Any action related to stocking taken on the Lake takes two years to take effect. 2013, the alewife hatch was almost non-existent, and that was repeated in 2014, as seen in the 2015 trawls. Stocking was reduced in 2016 by 20%, which was estimated to reduce predation by 10% when the natural reproduction, estimated as equal to what is being stocked, was taken into account. This past year was the last "pre-cut" year, and the preliminary data on the 2017 bait hatch says the fish out there chowed down last year's "record" bait hatch and the remains of the prior years pretty well, and there was only a moderate hatch out there last year. I personally think the biologists are doing a masterful job of managing the fish and indicating the state of the lake, we could very easily have gone the way of Lake Michigan without some action, and we are not 100% out of the woods yet. Certainly, if they had just let the Charter fleet have their way, and continued stocking all those predators along with the natural reproduction, which they can't control and which could be very good one year and could fail the next (it'll be interesting to see what recruits after the steambath of a river this past summer), we could be very close to Michigan now. Certainly the size of the kings is down, fall LCO 2017 was won by a 39 pounder, 2018, just 31. It has been a strange year, as there have been numerous reports of next to no salmon on the Canadian side of the lake all spring and summer. Of course, 20-20 hindsight based on conjecture is certainly the superior management technique. Perhaps you should reveal how you are getting your natural reproduction data, other than "I think." I think a lot of things but doesn't make it science.