At the Walleye Searchers meeting this week Jon Meerbeck and Kevin Stauffer of the DNR Office in Lake City, who are large lake specialist for Lake Pepin, informed everyone that the walleyes and saugers in Lake Pepin and the Mississippi River are growing faster due to the longer growing season caused by global warming. They said that they found less fish in the 12-13 inch range [the year class of fish that normally we be this size] because those fish were 17-18 inches long. When they used nets to catch larger fish they found about the same number of fish but the fish were double the weight. And to top that off they found that the sauger who hatched last spring were already 9 inches long. Thats right, 9 inches long already. The only drawback to this is that it may cause a problem where eventually the water could get too warm from global warming someday where growth might slow. But for now there are alot of nice fish out there to be caught.
In my words: he river has a huge amount of shad that these fish feed on and that means they are growing big and fat. Selective Harvest will help to maintain the great fishery we all are blessed with. We have a world class walleye/sauger fishery that is so great that people from all over come to fish in our area for their vacations and even the big Professional Walleye Tournament Circuits like coming here. And that says ALOT. 
Thanks, Bill
I think it has been more than adequate temperature here the last month and a half for snow fall. Yet we are still sitting at around 10″, well below normal. I think the word “drought” may be more the culprit of no snow then global warming. I can remember a few Winters in a row years back when I was a kid. somewhere in the 80’s that we had like 50 degree temps in Feb. for a stretch. I believe like another poster stated weather happens in cycles, we are in one of those cycles. The winter of 1996-1997 was not too long ago. I can remember it well. Storm after storm, after storm and temps that were cold. I mean real cold 20 below for highs and stretches below zero that lasted weeks. Snow piled up over street lights. After one storm they gave people 2 days to go mark your cars because the plows could not see them under all the snow. We also had a May 4th snowstorm that dumped 5” of snow, not to mention the ice storms that Spring that broguht on the Floods of 97. 
