Nalepa, the Michigan-based biologist, has been studying another, a tiny crustacean known as diporeia, since the 1970s. Now we have zero. The zebra mussel's appetite apparently has starved off the diporeia. It has, according to William Culligan, a Dunkirk-based aquatic biologist who serves as Lake Erie fisheries research unit leader for the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Walleye fishing is down from what it was in the 1980s, but relatively stable in the 1990s.
Smallmouth bass is better than it's ever been.
Jim Hanley, who leads fishing charters on Lake Erie, agrees. He said the material excreted by zebra mussels is being gobbled up by tiny crayfish on the lake bottom. The crayfish are then eaten by fish like the bass. And the number of fish we're catching has skyrocketed. We're catching 30 or 35 bass a day on an average charter.