Although I had many memorable and enjoyable years of Salmon fishing in Lake Huron off Southampton, the Bruce Power Plant and my favourite Port, Kincardine the writing was on the wall for the collapse of the Salmon fishery and the reasons why.
With that collapse, other fishing opportunities have emerged.
Just Google "decline of the Salmon in Lake Huron" and you will find many News Articles and Ministry Reports.
One such Article Dated April 19, 2011 http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2011/04/collapse_of_lake_huron_salmon.html Titled "Collapse of Lake Huron salmon fishery offers lessons" with excerpt
"Consequently, native fish species in Lake Huron rebounded after the number of salmon and alewives (neither of which is native to the Great Lakes) plummeted.
Lake Huron now is gaining a reputation for having a fantastic walleye fishery. Anglers are catching just as many fish as they did during the heyday of the salmon fishery; they just aren’t catching many salmon.
Or from this LFP Article Dated March 28, 2016
http://www.lfpress.com/2016/03/27/anglers-prized-chinook-have-crashed-in-huron-thanks-in-part-to-past-efforts-to-cut-pollution Titled "Anglers’ prized Chinook have crashed in Huron, thanks in part to past efforts to cut pollution" with excerpt " Chinook were introduced into the Great Lakes to boost recreational fishing and to control alewives, a herring-like fish that entered the lakes in the late 1940s and 1950s.
But the population of alewives continued to climb in Lake Huron, thriving on the availability of their algae food source that was being boosted by phosphorus nutrients flowing into the lake.
Found in animal and human waste, and in chemical fertilizers, phosphorus washes into the Great Lakes from the vast farm belts they drain on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.
Alewives became the main food source for the Chinook.
But then a couple of things happened.
Communities installed pollution-control plants to reduce the amount of phosphorus entering Huron, and quagga and tiny zebra mussels invaded the lake, sucking up more of the nutrients.
The resulting drop in nutrients in the lake reduced the amount of algae, the base of the lake’s food web.
“The predators and the nutrient limitation ultimately caused the alewive crash,” said Kao.
The alewives population collapse was followed by the sharp decline in Chinook salmon.
But the researchers suggest it isn’t necessarily bad news.
The lower level of nutrients in the lake makes it a better habitat for native fish species, such as walleye, lake trout, lake whitefish and lake herring, they wrote.