http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/chubs-08112009_0.mp3
The smell of smoked fish mixes with apple and maple wood outside of Monte's Original Smoke House in Frankfort.
The owner Monte Finkhouse says he can't supply enough smoked chub for his customers.
Chubs were THE smoked fish of choice at local retailers up until the mid 90s. They accounted for 90 percent of all smoked fish sold at Monte's small store in Frankfort.
"Chubs are the deepest fish we have," Finkhouse said. "So they're real oily and that makes for good smoked fish."
But now he and most other retailers mainly sell smoked white fish, salmon or lake trout.
"There use to be a lot of chubs out there," Finkhouse said. "It wasn't unusual to lift a ton, or ton0in-a-half of chubs in there. Now 150 pounds is a pretty good lift."
Fishermen lift chubs out of the lake using gill nets.
This summer, smoke houses like Monte's are having a little more luck getting chubs. There are only five licenses available from the state for gill net fishing. And two of those licenses are being used this summer by fishing boats running out of Frankfort and Leland.
Twice a week the fishing tug Kathy motors out of Betsie Bay in search of chub. Dustin Van Orman drives the boat for two hours, placing the fishing crew of three just off of South Manitou Island.
"So far the Manitou seems like the best place where there are some chubs around," Van Orman said. "They're at least flourishing."
Here, chub feed off of the shrimp-like diporeia and water mysis.
The fishermen spend two hours reeling in their mile long gill net. The first net they lift brings in about 250 pounds of the white and silver, hand-sized chub.
The quantity of chub they catch varies from week to week and from net to net.
They lift a second line hoping for an even greater number of chub.
"This doesn't look good," Van Orman said. "We'll be lucky if we get 10 pounds."
But there's easily more than ten pounds of quagga mussels clustered on their gill nets.
The fishermen toss the thumbnail sized invasive species overboard with a large shovel.
Ken Ranville comes from several generations of fishermen. He's fished for over 30 years and witnessed the explosion of mussels in the Great Lakes.
"When I was younger they (mussels) didn't exist in the lakes and now they're just everywhere," Ranville said. "There's enough to pave a road with them."
Ranville blames the mussel for the weak chub fishery.
The number of chubs has decreased more than 99 percent in the past 20 years.
Diporeia are a key food source for chubs. Quagga mussels and Diporeia compete for algae. The population of the shrimp-like organism has decreased more than 90 percent in the past two decades.
Bo Bunnell, a fisheries biologist with the United States Geological Survey, says it is easy to draw connections between invasive mussels and the decline of native Great Lake species.
"The lake only has so much energy and more and more of that energy is being shunted from fish into mussel bio mass," Bunnell said. "There has to be trade offs associated with that."
However, many scientists are not certain if mussels are directly to blame for the precipitous decline of chubs.
The chub population was even smaller in the late 70s, long before mussels were found in Lake Michigan.
Noting these mixed trends, scientists have come up with half-a-dozen hypothesis on the chubs wildly fluctuating numbers.
Some scientists believe their population increases and decreases in 15 year cycles, and the chub is nearing its' low.
Bunnell believes it could be tied to an abundance of the egg eating, and bottom dwelling fish called slimy sculpin. Their numbers have risen sharply the past decade because of a shrinking predator population, like lake trout.
Bunnell is optimistic the chub can rebound again, like they did in the 80s.
"The species has it within itself to come back," Bunnell said. "But it's going to be a tougher road to ho because they've lost diporeia, which is their primary prey.
"It's a different food web now, so I can definitely understand the concern of the commercial fishermen."