Does the state do a good job of managing fish?

Most of the lakes in my area of NY fall under general fish size/creel regulations. Some lakes have an overabundance of small pan fish while others have larger sizes in general. In a span of 40 years, I’ve seen an officer only twice and been checked only once. None of the lakes except one had been shock-surveyed to see what needs protection and that lake is private with low fishing pressure.

Our NYC reservoirs are under fished and never surveyed, but the bass populations averages bass over 2 lbs.

How does all of this compare to your waters and fish management (if any)?

I think MN does well on management. One thing I would like to see is a state wide slot on walleyes something like 15-18inches with one over 26. Also we have an issue with perch we use to have a lot of good perch fishing but now we have less lakes with good size perch. Also they are trying to figure out the pike populations.

I had to wipe up all the coffee I just spit all over the screen….

The MN DNR isn’t sufficiently isolated from politics. To many decisions are made to appease politically powerful groups like farmers, their hands are tied by treaties and court decisions, or they are afraid of riling up the state legislature (who by and large has NO idea what they’re dealing with). A lot of Minnesota’s natural resources are being poorly managed and it’s easy to point the finger at the DNR, but the [problem is bigger than that. Mille Lacs Walleyes, Lake Pepin, polluted lakes and rivers in SW Minnesota, Trout streams in our part of the Driftless region, there are many examples.

We’ve been screwing this state up for 150 years. It’s going to take a while to fix everything.

SR

Allan Davis wrote:

state wide slot on walleyes something like 15-18inches with one over 26.

A “feel good” slot like that may ruin every lake in the state. Looks good on paper, but in reality is not sound management.

-J.

Short answer is NO and I don’t believe the DNR is 100% to blame, not even close. Steve is right on with his comments above

In California, just about all bodies of water and all species of fish are put and take fisheries, meaning that they are stocked by DNR for recreational fishing. The biggest problems we seem to run into is mismanagement at State run hatcheries and heavy stocking of lakes that have natural reproduction. There have been fish kills near a million in the hatcheries this year due to operator error which means plants this year will be highly reduced. The stocking of the lakes that have natural reproduction has led to stunted fish. Not only does DNR typically continue to stock those lakes but they don’t raise the limit on those particular waters to help reduce the population.

Jon Jordan wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Allan Davis wrote:</div>
state wide slot on walleyes something like 15-18inches with one over 26.

A “feel good” slot like that may ruin every lake in the state. Looks good on paper, but in reality is not sound management.

-J.

Took the words right out of my mouth John. Here is extreme southern MN it would be a disaster. Our lakes are boom and bust and winterkill often, I like to see anglers keeping fish because they just might not make it thru the winter.

I think WI does what it can…..sometimes great…sometimes equivalent to dog crap.

The entire issue is the level that it needs to be micro-managed to be effective. There are only so many dollars available and we want everything…doesn’t work that way. Some lakes get shocked, fyke netted, creel survey, and others get nothing. Problem lakes are usually identified once its too late and needs drastic measures to correct the problem.

Slots are great short term solutions for protecting particular year classes. The best waters have a well balanced population of all year classes. The problem we see too often is a change is made to correct one issue and then left alone and a new issue arises.

Too often we get one size band aid applied to multiple wounds and they are not mended the the way they should. Fish biologists, CO’s, and others can only do so much. The tax base isn’t large enough to have a manager working full time to each 50 lakes…but rather a 1000 lakes. Now add in angler greed, poachers, spring spearing, and those that just simply don’t care and you have train wreck.
+

To answer the OP, I think each DNR does the best they can.

Jon Jordan wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Allan Davis wrote:</div>
state wide slot on walleyes something like 15-18inches with one over 26.

A “feel good” slot like that may ruin every lake in the state. Looks good on paper, but in reality is not sound management.

-J.

X 1000’s!! Long term, slot limits will kill off the species they are meant to protect. That is now proven by science and admitted to by most biologists–off the record for many still. Short term–slot limits will help bring back a species that is down and or build multiple year classes that were missing. Long term–proof is in the pudding on numerous lakes these days. “Feel good” slot limit takes ONLY hurt the lake in the long run!! Again–now admitted to by the biologists. sadly–in some cases–locals play the slot limit feel good card and the DNR is NOT doing what they know is right…

Both Steves and Jon share my opinion as well, especially RE: politics and serving the wrong masters. My one wish for the MN DNR would be to reduce daily and/or possession limits for highly targeted species, walleyes and panfish in particular, and make those reduced limits more uniform state wide.

Allan Davis wrote:

One thing I would like to see is a state wide slot on walleyes something like 15-18inches with one over 26.

Read your rules and regulations handbook sometime. There is a rule something similar to this already.

Right now there is only a one over 20. Also one thing they could do better is clean up the trout streams to make them more acceptable to the fish they stock. Same thing with trout lakes. Most lakes the survival rate is low for brookies and rainbows. If they stock more browns there will be a better survival rate because browns aren’t as picky. The stocking costs money and if they spend a little to make the streams more habitable would benefit.

Steve Root wrote:

I had to wipe up all the coffee I just spit all over the screen….

The MN DNR isn’t sufficiently isolated from politics. To many decisions are made to appease politically powerful groups like farmers, their hands are tied by treaties and court decisions, or they are afraid of riling up the state legislature (who by and large has NO idea what they’re dealing with). A lot of Minnesota’s natural resources are being poorly managed and it’s easy to point the finger at the DNR, but the [problem is bigger than that. Mille Lacs Walleyes, Lake Pepin, polluted lakes and rivers in SW Minnesota, Trout streams in our part of the Driftless region, there are many examples.

We’ve been screwing this state up for 150 years. It’s going to take a while to fix everything.

SR

And the winner is….see ^

We talking protected slot or harvest slot?

It’s not just Minnesota that does this, its not even just freshwater. If it is such failure and there is no proof that it helps, why do they do it? Who are these biologists that say it doesn’t work, because I can’t find anything on the internet, although I didn’t try that hard.

Just curious.

Steve Root wrote:

The MN DNR isn’t sufficiently isolated from politics. To many decisions are made to appease politically powerful groups like farmers, their hands are tied by treaties and court decisions, or they are afraid of riling up the state legislature (who by and large has NO idea what they’re dealing with). A lot of Minnesota’s natural resources are being poorly managed and it’s easy to point the finger at the DNR, but the [problem is bigger than that. Mille Lacs Walleyes, Lake Pepin, polluted lakes and rivers in SW Minnesota, Trout streams in our part of the Driftless region, there are many examples.

Exactly.

I see over and over again references to the MN DNR (and others) where people are saying “The DNR should… blah, blah, blah…” And what is missing is not some issue with the DNR, but rather these people’s total lack of understanding that the DNR actually has no power whatsoever to do what these people are suggesting.

My personal favorite lately is somebody on another forum saying that the MN DNR had “caved in” to bunny huggers and was “refusing” to allow wolf hunting. Ummm, actually, the DNR has no say whatsoever in the matter. Wolf hunting is currently banned in MN by the order of a FEDERAL judge. When I pointed this out, the only reply was, “Well, the DNR could allow it if they wanted to.”

Damned if you do…

Grouse

Whoa…The sky is not falling here people. Last time I checked one heck of the waters in Minnesota are covered by a rule of limit 6 and 1 over 20″ (on walleye…). That is a pretty liberal regulation that allows you to fish the way you want and keep the fish you want. Try fishing some of those waters instead of the one’s with regulations you disagree with. To be honest it’s not all gloom and doom. There CERTAINLY are examples that urine me off (Mille Lacs…) but overall they do a decent job IMO…RR

roosterrouster wrote:

Whoa…The sky is not falling here people. Last time I checked one heck of the waters in Minnesota are covered by a rule of limit 6 and 1 over 20″ (on walleye…). That is a pretty liberal regulation that allows you to fish the way you want and keep the fish you want. Try fishing some of those waters instead of the one’s with regulations you disagree with. To be honest it’s not all gloom and doom. There CERTAINLY are examples that urine me off (Mille Lacs…) but overall they do a decent job IMO…RR

I agree!

I don’t know if it’s the DNR’s fault that we have such good fishing within a 8 hour (or much less) drive any any direction for many species of wild and some stocked fish.

Really, tanker walleyes from Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi River.
Jumbo perch in a number of lakes and the river as well.
Trophy Flathead in the MN and Mississippi Rivers
Trophy Channel cats in the Red River and darn good size fish in our other rivers.
Lake Sturgeon and Shovelnose fishing that’s nothing less then awesome.
Panfish both crappies and gills in many lakes and rivers.
Muskies that are breaking records in many of our lakes and rivers.
Pike some very good size pike photos have been shown from the Mississippi, Red Lake, Lake of the Woods and other smaller lakes.
Trout, Len has some awesome photos of stream trout.
The great lakes have there own species that are doing well for the angler if they chose to fish that body of water.

Sure we have our snaffus, but in general I feel the DNR is doing an awesome job on the whole. Hell they are even communicating with the public if you’re signed up to their news releases.

I will add one thing. What hit me in the face that I wasn’t expecting is that just because I think a law or regulation would be good for my area, it may not be the best thing for the whole state.

Allan Davis wrote:

Right now there is only a one over 20. Also one thing they could do better is clean up the trout streams to make them more acceptable to the fish they stock. Same thing with trout lakes. Most lakes the survival rate is low for brookies and rainbows. If they stock more browns there will be a better survival rate because browns aren’t as picky. The stocking costs money and if they spend a little to make the streams more habitable would benefit.

Don’t stream trout not reproduce in lakes? Or do you just mean that the trout stocked in put-and-take lakes don’t survive?

Not sure the complaint here, could you elaborate?

BK, you’re puking rainbows on this one.

I do agree though, I feel the DNR does a decent enough job, for now.

Its time the attention starts getting focused to environmental issues such as restoring shoreline habitat to what it was, restoring creeks and streams to proper functioning tools of nature, and not just glorified drainage pipes, as well as erosion and sediment displacent on micro and macro scales.

Until we start cleaning up our mess that we created in the early 20th century the stocking efforts, bag limits, etc. will be futile.

And to close, public shaming on all pics of ungodly amounts of fish that no single people needs can’t hurt either.

Actually the DNR does very little managing of “fish” and alot more of managing “people”, whether it be anglers, politicians, special interests or “others”. It’s a BIG job !!!

mplspug wrote:

We talking protected slot or harvest slot?

It’s not just Minnesota that does this, its not even just freshwater. If it is such failure and there is no proof that it helps, why do they do it? Who are these biologists that say it doesn’t work, because I can’t find anything on the internet, although I didn’t try that hard.

Just curious.

One example prime is the “Blue Ribbon ” boys at Mille Lacs. They blamed the slot directly for “most” of the problem. Upper Red dropped the slot this year–why? Rainy is in DEEP trouble ( no one has publicly said that but the obvious is in the creel surveys) with many years of slot limits in place…. so that discussion/change is in the works. Winnie has had to narrow the slot ( not enough due to locals “living the dream of too many BIG fish”) to create more harvest of bigger fish–why? The Lake Mille Lacs mess/slot limit caused –behind the scenes is making many in St. Paul and in the Mn. walleye fishery management world squirm–no doubt–especially “off the record”–from LOW to Rainy to Winnie and Leech and the list goes on… as there is more to the story then what is being said publicly. No doubt!

But all that said–I agree–“generally”–the Mn. DNR has done and continues to do a good job statewide…despite the various political pressures that prevent them to use sound common sense science to manage the fisheries in some cases ( too many).

I feel that the Minnesota DNR has a couple of flaws when it comes to game and fish management.

1) They cave to special interests in setting limits and regulations.
case being a lot of these special regulations are put in place to satisfy a small minority of anglers and residents on certain bodies of water. The 750 acre lake my parents retired on north of Park Rapids now has a 12 inch limit on LM Bass none over 12.This combined with the DNR removing almost all the crappies and sunfish and restocking the walleyes and having a 24-36 protected slot on Northerns has our lake messed up. I used to be able to go and between the wife and 2 kids and myselfand catch 30-200 sunfish in 3-4 hrs and keep 15-20 for a meal that were 7-8 inches with some 9-10 inchers released and I think we have 6 sunfish the last 2 yrs, word has it the DNR removed a lot of pannies when they stocked the walleyes.

For those saying that for example a 15-18 and over 20 slot is bad, how do you feel from a management point about keeping 2 under 14 and one over for walleyes?

In a word, NO!

I think that trying to manage a species of animals like the DNR trys to do is a fools errand and the lakes will go through their naturally occuring swings if they are allowed to. When th do nothing right steps in to “fix” a problem things get worse.

They preach we need to protect lakes from invasive species yet they go and “introduce” muskie and stock with fish with a different genetic makeup than native fish which hurts or eliminates natural reproduction then we become dependant on stocked fish (job security?)

Though I suppose if the government can do such a great job with global warming/climate change/or whatever it is I maybe shouldn’t be so discourged. :/

I think MN does a good job as a whole. I would love to see smaller bags limits state wide (3 walleye, 5 crappie, etc).

I used to be a proponent of state wide minimum slot sizes, but the research shows each lake needs to be managed (for size) individually.

Find slot limits and shove them up your A$$! Just my 2 cents.

philtickelson wrote:

Don’t stream trout not reproduce in lakes? Or do you just mean that the trout stocked in put-and-take lakes don’t survive?

Not sure the complaint here, could you elaborate?

Right most lakes the trout cant reproduce, but I am talking about the survival of the stocked fish. A lot of the fish die after a year because the lake has a bad oxygen level or the temp of the lake is to hot. Brook trout and rainbows are more picky they need more specific levels. Brown trout are more hardy they have a wider range of oxygen and temps. The downfall of brown trout they take longer to grow. The complaint is that they should stock more browns because they will survive easier. Also try and make the streams more habitual for long term survival. A lot of streams could be killer with a little work.