It’s November. We now know the Lake is healthier than expected. Why wasn’t the night ban lifted now instead of in December? They should have done it when they announced the winter regulations. The number of people that will fish the lake this month in open water is trivial. Always has been, always will be. I assume the same is true for when we get safe ice.
Probably to keep the 2018 harvest lower, I know we are below the safe harvest. Dec 1st starts the 2019 allocated season.
Why are you asking us? No one here knows why. 
It’s November. We now know the Lake is healthier than expected. Why wasn’t the night ban lifted now instead of in December? They should have done it when they announced the winter regulations. The number of people that will fish the lake this month in open water is trivial. Always has been, always will be. I assume the same is true for when we get safe ice.
Honestly, you probably answered your own question—such a minuscule amount of people and impact made to where doing so was pointless.
Keep in mind there are some regs they can’t change. Even if they can in many cases they really shouldn’t.
With the quota a legal agreement between the DNR and the Ojibwe bands, and that number being based strictly off of hooking mortality, and the night ban being a measure to reduce the amount amount/rate of fish being counted towards the quota……and this all being agreed to a long time ago, well before the season started, I think there’s a very good chance lifting wasn’t an option.
If it was an option? I’m glad they left it.
Mille Lacs represents an amount of regs that is like no other lake. People have a hard time keeping them straight as it is. There are times when the DNR needs to make management changes outside what’s printed the rule book (take the cluster-eff that was the 2017 open water season for example numero uno), and making a change of such little significance isn’t worth the time, effort, muddying the waters, and burning a press release because the more volume of those = the less attention paid to them and importance they have.
Plus, I’m not sure if you’ve gone out yet now that we had daylight savings but it gets dark pretty freaking early the month of November. If you’re at the landing at 10pm close, good chance your rig will be the only one there, and guess what?
You just fished almost five hours of night!
A night ban in June? Very different story getting off at 10pm.
November though? Would you really be out a bunch fishing past midnight if you could?
P.S. if you buy some bigger crankbaits or use bigger suckers for bait—you can fish all night if you’d like.
This one just isn’t worth questioning, it’s fine as it is, plus if we’re going to collectively complain about a piece of management that needs to be changed….let’s save it for things of much more importance than this.
Zander brings up a good point. Even before daylight savings, it was still basically getting dark at 6:15, leaving people with hours of fishing time. I have been up there a lot, and there were only a couple boats at each access at dusk.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
