OK, I grew up in North Dakota and since I’ve lived in MN I fish mainly the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers. ND is not hurting for fish. It’s two lines in the summer and their limits are 6 I believe. On the rivers here the limit is six as well and two lines. I use two lines every time on the river. I don’t get my limit every time out. Some days yes, some days not even close. What it does is allow me to see what they are biting on. Minnow on one, leech on another, maybe try a crawler or maybe jig one and rig another. Handlining I have two raps on one reel at a time. I also use one rod with a jig at the bottom and lindy 18 inches up from that. Many things you can do with two lines. If fishing is hot, I go to one line so I can keep up. It’s extremely rare that any walleye is hooked so bad it won’t live.
As far as the buy a stamp for an extra rod and lower the limit….. Why? What’s the point? More nonsense, you pay more but now can keep half your limit, that’s half arsed. I’d buy a stamp for an extra rod but no way I would spend the money to keep half my limit if I wanted to. I’d stick to the river using my two lines and keeping a full limit if I choose.
Fishing opener on Mille Lacs we had three lines in the water in our boat. Over two days we managed five keepers between the three of us. Talking to the DNR we were on the high end as the average was one keeper per boat per day. So with three lines in how much harm did we do to the fishery? Zero, non, nata.
I’ve been fishing two rods on the river for nearly ten years. I have seen no down size in the number of fish in that system. I have no question MN could handle this. What does hurt it is the yahoo’s that think they need to keep the 20+” fish. I don’t keep anything over 18-19″ on the river. No need to. Rather than buying a dumb stamp to loose your right to half a limit, I would much rather see a stamp for the second line AND a statewide slot of 14-20″ with only one being over 28″. Those 20-28″ fish are the breeders, quite keeping them for table fair. They don’t taste as good anyway. Make the stamp an extra $20 so not just any Joe will buy it. Raise the cost of out of state licenses and charge them $40 for the stamp. Use the extra revenue to up your stocking efforts.
The excuse of “you’ll catch more fish”, “You’ll keep more fish” and “You’ll kill the fishery” are like crying wolf. You can only have six in possession. Doesn’t matter how you get them, it’s straight up six. If you need more than six in a week or so then you better read the fish eating advisories.
In Wisconsin it’s three lines. They have a lot of tourism and a lot of residents. Haven’t heard their fishery declining. In fact, didn’t someone just post about the WI DNR upping the walleye bag limit? But yea, it kills fisheries all right. 
