DNRs Seeking Input from Those Unable to Attend Border Waters Meetings

Recently the MN and WI DNRs held five joint meetings to seek input on length and bag limit regulations as part of a regulation review for the Mississippi River portion of the border water between the two states.

These regulations have been largely unchanged for the last 25-50 years depending on species.

During these meetings we used an audience response system that allowed every person in attendance to provide input (via a small remote control) on every question we asked.

We have converted the questions presented into a fillable PDF form that individuals who were unable to attend a meeting can use to get us their opinions and feedback.

This is just the first step in the process, but is an important one. Any potential regulation change proposals will need to have strong support to be able to pass through the rule making processes of both states in a timely manner, and the public opinions gathered during this process will be used to determine what if any changes might meet those criteria.

So…..

If you would like to participate and fill out the questionnaire, please send me an email requesting to participate in the border water regulation review.

My e-mail address is [email protected]

A copy of the questionnaire will be sent to you via e-mail. The PDF contains over 70 multiple choice questions each with a drop down list of responses. It is important that we get complete sets of answers. Please take the time to fill out the entire questionnaire. There will also be a second PDF with instructions for submitting the results back to me electronically.

All input provided will be provided to both the MN DNR and the WI DNR. We will be accepting comments until July 31st, 2018 as part of this process.

Thanks in advance to all who participate, thanks to those who already attended meetings or helped in testing the PDF, and as always feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Nick

Sent an email!

Thanks Nick – I’ll get this to the guys in the Red Wing Fishing League that weren’t able to attend the meeting.

Thank you Nick for giving us a chance to voice our opinions. Email sent

Email sent, thanks Nick.

Done and sent back.
Why was there nothing about sturgeon?

Sturgeon were not addressed in the questions for a few reasons.

1) Unlike the other species on the list sturgeon went through a review that changed their MN angling status statewide in 2015. Wisconsin matched those efforts in 2016. This means that the sturgeon rules on the border waters are only really a few years old.

2) The review questions were focused on bag and size limits, and Lake Sturgeon are catch and release only for the river. As a species of special concern in MN we would need much stronger data about the size and state of our Lake Sturgeon population in the Mississippi River before we would consider potential harvest.

We are working to collect better data about our Lake Sturgeon population on the river with several tagging projects underway, but the nature of long lived slow reproducing fish and the complex interconnected system of the Mississippi River and its tributaries means those things will take time.

Thanks, Nick — email sent, looking forward to it.

Email sent. Thanks for your efforts Nick.

Yeah close any harvest of Sturgeon for the next 100 years…. Where do I sign!

FishBlood&RiverMud wrote:

Yeah close any harvest of Sturgeon for the next 100 years…. Where do I sign!

I will be happy to put my mark on that.

Bump

Hi Nick,

Several years ago, a protected slot for walleyes was implemented on the Mississippi river flowing between Iowa and Illinois. All walleye between 20″-27″ must be immediately released. The harvest slot is walleye between 15″-20″ with one trophy over 27″ allowed.

Are you aware of any research results that show what affect this protected slot has had on the walleye fishery? I would think the biologists would be able to compare the Mississippi walleye fisheries in the pools that lay between Iowa and Wisconsin that did not implement the protected slot to the Iowa and Illinois pools which did.

Intuitively one would think the protect slot would improve the fishery, but what do the research results indicate, and how significant is the difference? I tried to do an internet search for this subject but did not find any published literature.

Thanks.

For all those who have requested and/or submitted the comment forms for the Border waters regulation review. Thank you!

We really appreciate all the feedback that we are getting.

We have had a number of folks who have submitted questionnaires that are blank.
I am not sure if the wrong file is getting attached for the return trip or if there is some other issue.

In order to make sure everyone’s opinions are properly recorded I would ask that you open the file you attach to an e-mail if that is the way you are submitting before you send to verify that it is filled out.

On my end I will send out a receipt e-mail to anyone who submits responses. I have a few meetings this week so may not be able to respond immediately, but if you don’t hear back from me within a few business days please contact me to verify your answers were received.

I apologize for any inconvenience, but I know more about fish than IT and want to make sure we get the best input possible.

Thanks again,

Nick

We appreciate the responses we are getting from folks. We have had some technical difficulties with the form we developed, so have produced the same form in a number of formats.

We now have the PDF form we had been using, a Google forms (web based) option that should get around our issues with the iOS standard PDF reader, and if need be an Excel option if the first two don’t work.

I have had some excellent side discussions about regulations with some of the members of the site (Boone check your PM again), and really appreciate the opportunity to discuss the resource and regulatory options with folks.

Keep contacting me if you have interest in filling out the questionnaire to contribute to the reg review, and feel free to pass on information about the review to others. We are hoping to collect as much information as possible before the close of our input period July 31st.

Thanks again,

Nick

I’m really interested in how the survey shakes out!

Only a few more weeks to provide your input to the MN and WI DNRs about current and potential future length and bag limits for the Mississippi River portion of the border waters.

The input period will close on July 31st.

We have a Google forms option that has addressed our earlier technical difficulties, so if you weren’t able to get the PDF version to work feel free to contact me again.

To get your link to the survey questions send an email to:

[email protected]

Thanks for the interest.

Nick

Only 5 days left to provide input for the review of current border water fishing regulations on the Mississippi River.

Thanks to the approximately 800 people who have already taken the time to provide there input. If you haven’t provided your input yet the link below will connect you to the questionnaire.

https://bit.ly/MississippiRiverQuestionnaire

As always feel free to contact me with any questions.

Nick

Last day for the survey. See link in previous post to comment.