Killing Walleyes!

I went to the PWT site last week to check the results of our local FTR boys and came upon something that shocked the $@*% out of me. The average weight was over 7 lb. per fish for the tournament and if I read it right, they killed all of these fish that were weighed. After day two, the press release said they had donated over 5 tons of fish to soup kitchens. Why can’t they attempt to release some of these fish? Most of the fish were caught in warmer water in the top 20′ of the water column, so wouldn’t they survive. Unless there is a good excuse, this just sickens me and gives tournament fishing a bad name. If you’re interested, go to the Professional Walleye Trail homepage and check out the Lake Erie Tournament. I’m very interested to start fishing tournaments, but I hope they are not all like this.

They are not all like this. Tournaments on the river can release before june and after august. in the summer months they make the people who run the tournament kill the fish. You can always do whatever you want after you leave the weigh-in. I hope they didn’t kill all those walleyes too and hopefully you heard wrong, but probably not. They have been getting too much static from hundreds of walleyes floating to shore dead 2-3 days after tournaments, so i’m guessing they think it is better to donate them. It saves on the bad press when all of these fish die a couple of days later even though alot of them make it just fine. The bleeding hearts will win this one everytime. We need to find a middle ground that makes both sides happy, but i don’t know what that is.

labsrule

BRI,

Not sure if you noticed, but the tournament permit that was issued by the Ohio DNR was a kill permit. This was not something the PWT director chose. It’s my understanding that Erie holds some 60 million walleyes. I guess the DNR wants to lower the population for management purposes. Since they had to kill all the fish, why not donate them to a good cause??

I understand your concerns, but I think the context of the whole situation needs to be understood.

Sorry I forgot to mention that. It is true the Ohio DNR issued the order. I didn’t know it was for management purposes. I thought it was just because they didn’t think a high percentage of fish would live, and I wouldn’t have agreed with that. If they are having problems with their population, maybe they could transfer a couple 13, 14 ten punders down to Red Wing – Pool 4. Man the size of the fish in that system is incredible! I might have to head out there next year. Anyways, I didn’t intend to put down the PWT or any tourney or tourney fisherman (heck, it’s my dream to make a living that way some day!), I just thought it was a lot of big female walleyes being killed. And yeah, if they had to be killed, I’m glad that it went for a good cause.

You have to look at it from a DNR standpoint, they needed to reduce the number of walleyes because they thought there were to many. By doing this they also had a good mind set in donating it to where they did.

Larson….

Hopefully DeeZee can jump in here and tell us for sure, but I doubt the Ohio DNR uses tournament anglers to reduce the walleye population. Nor do I think that is thier goal. (Heck, the Canadian netters can do a good job of that!!)

I think it is merely the fact that when you put half a dozen 10 pounders in a livewell, bang them around in 4 footers all day, you end up with belley up walleyes. Simple as that!!

J.

I agree Jon, I should have used a different term instead of management. The total weight killed does count against what the Canadians can net, if my info is correct. So may management is correct, just should have explained more.

I’ve got 5 buddies out there fishing for a week right now. I haven’t talked to them yet, but I’m betting they may have missed the best bite by 5 days……..If they have any pics I’ll get them over to FTL next week when the return.

Well, i didn’t say that was their main goal, but whoever decided to do that was a good idea, it isn’t just about the sport of fishing sometime it is about the well being of everyone also. No i don’t think that the dnr said hey lets keep all the fish from the tournament and distribute them. I am sure that is not their idea, but it was good that they did it

There are quite a few issues going on here. For one – the last time I talked to or read about walleye populations in Lake Erie, they had around 60 million fish. This is a renewable resource and they wanted to harvest about 10% – so around 6 million fish to be harvested annually!! In some previous tournaments – they enforced catch and release – only to have big waves (big fish getting pounded in live wells all day), fish caught from deep water (they needed to be “fizzed” – which works sometimes – sometimes not), and fairly warm water. The result was several hundred dead fish floating in the bay the next day – so from then on it was a catch and kill tournament. Much better to be killed, taken care of in a proper way and give to a good cause. Besides – the fish that were killed from the tournament were a portion of the 6 million that needed to be harvested. Just my take on what happened.

Couple of buddies of mine were over on Lake Erie a couple of weeks ago and they absolutely hammered the fish. They would fish all day to catch 8 fish smaller than 22″ to keep to bring home. I saw the pictures to back up their story. They caught alot over 10lbs, with the biggest going almost 13lbs. One thing that bothered me was that they said that everybody around them were using sonars and probably 80% were being snagged! They said they averaged over 100 fish a day. How many of those fish will live I wonder?

Hey Sled ! Don’t be putting my blades down . Most of those fish were just near sighted . LOL

You know I wouldn’t do that. I know how effective blades can be at certain times…gotta stay flexible. This rain going through has probably got you off that tractor. The big M is looking for a partner for this weekend. Wants to go up and see Ziggy!