Protesters on Mille Lacs

Time to guide this to a separate thread.

Eelpoutguy wrote:

For a good laugh you have to read the comments. Some people are just idiots.

http://www.startribune.com/dayton-cancels-meeting-with-mille-lacs-area-businesses-after-protest/433351373/

So did they shoot their selves in the foot?

Thanks Gil, I should have done that.

He said he canceled Saturday’s meeting — which was going to include several Lake Mille Lacs-area business owners — because he didn’t want to “reinforce that kind of destructive behavior.”

Funny, I don’t recall seeing him condemning the thousands of on-freeway protesters when all that was going on. What a hypocrite!

Love the protest, good for them. Bass and musky guys are gonna keep coming so who cares.

Dayton reminds me of Bush, completely incompetent silver spoon family made man who has no business being a politician.

How many believe the shutdown is directly related to the Governors action last winter keeping the season open? Probably would’ve had another CPR season no doubt, but the tribes needed a bit more this year bc of the broken agreement. And the Governor cancels the meeting to stand up to the people he affected, coward.

This one is my favorite.

dakmarknet
Jul. 9, 17
6:14 AM

@Carolee02 The truth is there are no walleyes in the lake anymore.  Why?  Because of over fishing.  Plain and simple.

I don’t think they shot themselves in the foot at all. They got more press coverage yesterday then they have in years.

As far as the comments goes. I would guess 90% of the respondents are banging out their comments while sitting in their kitchen on their Ipad while drinking their Starbucks. Most couldn’t find Mille Lacs lake with a map.

If Eno says this is costing her resort $40,000 just think of the total loss on and around the lake. Figure the tax from those losses. Add in the loss gas tax getting people to and from the lake in addition to boat gas.

This is a far greater economic issue then just a few resorters whining. Tourism is a billion dollar industry and this blackeye effects all sectors of tourism for the state.

did anyone else notice a landing net it a bass boat WTH?

KARE11 article.

Protesters greet Dayton when he fishes on Mille Lacs Lake

http://www.kare11.com/news/protesters-to-greet-dayton-when-he-fishes-on-mille-lacs-lake/454922144

“They just ruined the fishing, we had these boats circling around and heckling, they have a First Amendment right to do that. I’m here to emphasize the positive, to talk about what’s great in Mille Lacs. I’m not going to feed into that negative energy and I’ll meet with them, hear their concerns and respond,” said Dayton.

What he doesn’t know is that this is common etiquette on Mille Lacs.

what worries me is,what is going on behind the scenes that will affect the rest of Mn while Mille Lacs is a focal point???

a poor analogy I know,but while you are looking out for the guy stealing the pie out of the window,what about the guy who is stealing the stove behind you???

crappy politicians are like hemorrhoids,they tend to hang around for what seems like forever.
kudos to those who protested him !

The reason I say they shot themselves in the foot is because they were making news long before they even hit the water. They had a discussion planned before they even hit the water. They had both, now they don’t.

The biggest problem with Mille Lacs in the battle with the state is a lack of organization. There is no central group providing funding, public relations, media exposure to fight the state. It’s individuals and small groups trying to stand up to the state and all the lobbyist funding the anti’s.

So we have the AIS fight going on. We have the Mille Lacs fight going on. I’m sure the upland bird guys have something going on. Deer, Elk, Moose, Bear on and on. Yet each group try’s to stand and fight by themselves. Seems senseless to me.

In the meantime protests happen on Mille Lacs. Web sites whine about AIS and decontamination sites.
Meanwhile GLIFWC and the Lake Associations just sit back and grin. Divide and conquer.

And by the way as you read through the comments, no one is on their side. No one.

I’m not condoning their behavior, I’m simply stating that it made little difference. If anything, it’s now worse. They’ve made the public opposition larger.

Dutchboy wrote:

The biggest problem with Mille Lacs in the battle with the state is a lack of organization. There is no central group providing funding, public relations, media exposure to fight the state. It’s individuals and small groups trying to stand up to the state and all the lobbyist funding the anti’s.

So we have the AIS fight going on. We have the Mille Lacs fight going on. I’m sure the upland bird guys have something going on. Deer, Elk, Moose, Bear on and on. Yet each group try’s to stand and fight by themselves. Seems senseless to me.

In the meantime protests happen on Mille Lacs. Web sites whine about AIS and decontamination sites.
Meanwhile GLIFWC and the Lake Associations just sit back and grin. Divide and conquer.

Great point. Agreed.

It looks like Governor Dayton has a good handle on the matters.

Dayton emphasized that outside experts will analyze the management of the lake over the next 6 months for more evidence and transparency.

Eelpoutguy wrote:

It looks like Governor Dayton has a good handle on the matters.

Dayton emphasized that outside experts will analyze the management of the lake over the next 6 months for more evidence and transparency.

Well, are they here in Minnesota at the lake? Or are they using the same statistics that were provided to the last DNR Blue Ribbon Panel? Who is paying for this study? The DNR? Do we expect the committee to disagree with the entity paying them?

This whole thing is F’d up. One lies and the other swears to it.

This circus just keeps spinning with the resorts and all MN fisherpeople paying the price in different ways. Why should the resorts care if they lose another meeting with Gov? They have been on special task forces,in endless meetings and discussions with virtually no progress for 20 years.

Also, not sure what Dayton was thinking here, but many resort owners had numerous openings.

No room at the Mille Lacs inns for Gov. Mark Dayton

munchy wrote:

He said he canceled Saturday’s meeting — which was going to include several Lake Mille Lacs-area business owners — because he didn’t want to “reinforce that kind of destructive behavior.”

Funny, I don’t recall seeing him condemning the thousands of on-freeway protesters when all that was going on. What a hypocrite!

Dayton said he was concerned about protests that blocked highways and couldn’t support them.

“I would draw the line at something like, as I said when it happened, shutting down a freeway. That’s putting the public safety at serious risk,” he said, adding that he was looking at a standalone measure against those that would block routes to the airport — which he said posed “an even broader public safety concern.”

Jumping on a bandwagon should include a bit of awareness of what your talking about. Who was he condemning?

For anyone thinking this is a “sky is falling” senerio by the resorts I urge you to cash out your 401k, empty your stocks, sell your house and beat it up to Mille Lacs and buy a resort. Shouldn’t take long to find one available.

It’s easy for us all to sit back and plink away on our keyboards. We have no skin in the game. These folks do.

mnfishhunt wrote:

did anyone else notice a landing net it a <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>bass boat WTH?

What do you find odd about a landing net in a Bass boat ?

biggill wrote:

And by the way as you read through the comments, no one is on their side. No one.

I’m not condoning their behavior, I’m simply stating that it made little difference. If anything, it’s now worse. They’ve made the public opposition larger.

I said condone. I meant condemn.

For those of you who haven’t seen another version, this is from Suzy Fisher from Fishers Resort that hosted the governor and other guests.

“We hosted governor Dayton today on our launch. We looked forward to the opportunity to take this time to talk to him about the hardships the community. The protesters showed up, as they said they would, and made it impossible to fish.
For those of you that were peaceful, your message was heard, and it’s not as if we don’t agree with many of the things you stand for.

For the rest of you, it was embarrassing to see and have the children hear what you had to say. Things that had nothing to do with fishing and Mille Lacs issues and were hurtful to many on board that had never even fished before. Real classy

Anyway…. I would like to post our family photos with the governor of our state which we were honored to host today. Regardless of your political stance, it is an honor to host a governor at your place of business and feel like you are being heard.

The intention of the trip was to promote our lake and put a focus on kids/ celebrities fishing and attracting new people. Maybe someday we could try it again.
Thank you Linval Joseph for coming today. We hope to have you back under different circumstances and get you on some fish! Thanks also to all of our customers that gave us great support today! It was not all negative.
Lane made a buddy haha!”

Here is another account from Gene Miller who was also on the scene.

“Racial comments to Minnesota Viking player and disgusting comments to little kids fishing with the Governor. Grow up protesters. It was wrong and it was disrespectful to Fishers Resort and the Fisher family.”

And one more from Amanda McComas who with husband Brett McComas.

“Unfortunately what we thought was going to be a nice day on the water bass fishing with Govenor Dayton, quickly became impossible. In this video you will see Brett and myself on the launch, what they didn’t show was the screaming and yelling and swearing from the protestors boats. This “peaceful” rally was not peaceful, with a handful of boats coming within a short cast of our launch boat and bullying the people aboard. I feel embarrassed for the protestors for acting this way.”

What are the odds that the disrespectful people had little skin in the game? Usually they have none.

I don’t know, I wasn’t there.

I can really appreciate what Suzy said. I’m sure they got their opportunity to speak their mind peacefully.

As an angler, I wouldn’t be opposed to a catch and release trophy fishery. I’ve been there 3 times this spring/summer and enjoyed every trip.

I also went to the Rainy River twice during the pre-spawn and can honestly say the catch quality and catch rate was almost the same. Oh yeah, I brought home only 2 more walleyes from rainy than I did from Mille Lacs. 2

If that river can draw that many people from that far away, why not Mille Lacs?

Mille Lacs will never be the same but if it can maintain some sort of stability, business will come back.

Why would you hold a protest when a state leader comes with the goal of helping you with your problem? If people really wanted to help the Mille Lacs area economy, they would have helped Dayton catch a 6 pound smallie for the media and then told him in a civil tone at the next day’s meeting just how upset they are and what they think should (reasonably) be done that would help.

Instead, the whole scene looks nuts. From the outside looking in everyone on the lake appears angry about everything no matter what happens. It’s not exactly welcoming from a potential visitor’s perspective. Why would you want to visit a place like that, fish or no fish?

Of course, though, it’s not really everyone. The quotes that Andy Cox posted above make a lot of sense to me.

This is the image the public gets of the sportsman in our state?

Sad state of affairs.

The more I read about these contentious issues, whether it’s the big pond or AIS issues, the more I realize our biggest stumbling block might be our own lack of organization. There’s no united front, no true north. As a result our “interests” end up being represented publicly by a bunch of backwards minded morons with too much time on their hands.

john23 wrote:

Instead, the whole scene looks nuts. From the outside looking in everyone on the lake appears angry about everything no matter what happens. It’s not exactly welcoming from a potential visitor’s perspective. Why would you want to visit a place like that, fish or no fish.

I thought it important to report versions from those that were there firsthand. The majority of the uproar and comments from the Strib article were almost entirely directed at Dayton. Without knowing the witness accounts of what played out, unfairly fell back on Dayton as being hypocritical. There are many more accounts from those that were there and it most likely was the launch boat operator Fishers Resort that made the decision to pull the plug and head in.

Yes john23, this is exactly why this happening is so sickening and disappointing. Your observation is exactly what everyone’s perception will be.

pool2fool wrote:

This is the image the public gets of the sportsman in our state?

As a result our “interests” end up being represented publicly by a bunch of backwards minded morons with too much time on their hands.

You couldn’t have summed it up any better P2F. Head shaking isn’t it?

OK, so the next question. If Dayton wants to talk can’t he figure out a way to talk without making a public announcement and media circus?

He is just a talking head. Nothing more, nothing less. Show him a camera and he will become concerned. When the camera goes away so will he.

What exactly has he done besides wring his hands and say he will help? Anything? No, there was plenty of time before the closure to come visit the lake without making a media circus out of it.

Just think about “why” this protest happened… people had nothing better to do on a saturday morning ? Unless you have been going to the Lake for the last couple decades or so and have witnessed the decline/mismanagement of a once great walleye factory, it might be hard to comprehend what these people were doing. Have you seen these protests before ? Nope. There is one and all of a sudden the arm chair experts magically appear on IDO just ashamed of what is happening. What exactly is happening ? This just didn’t start on saturday morning folks, educate yourself then hit the keyboard. This hardly has given every sportsman a black eye, only ignorant people would lump all sportsman into one bucket. If there were racial slurs being yelled and used, to them folks I say they should stay home, being a racist and an idiot is not helping the cause.

big_g wrote:

Just think about “why” this protest happened… people had nothing better to do on a saturday morning ? Unless you have been going to the Lake for the last couple decades or so and have witnessed the decline/mismanagement of a once great walleye factory, it might be hard to comprehend what these people were doing. Have you seen these protests before ? Nope. There is one and all of a sudden the arm chair experts magically appear on IDO just ashamed of what is happening. What exactly is happening ? This just didn’t start on saturday morning folks, educate yourself then hit the keyboard. This hardly has given every sportsman a black eye, only ignorant people would lump all sportsman into one bucket. If there were racial slurs being yelled and used, to them folks I say they should stay home, being a racist and an idiot is not helping the cause.

Big G, were you there for the protest? Are you saying you think it was helpful?