Stop Chumming–Updated

Soap box time~

If you haven’t had a chance to sign the petition to ban chumming for steelhead on our Michigan rivers, please take the time to do so now.

I recently was sent a message from a guide who fishes our home waters, the Muskegon River, and is a proud “chummer.” He poked fun at the fact that we’re actually catching steelhead with flies only as if it’s misguided or too difficult to do. His interpretation of the petition apparently is that we fly fishermen can’t catch steelhead due to the chummers’ advantage in taking steelhead.

Well, he’s spot-on with a couple of points but dead wrong on the bottom line: chumming is so effective in taking steelhead, it needs to be banned as an unsporting method of taking a great game fish. If packing a box with dead steelhead is your game, chumming is the way to go, period. It requires little or no skill; just a bucket of eggs, a bobber, a spawn bag, and whack away.

He’s also correct in inferring that it’s much more difficult for those not chumming to hook steelhead when chumming occurs. Whether you fish spinners, plugs, spawn, and, yes, flies, you will need to search longer, fish harder, and be satisfied with significantly fewer hookups—in part, because greater numbers of steelhead lie dead in fish boxes due to chumming than otherwise would be the case. Read the posts commercial guides who chum put up: it’s all about numbers, numbers of dead steelhead that they correctly claim they catch in greater numbers than other fishermen. Precisely. That’s the point.

He’s dead wrong, though, about the bottom line: check our blogs. We’re catching steelhead; we’re supposed to; that’s our job. Are we hooking fewer steelhead so far this year than in the past (mostly due to a very late winter), absolutely, but we’re managing to provide our clients the sport they come to our river to enjoy.

Chumming isn’t just about us; it affects every non-chumming fisherman on the river. Chumming for steelhead is simply the most deadly method known for taking steelhead. When large amounts of salmon or, God forbid, steelhead eggs are thrown into a run, fish that otherwise might be off their feed turn on to their own peril. Fishing spawn under a bobber is a deadly method in itself, but chumming makes it even more deadly. That’s why chummers do it. It’s a sloppy, messy business that no one would do if it didn’t dramatically bump up catch rates. No matter, too, that it involves taking eggs in huge numbers from the very salmon and steelhead we need to spawn; chumming works big time.

The problem besides inordinate numbers of steelhead dead in fish boxes, though, is that chumming adversely affects others who may be fishing where the chummers toss their eggs. If the fish aren’t hooked, landed, and killed by the chummers, they may become satiated with eggs the chummers have tossed, putting them off their feed when otherwise they might take a spinner, plug, spawn bag, or fly. In short, chumming solely serves the wants of those chumming and places their success ahead of other fishermen who have the misfortune to fish water the chummers have just cleaned out. These fisherman, while some certainly are guides, are more often recreational fishermen who haven’t any idea what has just happened where they are fishing. While some will be successful, many will not. Soon, their lack of success will find them questioning why they went fishing. After several times out with little or no success, they may well conclude that steelhead fishing and even worse, our beloved river, isn’t worth their time. Indeed, some may kiss off fishing and take up golf or any number of other endeavors which are increasingly luring people away from outdoor sport. They lose recreational good times in the out-of-doors they otherwise would have had, and the outdoors loses them.

Fewer fishermen coming to the river, of course, also negatively impacts economic vitality and health of the community. Make no mistake about it: the long term effects of chumming are likely bad all ‘round—to sportsmen, to communities, and to outdoor resources. Fewer fishing licenses, fewer purchases of fishing gear, fewer meals at restaurants, and fewer stays in motels and lodges all spell trouble for our communities and natural resources which depend heavily on revenues generated from such goods and services.

The good news, though, is that we are making headway! There is a buzz within the DNR that may bring this issue to the May meeting regarding cold-water fisheries. Please post and share this information. Continue to push for increased awareness of how chumming is discouraging steelhead fishermen from fishing the Michigan’s great steelhead rivers. The rivers, the steelhead, the people deserve better.

Capt. Steven Kuieck

https://sites.google.com/site/realsteelheadersdontchum/