News is in Catch and Release! for Mille Lacs

Catch-and-release summer walleye season announced for Mille Lacs Lake

MN DNR

Link to story.

Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see anything about a night fishing ban?

That’s what I am wondering as well. For sure going up opening night pulling stick baits shallow… if its allowed

What a mess of rules to follow.

Now you have to measure your bait! Bait shops will love that. ‘Wait, I want a refund on my suckers, a couple where shortys!”

“In addition to the catch-and-release regulation, and to help keep the walleye season open on Mille Lacs through Labor Day, the lake will have a 21-day walleye fishing closure from Friday, July 7 to July 27. During that 21-day period, anglers can fish for all other species in Mille Lacs Lake including bass, muskies and northerns but only with artificial bait and lures.

An exception exists for anglers targeting northern pike and muskellunge only, and who don’t possess walleye gear. Those anglers may possess and use live sucker minnows longer than 8 inches when fishing.”

The state anglers are alloted 44,800 pound of fish, but since the ice fishing season was so good, estimates are that we are already 1/3 into our limit.

“Our next milestone for success is to observe another abundant year class of walleye,” Pereira said. “We need more than one year when a lot of walleye hatch. What we need to see is large numbers of walleyes surviving beyond the first year to add more spawning fish to the population. We’ve not seen that yet.”

Maybe because the big walleye are eating the small walleye?

Define: walleye gear?

What is the total allotment and how was it split? Did they split the allotment 50/50 between the “sportsmen” and the tribes?

That information seems to be withheld from the press release.

Additionally, state and tribal leadership agreed to return to an overage system, through which each party will be required to deduct any harvest above its allocation from a future year’s allocation.

This is complete BS. Trying to control myself here.

If the allowable harvest is based on surveys from the fall of the previous year, then there is no reason to factor in mortality from the prior year into next year’s projections.

When creating a budget or forecast and you have a hard number as a base, you do not add a factor to adjust that base for anything that occurred prior to the base number. The number is the number. It can’t be anything else.

Let’s say you take inventory on 1/2016 and find that have 100 of something. Then you buy and sell a bunch of them over the course of a year and take inventory again on 1/2017.

That new inventory is your base. If that base is now 200 it doesn’t matter so much how you got there. It is what it is. It is 200 and that is all it can be.

You can get there from any number of inventory adjustments. Over buying widgets, under counting the previous inventory, dispensing less inventory the prior year than what you thought, miscounted receipts, etc. Those things don’t matter when looking forward. The new inventory is your new base. You don’t adjust that base number by some factor to appease Tim from accounting because Ron under counted the prior inventory. It is what it is. You move forward.

What the state agreed to here is retribution. Pure political dung. We are being penalized for no biological reason and they are writing this up in happy speak hoping people will not understand what just happened.

This is Mille Lacs here. It’s not supposed to make sense.

Kyhl wrote:

What the state agreed to here is retribution.

Yep. Did you really think there’d be no consequences for Governor Trustfund backing over his own agreement and keeping the season open last year to appease the resort owners?

Like it or not, the State can’t dictate to the MLBO. If you negotiate a deal and then renege on it, there’s going to be consequences the next time you come to the table. Put the blame where it belongs, Governor Trustfund caved in to the resort owners who wanted fishing to stay open at any cost, both present and future.

Grouse

What a blunder! Nice job crushing the resorts again. Closing during the 4th of July holiday week. Couldn’t wait until Monday the 10th? If there were any thought actually put into this closure, it would start later and end mid August.

-J.

I am also wondering about night fishing? Since it was not addressed does it mean we will be allowed?

Also, looks like no fall trolling again this year with the September 4th closure????. Not that it won’t likely be closed by then,anyways…….

Matt

I would assume the night closure to continue. (Starting Sunday night after the opener. )

-J.

Jon Jordan wrote:

What a blunder! Nice job crushing the resorts again. Closing during the 4th of July holiday week. Couldn’t wait until Monday the 10th? If there were any thought actually put into this closure, it would start later and end mid August.

-J.

I’m guessing there was A LOT of thought put into it, and that’s why they picked that time frame.

Is anyone really surprised by this? I mean the resort owners had to see something like this coming right?

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Yep. Did you really think there’d be no consequences for Governor Trustfund backing over his own agreement and keeping the season open last year to appease the resort owners?

Like it or not, the State can’t dictate to the MLBO. If you negotiate a deal and then renege on it, there’s going to be consequences the next time you come to the table. Put the blame where it belongs, Governor Trustfund caved in to the resort owners who wanted fishing to stay open at any cost, both present and future.

Grouse

Yep, I expected retribution, but label it what it is. Don’t lie. Don’t obfuscate. Publish the truth, not their spin. Give us the facts.

I’m still waiting to see what the 44,000 lbs means, half of 90,000? The tribes got 50% of the allocation? On top of the made up retribution?

Where are the results of the DNR netting/survey results, that the regulations are supposed to be based off of? We were told previously that those 2013/14 year classes were too small to show up in those, thus the biomass was significantly lower than angler reports thought. That should no longer be the case.

Kyhl wrote:

I’m still waiting to see what the 44,000 lbs means, half of 90,000? The tribes got 50% of the allocation? On top of the made up retribution?

Revealed at the Mille Lacs Advisory Committee meeting by the DNR was that the tribes rejected the 90,000 pounds safe allowable harvest with the 50/50 split proposed by the DNR and countered with 64,000 pounds with a 70/30 split. So there you have that…70% of 64,000 gives you the 44,800…exactly the amount stated in this news release. Now subtract the 14,000 winter harvest leaves 30,000 pounds. Then subtract the additional 1700 pounds for the overage, 6,800 pounds spread over 4 years.
Actually this “news” isn’t really news at all as this was all learned a couple weeks ago. This is just the official confirmation to have it communicated prior to the start of the NW Sport Show.

Jon Jordan wrote:

What a blunder! Nice job crushing the resorts again. Closing during the 4th of July holiday week. Couldn’t wait until Monday the 10th? If there were any thought actually put into this closure, it would start later and end mid August.

-J.

Closing on Friday July 7th would be the weekend after the “holiday” weekend in my book… That might deter some of the folks up for he “holiday week” but I am guessing most of the holiday traffic will be “as usual” which wasn’t very many boats on the north side last year.

bad deal, but you knew something had to be coming down the pipe after last year..

Nobody should be surprised that the tribe was challenging to deal with after Gov. Dayton kept the season open last year. Right or wrong, good or bad, nobody should be surprised by the tribe’s position.

Walleyestudent Andy Cox wrote:

Revealed at the Mille Lacs Advisory Committee meeting by the DNR was that the tribes rejected the 90,000 pounds safe allowable harvest with the 50/50 split proposed by the DNR and countered with 64,000 pounds with a 70/30 split. So there you have that…20% of 64,000 gives you the 44,800…exactly the amount stated in this news release. Now subtract the 14,000 winter harvest leaves 30,000 pounds. Then subtract the additional 1700 pounds for the overage, 6,800 pounds spread over 4 years.
Actually this “news” isn’t really news at all as this was all learned a couple weeks ago. This is just the official confirmation to have it communicated prior to the start of the NW Sport Show.

Thanks. 70% of 64k = 44.8k. I get it now.

I’m still contemplating the penalty scenario.

The press release says that the DNR is doing this because of low walleye #’s then out of the other side of their mouth they reference how this past Winters fishing was so good (which we have all been saying for months!). So how could this past fishing have been sooooo good if the walleye population is sooooo low? They could be the dumbest government entity to ever govern this State. So stupid it hurts…RR

Walleyestudent Andy Cox wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Kyhl wrote:</div>
I’m still waiting to see what the 44,000 lbs means, half of 90,000? The tribes got 50% of the allocation? On top of the made up retribution?

Revealed at the Mille Lacs Advisory Committee meeting by the DNR was that the tribes rejected the 90,000 pounds safe allowable harvest with the 50/50 split proposed by the DNR and countered with 64,000 pounds with a 70/30 split. So there you have that…20% of 64,000 gives you the 44,800…exactly the amount stated in this news release. Now subtract the 14,000 winter harvest leaves 30,000 pounds. Then subtract the additional 1700 pounds for the overage, 6,800 pounds spread over 4 years.
Actually this “news” isn’t really news at all as this was all learned a couple weeks ago. This is just the official confirmation to have it communicated prior to the start of the NW Sport Show.

Isn’t the safe allowable harvest based off their fall netting/survey findings? And if so, do we know what those DNR reports showed #’s wise? Seems the numbers aren’t adding up from what everyone is seeing.

john23 wrote:

Nobody should be surprised that the tribe was challenging to deal with after Gov. Dayton kept the season open last year.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I certainly thought when Dayton took that step to arbitrarily keep the season open he was actually going to challenge the tribe. As you state it was obvious challenges from the tribes would come. Apparently Dayton is even dumber and spineless than the little credit I give him.

Indians feed themselves. We feed the gulls. Makes sense:???:

fromm Millelacs messenger
the night ban will continue

http://www.messagemedia.co/aitkin/mille-lacs-lake-walleye-regulations-released-by-dnr-includes-/article_ed19bdd2-0e53-11e7-b92e-ef0d18a84dcc.html#user-comment-area

They(the Bands) are after the lake and everything around it.
They want 55,000 acres to be the treaty area, that’s why the fight with the county on cooperative police agreement.Thats why they are trying to get the ricing issue and walleye issue around Gull Lake into Federal court.
Now the DNR says its a baitfish issue….They haven’t learned much….
This is a political football,period
Dayton has been in touch w the Band at Millelacs and helped negotiate this.
Also in the Bands back pocket
So this is about all the lakes up north.
They didn’t net last year but speared( this takes larger fish…and more females)one with the land…right
BTW…they still can take 10 fish of any designation any day after they are done netting.
Maybe if Trump’s regime survives , we might have someone who has the power to stop this baloney…all men should be under the same game and fish laws.

Kyhl wrote:

Yep, I expected retribution, but label it what it is. Don’t lie. Don’t obfuscate. Publish the truth, not their spin. Give us the facts.

Obviously, the Governor Turstfund administration and the resort owners were the ones who ordered this obfuscation scheme hidden in the fine print.

And now the resort owners will be able to go on camera and scream from the top of their barstools that once again they’re getting hosed by the closure scheme and the overage scheme. And because of the Governor Goofy Overage Obfuscuation Scheme, the general angling public will never understand that it is BECAUSE of the resort owners political demands and Governor Trustfund caving in to them, that we’re now under this scheme in the first place.

And, of course, the DNR takes all the blame. What a perfect scam the Dayton administration is running. Make all the decisions, with zero accountability, and let the DNR twisting in the wind for decisions that they don’t make.

If Governor Trustfund would have just grown a pair….

Grouse

Dayton is the DNR and the DNR is Dayton. They are interchangable. I hope everyone realizes that. Do not act like this is all on Daytons shoulders. He’s not smart enough to drum this up…RR

RedRanger wrote:

This is a political football,period

I’m glad some have started to realize this, rather than blaming the DNR for everything that ever happened. The DNR can only do what the Governor will allow the Commissioner to sign off on.

RedRanger wrote:

Dayton has been in touch w the Band at Millelacs and helped negotiate this.
Also in the Bands back pocket

No, Governor Trustfund isn’t in their back pocket, he’s in the worst negotiating position possible: He HAS to make a deal every year. He can’t walk away, he can’t change the treaties, he can’t NOT have a deal because otherwise the deal is the MLBO do whatever they want. Anyone who has no options has no negotiation power. Dayton has to make a deal and he has no power to walk away because he’s a little ol’ governor negotiating a deal with a soverign nation that can go running off to Federal Court anytime they want.

RedRanger wrote:

Maybe if Trump’s regime survives , we might have someone who has the power to stop this baloney…all men should be under the same game and fish laws.

I know it’s the Trumpies fantasy that he can just tear up any treaty or contract he doesn’t like, but it just ain’t so. Trump is getting taken to the woodshed for an ass whipping by the courts on an almost daily basis. Just look at the dumpster fire that is Trump’s muslim ban. Ain’t the Constitution wonderful? We got this thing called the 3 branches of government, each separate and independent. Ultimately Trump will quit because he’ll finally realize that being President isn’t anything like being King. It’s much harder.

Grouse

As far as catch and release only Steve Fellagy has come up with a brilliant idea. Clients that hire him to guide on Mille Lacs will be sent home with 12 walleye filets (per group, not person)
I think it’s a very clever way to overcome ” why would I go there if I can’t keep any” crowd.

Correct me if I passed this incorrectly Steve.