily bag of five birds, up from three.
Ver Steeg told of attending a ”heated meeting” in which Illinois waterfowl biologists threatened to refer every complaint of a nuisance goose directly to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. ”Some of our guys even threatened to give out their home phone numbers,” Ver Steeg said.
This fall, by the way, early predictions call for a fall flight of 1.46 million geese in the Mississippi Flyway alone. Based on past results, at least a million will descend upon Illinois.
– Brian Shaffer was bored last Friday, so his wife suggested a bass outing to little Bode Lake in the Poplar Creek forest preserve near Hoffman Estates. Standing on shore, the Hanover Park welder tried a few casts with a Rattle Trap, then switched to a 3/8th-ounce diving Rapala. He thought he stuck it in the mud. But then the ”mud” moved, and Shaffer soon was battling a 19 1/2-pound tiger muskie.
”How are you going to get it out?” his wife, Kathy, fretted. ”You don`t have a net.” Brian looked at her and said, ”I guess I`m going to get my feet wet.” He plunged in, gilled the thrashing fish, even got bit once or twice. But he dragged the 42 1/2-incher ashore and plans to have it mounted.
Cook County fisheries biologist Chris Merenowicz said he wasn`t surprised by the catch. ”It either came through Poplar Creek or was planted by someone,” Merenowicz said. ”I`d heard of a 10- or 12-pounder being caught there a few years ago.”
Merenowicz has been surveying Skokie Lagoons the last few days, where he also shocked up a trophy that soon will hang on his office wall-a 21-pound carp. ”It`s a real beauty,” Merenowicz said. ”The length was 32 1/2 inches, and the girth was 23 3/4.” Chris also has tallied more than 450 bass, up to 4 1/2 pounds. All were released. He said anglers were doing very well at Skokie Lagoons for panfish and carp on light tackle.
– This `n` that: Several Indiana anglers argue that all those dead perch found floating a few weeks ago were illegally dumped by commercial netters whose catch was ruined, rather than killed by pollution. If so, it`s too late to catch the culprits. . . . Jeff Ver Steeg is recuperating at home in Springfield from lower back surgery. He hopes to be on his feet in time for an Aug. 8 wedding to Barbara Broussard, the Illinois Natural History Survey`s badger specialist. . . . The Northeast Indiana Steelheaders are busting their buttons after being named ”Grassroots Organization of Year” by the Sport Fishing Institute. . . . Dick Blythe, owner of Indiana tackle shops in Valparaiso and Griffith, is back at work after sextuple-bypass surgery (they also found a couple of clogged arteries in his neck). . . . Indian gill net fishing will be prohibited in the northeast section of Michigan`s Grand Traverse Bay in August and September under federal court orders to protect the fishery. The affected area extends from the tip of Old Mission Peninsula to a point about 10 miles west of Charlevoix. . . . For the first time, Michigan plans two September elk hunts as well as a third hunt in December. The DNR expects more than 40,000 applications for the 270 available licenses. The elk herd there numbers about 1,400. . . . A pair of captive-raised bald eagles has been released by the World Bird Sanctuary of Eureka, Ill., in a refuge across the Mississippi River from Alton.
– Although zebra mussels are credited with filtering toxins from the water, a scary scenario has been outlined by Randy Eshenroder, senior scientist with the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. By straining plankton and other elements from an average of two quarts of water per day, individual mollusks rob fish of food, then overload the bottom with organics in the form of feces. Eventually, they die and decay, passing the accumulated toxins back into the ecosystem, leaving more contaminants in the sediment.
