Michigan Department of Natural Resources
Research and Development Report No. 207
Institute for Fisheries Research Report No. 1769, 1970
Lake Trout Fishery on the Caribou Island Grounds
Mercer H. Patriarche and James W. Peck
Introduction.-There are offshore stocks of native lake trout in Lake Superior which might be able to sustain a small commercial fishery because they are not subject to severe lamprey predation and are inaccessible to sport fishermen. One of these fishing areas is near Caribou Island which is 35-40 miles north of Grand Marais, Michigan. The grounds consist of several submerged, uplifted plateaus (locally known as “banks”) which lie offshore around the island in both Canadian and U.S. waters. An assessment program for the stocks in American waters was started in 1967 when four commercial fishermen were contracted by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to fish these grounds under an annual quota of 60,000 pounds. The Great Lakes unit in the Research and Development Division was asked to review the data and prepare recommendation for a quota in 1970. This report was prepared to show the results of a detailed analysis of these data in which Ricker’s yield equation was used to estimate an optimum level of harvest.