Mille Lacs closure Monday at 10 pm

http://www.startribune.com/dnr-closure-of-walleye-fishing-season-imminent-on-mille-lacs/320427622/

Awesome. Let’s leave more big walleyes in there to keep them eating little walleyes. That should work

Im so sick of mille lacs. I say kill it off. Oh wait thats what there doing anyway.. nevermind

(queue everyone thinking they could manage the lake all by themselves)

no the DNR has been doing a fantabulous job already !!!

riverrat56 wrote:

Awesome. Let’s leave more big walleyes in there to keep them eating little walleyes. That should work

Hhhmm…I know this has been talked about, and I think it’s brilliant! Have a 1 fish limit of fish over say 22″. I say ta’ hell with what they say is the maximum amount of allotted lbs that can be taken. Clean up some of those larger fish and try and get things back to a more ‘normal’ ratio of bigs to littles in that lake. Does a couple things: Keeps people fishing and it keeps the resorts turning some dollars. Instead we are talking about a special session to help out the resorts! I wonder what the Eno’s at Twin Pines have to say about this. Great people right there…RR

roosterrouster wrote:

I wonder what the Eno’s at Twin Pines have to say about this. Great people right there…RR

“I feel like nobody listened,” said Linda Eno, owner of Twin Pines Resort in Garrison. “I was sitting with some customers when I got the text … they are sick about it, sick. Everybody is disgusted, saddened and sickened.

From this article in today’s StarTrib:

http://www.startribune.com/dnr-closure-of-walleye-fishing-season-imminent-on-mille-lacs/320427622/

-J.

1 fish limit… 1 walleye 22-27 7/8″….. but first you have to catch and keep 3 Northerns that are under 35″… and keep 6 smallies over 16″ and all while having no trace of water in your boat when your done…

big_g wrote:

1 fish limit… 1 walleye 22-27 7/8″….. but first you have to catch and keep 3 Northerns that are under 35″… and keep 6 smallies over 16″ and all while having no trace of water in your boat when your done…

sktrwx2200 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>big_g wrote:</div>
1 fish limit… 1 walleye 22-27 7/8″….. but first you have to catch and keep 3 Northerns that are under 35″… and keep 6 smallies over 16″ and all while having no trace of water in your boat when your done…

Dont give them any ideas!

Can’t they airlift a couple million pounds from URL and drop them in Mille???

Fishing by the bands is still a little under their quota, but their take of walleye is not the problem, Landwehr said. The Mille Lacs Band’s decision was “a good-faith effort,” he said, but is “not going to make a significant difference in the harvest or significant recovery of the lake.”
The man is blind…

yes, removing 25,000 lbs has nothing to do with shutting down a lake, because the rest of us took 28,000 lbs… of 19-21″ fish, that is the problem… Landwehr is a dipshi7. (mortality happens in nets and with hook and line)

Somebody should ask the DNR if the deer the natives harvest affect the herd at all ? They probably don’t either…?

I just figured it out ! If they allow all of us to net during the spawn, the lake should recover just fine, because them walleyes do not affect the overall health of the lake !!!!

Tony Arnold wrote:

(queue everyone thinking they could manage the lake all by themselves)

Exactly. And whatever the future direction is, it will of course be universally panned because it won’t be a simple, single factor fix and it won’t involve the much-fantasized-about ban on tribal netting.

And queue everyone complaining and finger pointing when it isn’t “fixed” by next year. It surprised me that there seems to be no discussion of the really bad-bad news in all this: That Mille Lacs is going to be shut down or severely restricted for years to come.

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

It surprised me that there seems to be no discussion of the really bad-bad news in all this:

Only about a million threads in the last three years…

FishBlood&RiverMud wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>TheFamousGrouse wrote:</div>
It surprised me that there seems to be no discussion of the really bad-bad news in all this:

Only about a million threads in the last three years…

Yup…That is the problem. They don’t listen to the people that are in the fields, woods or on the lakes. They don’t know how valuable OUR information is. But they sure do like the paychecks that come from our pockets…RR

Based largely on what I’ve read here on IDO, I feel like the whole Mille Lacs saga boils down one group who feels entitled to keep the walleyes fighting with the other group who feels entitled to keep the walleyes. If you’re part of the fight, you can pick which of the aforementioned groups you fit into. It really is too bad that the lake is closed to even C&R walleye fishing at this point.

FishBlood&RiverMud wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>TheFamousGrouse wrote:</div>
It surprised me that there seems to be no discussion of the really bad-bad news in all this:

Only about a million threads in the last three years…

Yes, of course, but what attention does anyone pay to anglers?

I was referring to the mainstream media coverage of the situation which seems to be largely focused on what will happen next week and next month and the impact on the resorts, etc. All the focus on the short term is driving a message that somehow there’s a quick fix out there.

Grouse

Oh gotcha gotcha. Agreed.

DaveB wrote:

Can’t they airlift a couple million pounds from URL and drop them in Mille???

I believe this was tongue in cheek, but you watch, Red will be in a very similar state of peril in the very near future.
They have already dropped the limit and changed the size distribution of the slot because of the harvest success the last several years.
Red is heading down the same path again. The number of fish harvested on that lake in the winter is almost unfathomable.

I think Mille Lacs is a total and necessary wake up call for fishermen in this day and age. With all the advances in technology it’s become a lot easier for people to find and catch fish than in the past.

Mille Lacs is a reminder that even the biggest lakes can be overfished. Whether it’s netting(it’s not just netting) or by hook and line, it doesn’t matter. Walleyes, panfish, northern, you name it.

Anglers don’t want to admit that they share part of the blame.

I see it every year up at LOTW, the same group of three guys show up to the fish cleaning shack four days in a row with three limits of walleye. I’m sure they are eating their full limit every night though, so nothing wrong with that.

Joe McCabinOwner shows up to Mille Lacs every weekend of the summer for 15 years and takes home 8 limits of walleye for him and his wife and stuffs them in his freezer.

“It’s a big lake, it’s like taking a grain of sand from the beach.”

Except that Joe McCabinOwner’s neighbor Harold Von Limitsschtein has done the exact same thing for the past 30 years. And who can forget their pal a few miles up the road, Frederique de Freezerstuffier.

It can happen anywhere and probably will continue to happen if something isn’t done.

“I only want to fish Mille Lacs if I can get a bunch of keepers! What is this slot nonsense, there’s no keepers left, it’s the indians! Darn indians are stealing our walleye! Where are my keepers!!!!”

-Harold Von Limitsschtein, who possesses 145 freezer burned walleye filets in his chest freezer at home.

john23 wrote:

Based largely on what I’ve read here on IDO, I feel like the whole Mille Lacs saga boils down one group who feels entitled to keep the walleyes fighting with the other group who feels entitled to keep the walleyes. If you’re part of the fight, you can pick which of the aforementioned groups you fit into. It really is too bad that the lake is closed to even C&R walleye fishing at this point.

I would say it really boils down to two issues. One being equality (or lack there of) in the application of the law. Race base laws agreed to 178 years ago, by people born over 200 years ago. And two would be netting during the SPAWN. If netting during the spawn were biologically sound with no negative impact on a fisheries health, why don’t we allow it everywhere? Until these two issues are addressed there will ALWAYS be significant disagreement.

Shutting the lake down for this year is nothing more than a temporary “band-aid” solution. Same with removing the nets next year… The real problem is that the management system that is in place is a joke. Until they go back to the drawing board on how the lake should be managed this mess will happen again.

Here are a 3 very easy and achievable steps that need to take place…

1 – Fall surveys should be conducted in October, not September… Setting shallow water located nets in September will not provide an accurate measure for the number of walleyes. Anyone who has pulled cranks in the Fall over the past half dozen years knows that there are have been very few walleyes shallow until October.

2 – Work on improving the accuracy (And transparency) of creel surveys for what for what is being caught by hook & line. Work with the resorts and local bait shops to make detailed log sheets available to each and every angler fishing the lake.

3 – Work with GLIFWIC to improve transparency for the netting harvest numbers… For the ammount of federal funding that is poured into that organization honestly don’t think it’s unreasonable to provide a daily log showing the number of nets placed and size/length for each fish caught.

Will

philtickelson wrote:

I think Mille Lacs is a total and necessary wake up call for fishermen in this day and age. With all the advances in technology it’s become a lot easier for people to find and catch fish than in the past.

Mille Lacs is a reminder that even the biggest lakes can be overfished. Whether it’s netting(it’s not just netting) or by hook and line, it doesn’t matter. Walleyes, panfish, northern, you name it.

While on the surface that seems to make a lot of sense Phil and it is accurate to say that fishing pressure can take a toll on a lake as big as Mille Lacs, IMO the numbers don’t really support this theory… 20 years ago (before the current slots were introduced) the number of walleyes harvested were on the order of more than 5-10 times more than the amount harvested over the past several years so there is definitely much more at play here then simply over-harvesting the lake.

Will

Agreed @Will, also if fishing mortality were as big of factor as we are being led to believe, how were there any fish left after 2008-2012 when there were lines of boats circling every flat? This whole situations stinks, and I believe there is a lot more going on than we (the public) are being allowed to know.

Will Roseberg wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>philtickelson wrote:</div>
I think Mille Lacs is a total and necessary wake up call for fishermen in this day and age. With all the advances in technology it’s become a lot easier for people to find and catch fish than in the past.

Mille Lacs is a reminder that even the biggest lakes can be overfished. Whether it’s netting(it’s not just netting) or by hook and line, it doesn’t matter. Walleyes, panfish, northern, you name it.

While on the surface that seems to make a lot of sense Phil and it is accurate to say that fishing pressure can take a toll on a lake as big as Mille Lacs, IMO the numbers don’t really support this theory… 20 years ago (before the current slots were introduced) the number of walleyes harvested were on the order of more than 5-10 times more than the amount harvested over the past several years so there is definitely much more at play here then simply over-harvesting the lake.

Will

So does it not make sense that if 20 years ago there were that many more walleyes taken, then there would be that many fewer walleyes to spawn for next years class, thus leaving us with a steady decline of fish? So how is over harvesting not one of the main issues here?

Prior to the netting and corresponding slots (1999) Mille Lacs produced hundreds of thousands of pounds of walleye year in and out. This nose dive coincides with the netting during the spawn, and the slot that skewed the population toward large fish.

Simply, its the nets, its the hook and line, it’s the DNR, it’s me, it’s you…. where’s my blue ribbon ?

Plain and simple combination of a slot designed to lessen the take and the netting that also goes for the same slot. Be careful what you wish for you cannot have a lake with the all the fish being large they eat the forage base down. They are not the best spawning fish. Slots that are biologically geared to protect a fishery for natural reproduction AKA Lac Suel protected the one scientifically proven to be the best spawners not who lays the most eggs that hatch in a jar at a hatchery in controlled conditions. Like MN does they favor the big girls just based on egg count. Lac Seul studies found out that protecting the 18 inch to 21 inch fish had the highest reproduction value. So they let you keep fish under that and one over 21. That also creates a more diverse walleye community of large and small sizes year classes etc. It had been netted to the extent of red lake and crashed in the late 70’s early 80’s. Now it is arguably one of the best walleye fisheries on the planet. Netting was stopped and this biological slot was put in. As long as this treaty style management exist there will be no change. And in regards to poorly thought out slots look to data on Leech Winnie and Vermillion. Big fish increasing, perch disappearing no keepers hmmmmm sounds familiar don’t it

Minnesota the land of 1 lake and 1 species of fish