Page 11 - Vermilion Lake Association Spring 2021 Newsletter

Figure 1. Gill-net catch rate (fish/net) of walleye in Lake Vermilion from 1984-2020. The horizontal dashed line represents the management plan objective. The solid line represents the 3-year moving average.
Muskellunge
Muskies provide an import- ant catch-and-release sport fishery on Lake Vermilion. The muskie population was established via a stocking program that began in the late 1980s with the goal
of providing a low densi-
ty, high quality fishery. In 2020, DNR had planned to conduct the second year of
a two-year effort to get a population estimate of adult muskies in Lake Vermilion. Due to safety concerns with the COVID-19 pandemic, that assessment was not completed. Options for obtaining population esti- mates in the future are being evaluated. During the most recent assessment conducted in 2019, muskies averaged 44.7 inches in length and over 10-percent of the fish sampled were 50 inches or larger.
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Figure 2. Length frequency distribution of gill-net captured walleye (dark bars) in Lake Vermilion in 2020 in relation to the historic median length frequency distribution from 1984 to 2019 (light gray).
Figure 3. Length frequency distribution of smallmouth bass captured during spring electrofishing in East Vermilion (light gray bars) and West Vermilion (dark gray bars) in 2020.
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