Fisheries managers in the Great Lakes area and elsewhere have made relatively few efforts to gather socioeconomic information, or to use what information researchers have produced. Perhaps because resource conflicts involving fisheries have lower intensities than those involving forestry and wildlife, fisheries managers have lagged behind the other two resource professions in using socioeconomic, or human dimensions, information. A published matrix of wildlife agency decisions and concomitant needs for human dimensions information is transferred in this paper to a fisheries context. A new matrix of agency needs for human dimensions research by planning and decision-making horizons is developed and illustrated.