From today’s Pioneer Press.
DNR tightens walleye limits on Upper Red Lake
By Dave Orrick
[email protected]
Posted: 11/17/2014 12:01:00 AM CST | Updated: about 13 hours ago
Minnesota walleye anglers on Upper Red Lake blasted through recommended “safe harvest” levels this year, prompting state regulators to tighten limits on the rapidly advancing ice season.
The Department of Natural Resources announced Monday that starting Dec. 1, the daily bag limit would be three walleye shorter than 17 inches, or two in that range and one over 26 inches. The past two winters, a more relaxed scheme had been employed, with a four-fish daily bag and a 20- to 26-inch protected slot.
The lake’s walleye population is healthy and at no risk of collapsing, a DNR fisheries biologist said, but a sustained take equal to the 2014 take could lead to problems.
“The fish population is in great shape,” said Gary Barnard, Bemidji area fisheries supervisor for the DNR. “Recruitment (survival to adulthood) is great, and we’ve got a number of great year classes out there. But we need to keep it that way.”
Unsustainable commercial netting by American Indians and overfishing led to a collapse of walleye stocks in both Upper and Lower Red lakes in the late 1990s. The lakes were stocked and closed to walleye fishing until 2006, when populations had recovered.
Ever since, the walleye fishery has been burgeoning, with excellent fishing and increasing fishing pressure, especially from ice anglers. Management of the waters is via agreements between the state of Minnesota, which has jurisdiction over 40 percent of 120,000-acre Upper Red Lake, and the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, which has jurisdiction over the rest of Upper Red and the entirety of Lower Red.
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Those agreements set a range of safe harvest levels based on three-year averages.
The upper kill limit for non-tribal anglers is 168,000 pounds of walleye annually. In 2013 (Dec. 1, 2012, to Nov. 30, 2013), the kill was estimated at 156,000 pounds. The 2014 kill is estimated to be 231,000 pounds.
“We blew right by ‘er,” Barnard said. “The plan allows us to exceed the harvest in a single year, but we need to average our way back.”
Barnard said the reasons for the high harvest starts with increasing fishing pressure, likely anglers diverting from other destination lakes, such as Lake Mille Lacs. It also probably includes the proliferation of wheeled ice fishing houses, which depend on large lakes with regularly plowed ice road systems. Another factor: good fishing, which began in May and persisted into the summer, he said.
The ice fishing part of the equation isn’t small. Last year, the hard-water take was 119,000 pounds, a record since the lake reopened in 2006.
And this year is shaping up to be a long and successful winter for ice fishing. The lake is already frozen, with anglers on foot venturing out to work near-shore areas. The area has received little snowfall, so without an insulating blanket, ice is thickening daily as cold temperatures persist.
“I have a feeling we’ll be ice fishing in December,” Barnard said, referring to the time when ice is thick enough for trucks to haul ice houses onto the lake — and take advantage of a famously hot early-winter bite.
What all this might add up to: Come the May walleye fishing opener, regulations might have to be tightened again, Barnard said.
“We don’t know at this point, but they certainly won’t be looser,” he said.
Traditionally, the expanded 17- to 26-inch slot is in place for the beginning of the open-water season, but Barnard said that if enough walleye are killed this winter, it’s possible the DNR could decide to drop the daily bag to two fish. “It’s just too early to know.”
The Indian harvest is estimated at 700,000 pounds for 2014. That’s within the band’s safe-harvest level. Because roughly 40 percent of the band’s take is via commercial nets, Barnard said band officials have the ability to put the brakes on the harvest.
“If they had exceeded their safe harvest level by the same percentage we did, I don’t know what that would have done to the lake,” he said.
Edit to add link to Minnesota DNR press release:
-J.