By Bill Diem
Audrey Baetz expects her arrival at the Newberry DNR offices on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, will be an omen of good luck. She is the new Fisheries Biologist for the Lake Superior watershed east of Independence Lake near Marquette. She mainly concentrates on inland waters, while Marquette-based biologists work mostly with Lake Superior fishing questions. Before Newberry, she worked as a biologist for the Little Traverse Bay tribe.
Fisheries biologists oversee gathering data to support the rules that govern fishing, and “There are a lot of regulations,” she says. The 2025 Michigan Fishing Regulations booklet is 72 pages long.
While rules are complex, “I encourage people to ask questions,” calling or stopping at the new building on M-123.
She understands how complex rules – like the proposed protected slot limits on particular waters – can be difficult to live with. Such rules allow smaller keepers and bigger keepers to be kept, but fish of a certain size good for reproduction must be let go.
However, the point of such rules “is to protect the resources we have, and not bring back resources we have lost,” such as the grayling that Michigan is trying to re-introduce in lower Michigan. “I hope that goes well,” she said.
In Lake Superior, Baetz and other U.P. biologists are planning to propose new rules to reduce bag limits at Stannard Rock and Big Reef.
“They are known for big fish,” she said, and growth in recent harvests suggest that a lower limit should be proposed to “protect what we have now.” New rules are always subject to the data the biologists gather, and to public comment. And to keep from having too many unique rules, she said, the DNR tries to set them for about 12 years.
Sometimes public comment leads to changes. She said a lake near Marquette is being reviewed for possible change in size limits because fishermen report many brook trout being caught, but all under the 10-inch limit.
Her early experience with questions from the public came in April, when people wanted to know where DNR trucks were stocking fish. “They want to know which lakes, and how often they are stocked,” she says.
Later, the questions came from travelers to the Upper Peninsula.
“They want to know where to fish, where they can launch their boats,” Baetz said.
She answers the “where to fish” questions not with GPS co-ordinates, but with places that have both public access and fish.
Research falls into several categories. Status and trends are 10-15 year summaries of major rivers and lakes. Stocking surveys are mainly monitoring the lakes for autumn walleye stocking. And water supply surveys are testing for oxygen and pH content of Upper Peninsula waters.
The Upper Tahquamenon was surveyed for brook trout two or three years ago, and it matched the state average. Around Dollarville the fishing has been good for muskies, walleye and perch, and a survey near the Tahquamenon Falls is coming soon.
Baetz herself fishes, and was after trout in June on the East Branch of the Tahquamenon. It was brushy and hard wading, but she “was happy to be in nature, getting out into the woods. I love to fish.”
On a recent weekend she went after salmon. “But most of my fishing is in winter, on the ice,” she said. “Summer is hot, and fall is for hunting.”
Baetz grew up in metro Detroit and was against hunting as a girl, but after four years of graduate school in Louisiana, she became part of the “becoming an outdoorswoman” movement. This fall will be her third season hunting deer – she has three to her credit with a rifle – and she hopes to get her first with her bow this fall.
Baetz lives in St. Ignace, and it’s a long drive to Newberry, but she says her drive is “like a private wildlife tour.”
