Massive fish release aims to restore king salmon population and deep sea fishing experience in Lake Michigan

They gathered to release three-and-a-half-inch-long salmon fingerlings – so small that they’re weighed by the pound instead of counted individually – into pens built by the Lake County Fish and Game Protection Association, which will feed them three times daily and take care of them over the next few weeks. They goal is to get the salmon to imprint on the East Chicago Marina so they swim back there when it’s time to spawn three years from now, giving fisherman the chance to catch prized 30-pound salmon from the shore.

“We won’t be able to bring it back to the boom era in the 1970s and 1980s when fisherman could catch unlimited amounts of chinook salmon,” Lake County Fish and Game Protection Association President John Dembowski said. “It’s a different lake than it was then.”

Lake Michigan suffered from declines in the alewife population that serves as bait fish to lure bigger fish like salmon, to the point where it stopped stocking chinook salmon altogether for a few years starting in 2012 and then put less in the lake than normal in subsequent years.

“It’s a predator and prey model,” he said. “There have to be enough alewives to warrant putting salmon in to the control the population.”

Currently, only about 1% of the chinook salmon stocked every year return to where they were released in Lake Michigan. Some get killed by predators like seagulls and cormorants. Others make their way into tributaries where they can end up outside the reach of fishermen or stuck in shallow water, dying when they can’t swim any further. Some get caught by fisherman before they’re old enough to return to spawn. Others just get swallowed up in the enormity of one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes, which spans 307 miles long and 118 miles wide at its widest point. 

“There’s no guarantee they’ll stay in the marina. They might make their way to a different point of the lake like the Gary Lighthouse or join Coho salmon and head to a different port or tributary,” he said. “This isn’t a magical silver bullet, but we get just 1% back so hopefully changing the way we stock the lake will help. This will give shore guys a much better opportunity to catch chinook salmon.”

Lake County almost lost its share of the 275,000 chinook salmon the DNR will stock in Lake Michigan this year from a fishery near South Bend. The state agency will stock 100,000 each by Trail Creek in Michigan City and the Portage-Burns Waterway in Burns Harbor.

The DNR was considering not stocking any this year in Lake County, but the Lake County Fish and Game Protection Association in Griffith sprung into action to build massive pens to hold about 37,500 salmon fingerlings in the lake. The idea is to give them time to imprint on the marina so they will come back in the fall of 2027 and then their children and grandchildren will continue to return to the ancestral spawning place. 

“Lake Michigan is stocked with West Coast salmon who are born in creeks and swim into the ocean for a few years. It’s just something they’re programmed to do, to return to the exact area to lay their spawn,” he said. “It’s a genetic trait they’ve developed over thousands of years of evolution. They figure if it’s good enough for their parents to spawn there, it’s good enough for them.”

They will be kept in the pens for about three weeks or until they grow to about four inches long and start to molt.

“Rearing them a little bit also will give them a little time to grow and get away from predators like seagulls and cormorants,” he said. 

About eight or nine Lake County Fish and Game Protection Association volunteers will feed them three times a day and scrub the pens clear of algae, Connie “Mugg” Dembowski said. About 37,500 chinook salmon will be kept in the pens while another 37,500 will be dumped directly into the lake at night, to hopefully escape the detection of shorebirds looking for a seafood snack.

“Chinook salmon are great for the shore fisherman,” Connie “Mugg” Dembowski said. “It’s like catching a marlin where it can take 40 minutes to bring it in. They’re also good eating. It’s the king. It’s the king of salmon.”

Smaller Coho salmon, which typically grow to around 14 pounds but have gotten as large as 28 pounds locally, have been thriving in Lake Michigan.

“Fisherman with charter boats were catching their limits within an hour, this past weekend,” Connie Dembowski said. “There’s an abundance of bait fish to bring them in. It’s been a hot place for fishing for the last few weeks. My husband calls East Chicago the Coho Capital of the World.”

The Griffith-based Lake County Fish and Game Protection Association, a century-old group that waged a successful campaign against the commercial fishing of lake perch, hopes to repopulate chinook salmon in a similar fashion. The hope is to ensure future generations have the deep sea fishing experience in Lake County.

“We had to fight them but this is great for everybody,” he said. “It’s great for the shore fisherman. It’s a lot of effort and a lot of volunteers but we want to see this for the shore fishermen and the charter boats. It makes everybody happy.”

For more information, to volunteer or to donate, email [email protected] or find the Lake County Fish and Game Protection Association on Facebook.