TheFamousGrouse wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Michael Best wrote:</div>
Last year there were roughly 10,000 deer harvested during muzzleloader.
It’s looking like we will surpass last years umbers with the remaining seasons that are left.

Just looking at the harvest data today. MN is currently at 154,000 obviously with seasons still ongoing.

So despite all this “DNR mismanagement” and DNR/insurance company secret collusion to eliminate deer from all of Minnesota, we are now at a harvest rate that is greater than or very close to equal to the harvest rates in 10 of the last 12 years.

The only harvest that is significantly greater in that time period was in 2017 with 167,000 deer harvested.

Yes, there will ALWAYS be areas that for some reason have below-average numbers. But to me, as a state-wide number, I would say this looks to be an pretty average deer season as far as harvest numbers.

Just a quick correction: If we are referencing the same comparable statistic from the harvest report, there were 197,000 deer harvested in 2017.
I hunt up in the 130 zones north of Duluth. We had a pretty good season, most folks are pretty pleased with what we saw this year. The deer were really moving on opening morning. If you batch the four 130 zones together buck harvest should be ~10% up from last year.
It’s been pretty damn cold this week, but we have essentially no snow pack. Another mild to avg. winter and the trend back towards 2017 numbers should continue.
I’m also very involved in moose population monitoring and I’m very curious to see how those big critters will respond to these winters and wildlife interspecies dynamics.

Oh I’m sure they don’t ignore it. I think they raise premiums accordingly. Which is much easier and more effective than influencing deer hunting regulations.

It’s not impossible, politicians are a sneaky bunch. But coming from someone that helps set deer hunting regulations I have never run into it.

License sales are up? I hadn’t heard that, that really is great news. License sales have been on a multi-decade nationwide decline. Even a small increase is reason to celebrate.

Hunter success is looking like it’ll be decent this year as well. Still a little lower than I’d like to see up north, but significant improvement over the last two years.

To the post above this. I’m fairly certain the insurance company story is a myth. While I’m not top brass, I work in natural resource management, pretty much at every agency under the sun by now. I’ve never once ran into insurance company lobbyists. I have run into farmer lobbyists, legislators or groups supporting farmers that push to keep deer populations low.
I asked an insurance executive once, his response was “since deer are managed at the state level we’d have to employ a lobbyist in damn near every state, that’s ridiculously expensive. Instead we just raise premiums a little bit in regions with high vehicle strike incidence rates.” This makes more sense to me.

That reminds me, I’ve got a deer to register and a road kill head to turn in for CWD testing

I hunt 130/132, our camp is pretty happy with what we’ve seen so far. We hunt a highly pressured piece of county tax forfeit land. Last two years were tough, but this year we’ve got 2 bucks and ran into a guy just out for a walk with a nice 8-point down. Helped him drag it out, unusually heavy animal Three bucks out of ~1-2 sq. miles is good for the Brimson area.
Hugo’s Bar has weighed in a good number of bucks for the 2024 Big Buck contest. It’s a slow trend back, but overall we’re happy hunters!

Well I said I was a meat hunter, but if the first deer that walks out is a nice buck I’ll take it. Two for my family this morning, after two tough years we are calling that a huge win.
I registered mine at Hugos Bar and there was more nice bucks registered for the big buck contest than I’d expected.
A lot of people out, heard some shooting and a lot more positive energy coming out of 130 and 132 this morning.

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I’m looking forward to this weekend, seems to be a few more deer up north than last year, and they have been on the move this week. I live in 132, work in 199/181 and hunt mostly in 182 for the bonus tags. I’m a meat hunter through and through. Moved to a new spot, seeing plenty of sign, feeling motivated!

Yeah, the bite was hot AF this spring. Thanks for the info.

I’m curious, can anyone confirm harvesting a slot fish during Oct? I know the bite has been pretty tough. I’m looking for a rough count to compare to creel results.

Anyone got water temps from this afternoon/evening. (saturday 9/21) I was out Tuesday and Wednesday night and had 68 – 72 degrees still. Hoping for a cool down!

How’s harvest opener going? Launches busy? Bite going ok?
Now that people are cleaning fish are we indeed seeing juvenile tulibee in the stomachs? Juvenile perch? Got any stomach contents pics?
Anyone that’s been fishing the lake for a awhile, are the fish looking healthier than last year? How about compared to 2018 (I think that was the year they got razerback skinny) Any other note worthy observations?
Lots of questions I guess.

[Can you explain why in 2022 the state quota was set to its lowest number in 5 years even though the biomass at the time was its second highest recorded since 2014?

Bad negotiations?]
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The reduced quota in 2022 was due to a very low juvenile index. A measure of year class strength for the last 4 years. I think 2019 and 2020 were very low juvenile survival years I don’t remember. 2021 and 2022 are looking pretty good though. 2023 was a bust, I’ll bet damn near ZERO juvenile walleye survived in 2023. I’m optimistic about 2024, I guess we will see soon.

In my opinion there were probably some negotiation issues in 2022 at a level higher than mine. Cause 135,000 pound quota is pretty damn low, and the state angling regulations were ridiculous. The state only harvest 15,000 pounds in 2022.

I’m hoping so hard that the biomass model comes back higher than 1,219,000 this year. Even just a little bit would be so nice for everyone.

I’ll give it a try, I’m not a modeler, but I think the main difference was the model did not differentiate between sexes. I’m not sure why that wouldn’t have been included, but sometimes a model wont work when you add too many variable. Perhaps sex had to be removed.
Anyways that was part of what lead to the population decline, amongst a million other things. Males were being over targeted. Back then we were all about protecting the large female spawners. Turns out it’s more complex than that. Tribal catch is ~80% male by design, but when angler regs were designed to protect the large females, targeted smaller males were hit double. The sex ratio became skewed, before the population declined. This could have been picked up with a split-sex model.
That was during the 24% exploitation rate era, 24% is a fine exploitation rate if a walleye factory is firing on all cylinders, but one thing goes wrong and that becomes a high exploitation rate quickly.

The other invasive that has a profound impact is spiny water flea. Not only do Spiny water flea eat other zoo plankton, but also are not suitable food for forage fish. They get stuck in shiners gullet and they die. I did hear that Tulibee can digest spiny water flea, perhaps if ML is cooking up a Tulibee year class right now Spiny water flea densities would decline?

Last impactful thing I’ve heard of and someone here can probably confirm. During the 70’s and 80’s many cabin and resorts had failing septic systems, and probably pumped grey water right into the lake. These sources of nitrogen fertilized the historically clear and less productive lake. This in turn led to increased productivity lower in the food web that ultimately led to a shitload of food for walleye of all years classes. The clean water act cleaned this up, the lake became less productive, and now despite having miles and miles of premium spawning habitat there isn’t enough food for all these fish. The juveniles regularly starve over winter.

Oh and now the water gets to a million degrees in the summer and frys the juveniles brains. I heard there has been some adult Tulibee die off this past week. Looking forward to cooler weather.

It’s all an estimate from the DNR creel survey.

Creel surveys are inherently inaccurate.
I’d prefer a creel survey for the avg joe.
Then have mandatory catch reporting from the guides and launches. Assuming the catch reporting would be 100% accurate it would help make up for the inaccuracies of the creel survey.
But for now this is what we’ve got to go on.

The penalty gets taken out of the following year’s quota if I remember correctly. So say you go over by 10,000 pounds, that amount is dedcucted from the future quota amount the following season.

Maybe Ripjiggen or BigWerm can confirm this but I seem to remember it occuring at least once, maybe twice, when Mark Dayton was the governor.

Correct, and some would say the state anglers are still paying the penance on that to the tribe.
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The state has gone over the quota 9 times. See the graph I’ve attached. Though there used to be a “conservation cap” system that allowed last min negotiations to allow for continued catch and release fishing, often the state would pay it back the following year. Something like that anyways, the overages were before my time.

I’ve also attached a spreadsheet I use when I have data questions from the past 10 years. I don’t really worry about what happened before 2014. 2014 is when the current population model was developed, and I consider the period before that the pre-invasive species era.

There is not currently a conservation cap system or an overage policy in place. After the last time, 2019, the policy agreement was dissolved. The tribes are not currently interested in an overage policy agreement.

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I think a three year plan would be wonderful.
It wouldn’t be a set quota, but rather a formula based on the Spawning Stock Biomass. If the SSB increases the exploitation rate increases, if the SSB decreases the exploitation rate decreases.
For example if the SSB is 1,219,000 lbs, the exploitation rate is 12.9% (the actual 2024 numbers), quota = 157,500 lbs. If the SSB increases to 1,300,000 then 13.5% exploitation rate, quota = 175,500 lbs.
There would be a stop gate installed in the formula, “if the SSB drops below 1,000,000 lbs, exploitation rate may not be more than 10%”

Keep the numbers in the formula for three years, then adjust if needed.

This is mostly off the top of my head, but this is what I’d like to see.

Now good luck getting it adopted into policy…

Sometimes I wish I was emperor of Natural Resources.

oh yeah, now I see what you did. It’s correct, my bad.

This year I at least understand what happened.
last year (62,000/100,000) wasnt so bad either
2022 (15,000/80,300) that’s unbelievably flawed reg setting.
The tribes have a vested interest in this being done right. We get a lot more harassment and blame when state regs get more strict than necessary.

And dude, your reported numbers wern’t just columns flipped around. At least I don’t think so. You were about 22,000 pounds off in 2023.
and yeah I’m a stickler for numbers. Fisheries management is almost all numbers. I barely even touch a fish anymore. Emails, budgets, and spreadsheets.

Good to hear you can confirm the cisco hatch. Fingers crossed they survive the winter. I’m also optimistic for the 2024 walleye year class.
Not all of the biologists share that optimism, we’ll see I guess.

Yo it’s your least favorite tribal fisheries manager here.
First, where you getting those harvest numbers?
try this:
2024 – 24,142/91,500 pounds (as of July 15th)
2023 – 62,525/100,300 pounds
2022 – 15,558/80,300 pounds
2021 – 53,485/87,800 pounds

Not that it’s what ya’ll want to see, but at least it’s factual.

Another fact, the tribes have no say in angling regulations, none. Once the quota is set the DNR makes the regs. The tribes can object, but never do. We fully support, even celebrate this 2 fish limit. This is good news. We would have supported a 1 fish limit all year.
With the lack of forage this spring we actually hoped both the tribes and the state would reach quota.

So what the hell happened?
Catch rates, two things happened:
1) The DNR catchability variable must be flawed, it’s been low three years in a row. I don’t know much about it, the tribes are not part of that process.
2) Large forage influx, I’ve heard there may be a healthy Cisco (lake herring/tulibee) year class brewing. This is also good news. It’s been 10 years since we had a strong Cisco year class. This is great news for the lake. It also depressed catch rates. No body could have predicted this.
Water temperatures:
During May and June when the bite was bomber, water temps stayed cool. This both further contributed to decreased catch rates, it also decreased hooking mortality. So far this summer HM has been very low ~4% last I checked.

These factors have led there to be a lot of angler quota being left. The DNR has changed course and opened up the 2 fish limit. This is good news.
Yes, with the benefit of hindsight, there could have been a 1 fish limit all summer, but I was stoked this recent change happened, I was surprised to see all the negativity. I am very excited for this fall, busy launches, a good bite, and fish for the freezer for state anglers, something that’s been missing for awhile.

I am very involved with the Mille Lacs fisheries conundrum, happy to attempt to answer any reasonable questions.

Hmmm your right the 2023 yc wouldn’t be part of the spawning biomass. But the 2019 and 2020 yc would, both poor recruitment. No matter what the harvest level was in 2023 the 2013 and 2017 year classes were going to decline, both from harvest and natural causes. Those large adult fish havn’t been replaced as they’ve died. If you watch my youtube video you’ll see the population is skewed towards older fish, the fishery is still waiting on those 2021 and 2022 fish to mature. I made that video in Dec. before the model estimates were done. The minor spawning stock biomass decline was projected due to year class breakdown. This would have happened regardless of a 120k harvest, a 50k harvest or a 200k harvest. Though the magnitude of the decline would change with harvest level. I am probably overly optimistic that the 2021 and 2022 yc will provide us good SSB over the next 5 years.

“So 2019 biomass was 300k larger than now but we had less allowable harvest in 2019 than today, but actually more because we could harvest vs this year where the state is not allowed.”

I wasn’t around in 2019, but they didn’t know the biomass was 1.5 million. They made the decision based on 1.2 million pounds. The quota decision is made based on a bunch of different parameters other than just spawning biomass. mostly recruitment trends, but 2017 was a good year, so I don’t really know why. Looking back at a few years the quota makes perfect sense to me, certain years not at all.
We have loosened up a bit since 2019 and are applying higher exploitation rates to the biomass estimates, resulting in higher quota. The state has a higher quota this year than 2019. Had they known the biomass was 1.5 mil in 2019 I hope they’d have increased the quota accordingly.

I also think the 1,219,000 pounds estimate is on the low side as well. We reestimate previous years, every year, the assumption is that with another years added information we have a more accurate model. I expect that 1,219,000 will be increased between 1 – 4%. Not much but yes I think it’s on the low side. It results from the poor gill net results this year.

Using the reestimation method 2019 spawning stock biomass was actually updated to 1.5 million pounds. That was probably the 2013 year classes peak abundance and health year. Recruitment in 2019 and 2020 was poor if I remember correctly. So as 2013 yc has been harvested or died naturally new yc have not done well to replace those fish, not yet anyways. I’m optimistic.

The biomass is estimated using many more methods than just one years gill net results. Juvenile assessments, plumpness, catchability, probably others, I’m not a modeler. Those numbers over the last 15 years are all included. That way one years gill net assessment dosn’t have too much model influence. Because as you said gill net assessments vary.
We run our own models as well, but that MN DNR model seems to be the most accurate and we use that one for quota setting.

As far as giving back, or going over. It’s worth considering, but it’s not super straightforward. When quota is “given back” it dosn’t necessarily survive to the next year. Fish die naturally, and since we deal in terms of biomass, they loose, or gain weight. I do expect we will move towards some sort of going over/giving back plan. I’d like to see it happen the very next year, as ecosystems change year to year.
This type of plan could cause problems for our intertribal allotments, but thats our problem and we can deal with it.

Hooking mortality. I don’t know as much as I’d like to, I don’t calculate those. It’s pretty basic now that only temperature and released fish are the only parameters. Here’s my understanding, It’s assumed that X% of released fish die at certain temperatures. So in May water temps will range from 55 – 62 degrees, I think that will be about a 1% mortality rate. 300,000 pounds of fish could get caught this May (wild guess) 300,000 x 1% = 3000 pounds hooking mortality. It don’t know if this is calculated daily or what. When I get a chance I’ll get specifics and pass them on.

The reason we went backwards from last year was the total biomass estimate decreased ~10%. 120,000 pounds of fish were harvested, some died naturally, and the fish are probably slightly lighter than last year. But the 2023 year class was a bust, the juveniles were small and skinny in Oct. Their chances of survival is low. Nothing replaced those harvested fish. I don’t expect to see biomass increase for one more year when the 2021 and 2022 year classes start putting on weight and influencing the population.

Sorry guess I got a little defensive. My bad. I don’t know why people havn’t had more conversations over the past decade.

I’ll take a swing at them.

Tribal angling is accounted for in four ways.
1) 2,500 pounds is set aside at the beginning of the year for angling
2) MN DNR creel clerks also creel tribal anglers this provides a known tribal angling harvest number. This usually results in another ~1,500 pounds being removed from overall tribal quota, this year of course that will be more.
3) A few groups that love to fish, self report their catch to me, it’s not much most years.
4) 2,500 pounds is usually enough, this year with the hot bite it’s not, luckily we are still 10,000 additional pounds under quota. More than enough to cover the difference not accounted for in #1. #2, and #3.

Spearing is documented through the same system as netting. A band member is permitted when they leave the landing. Then myself, creel clerks, or wardens sit there until they get back and we creel their fish and check in their permit.

Ghost nets:
Ghost nets have happened. There was the high profile incident a few years back. A mistake was made somewhere in the documentation. Those Band members were cited, and we made some adjustments to regs to try to never have that happen again. Then of course last year three nets were swept up by the ice. They were recovered. I’m kinda hoping given the extreme amount of angling pressure the lake receives and the fact that almost all nets are set shallowish, and near shore that if there were others out there they would be snagged and recovered.

I don’t know how many citations have been given. I can think of a few off the top of my head. We used to have size limits for spearing. That resulted in a lot of citations and was deemed unreasonable and had to go. For awhile we searched every boat! Also deemed unreasonable and that practice had to stop or I was gonna get beat up.

Is the system perfect, no of course not, no system is. There are still a few holes to fill in. Like last year when our creel clerk wage was still $14/hr and we couldn’t find enough staff. In the end I’ve done this type of thing a long time. I learned how while documenting subsistence harvests along the entire length of the yukon river, makes Mille Lacs seem easy. Then I came down here and worked for the DNR, often did creeling. Of those three I have the most confidence in the mille lacs tribal harvest report.

So in summary, hook and line is documented in those 4 ways. Spearing is the same permit system previously described I just didn’t explain it all to keep posts shorter. Tracking nets is a battle between accurately tracking harvests and being overly intrusive/obstructing opportunity. Currently we are very hands on.
This year we had a stated beforehand minimum staffing requirement or else no spearing opportunity would be offered or openings limited. It seemed to work, I didn’t notice any unstaffed landings issues this year. Harvest was slower this year than last and easier to track.

As far as the mayfly/bug hatches I don’t know much about them at all?

I’m hoping they provide some food for these hungry fish.
I’m also wondering if they will provide an alternative food source to cannibalism this year coinciding well with juvenile walleye development.

I’m curious if this years; rate of water temp warming + bug hatches + lower water clarity could result in higher juvenile success than last year.
I would think, and hope so.

If I thought you were genuinely interested in answers to those questions I’d gladly provide answers. But I’m guessing, and I expect most would agree with me that you’re not looking for answers to questions but an argument, something I don’t have the time nor energy for.

Here’s one anyways: Tribal angling is accounted for in four ways.
1) 2,500 pounds is set aside at the beginning of the year for angling
2) MN DNR creel clerks also creel tribal anglers this provides a known tribal angling harvest number
3) A few groups that love to fish, self report their catch to me, it’s not much most years.
4) 2,500 pounds is usually enough, this year with the hot bite probably not, luckily we are still 10,000 additional pounds under quota. More than enough to cover the difference not accounted for in #1. #2, and #3.
What more can you ask for, this is significantly more rigorous than the avg. state angler?

Note: the error bars on the state angler creel estimates are so large any of this scrutiny would be better redirected there if the worry was truly accurately documenting harvest.

I’ve got questions for you guys.
What kinda water temp/water levels are you seeing?
There has been a fair bit of windy and rainy weather is the water clarity more cloudy?
How does this mayfly hatch compare to other years?
Did the bite shut off? Fish feeding on mayflys?
I’ll be down tuesday to do the spring juvenile assessment (1 and 2 year olds). I’ll let you know how it goes. The 2022 yc (2yr old) should be a good showing.

#1 A few things have changed: first and most impactful. Mille Lacs has gone through an entire system change. The productivity changed first from the septic tanks being cleaned up which where basically fertilizing the lake with Nitrogen. Then zebra mussels finished filtering that lake to gin clear, add spiny water flea and higher water temps and you’ve have reduced YOY recruitment capacity no matter what management does. That lake would never support the large harvests of the 80’s and 90’s Also look into the 1988 year class, that unusual boom yc drove that fishery for a decade. Other large MN lakes have not experienced these changes to the same degree. They just havn’t, Mille Lacs gets urine warm, and I’ve never seen zebra mussel densities like this, it’s bananas.
Second there is a large tribal fishery on Mille Lacs, the tribes are rightfully exercising their treaty rights. That 60,000 pounds needs to be considered. If the state had say a two fish limit and took 250,000 pounds + the tribes 60,000 pounds that is not sustainable. Lastly I’d like to point out that the state hasn’t even come close to their quota in the last two years. Both years the regs could have been more relaxed. That has nothing to do with the tribes. Figure out a better creel system and regulation scheme. I’d like to see mandatory reporting by guides and launches. Track the angler harvest closer and adjust regulations accordingly.

#2 We do population estimates two ways, one is a model that incorporates age class structure, gill-net assesment data, electroshocking juvenile assesment data, catchability, body condition, and probably a number of other things. We also do a huge mark recapture tagging study every five years to “proof” the model with more hands on real world data. I don’t know how other lakes do it.

#3 Yeah it’s right around 500,000 fish. It includes some pretty small males if that is what is throwing you off. There’s probably another 300,000 immature fish 13 – 15″.

#4 Not sure what you mean

#5 in my opinion in Mille Lacs its YOY survival since that seems to be the bottleneck. Of course they are connected at least to some degree, and really connected if the spawning biomass get low. Not everyone would agree with me on that.

#6 It’s my understanding that netting was illegal before the court case? Of course it was happening, but under the table. Now we celebrate exercising treaty rights. A seat at the management table is important to the tribes especially on a lake that a significant portion is adjacent to the Mille Lacs Reservation. The history of the 1837 and 1854 Treaties and their importance to the Ojibwe people should not be understated. Remember they gave up 5+ million acres, but retained the right to hunt, fish, and gather, and to manage those activities for themselves. I am grateful to be a part of it. I run an elder ride program and a youth harvest in the fall. It’s the most important thing I do professionally.

Tuffyguy, I got some of the numbers you asked for. Percentage of total MATURE biomass broken down by year class. Just a screen shot of my computer, hopefully its readable.
As far as avg size 2013 yc fish, I’ll have to find that later.

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I’ve got those answers, but only for our Band. Buckle up, this will get long….

#1 The short awnser the FTC meetings are long, technical, occasionally tense and stressful. In my opinion there are too many people there already and we could have better conversations with less. Every year politians are invited, but I always oppose any more people attending. Not what you wanted to hear, but in this case I believe less people would = smoother discussion. I don’t trust outside media to fairly report, I could give many examples of this. Even the person I trust the most, Steve J. regularily gives incorrect, information in his videos. I believe inadvertingly or even subconciously but always skewed. Outdoor News regularily publishs articles with conviently missing information. Hard pass from me.

#2 The totes vary from 0 to 120 pounds. The rule for netting is one net per tote. That statistic is important for my reports. The avg. pounds per net in 2024 was 44.4 pounds per net. More on that system for #3

#3 Your question seems a bit confused so I’ll just explain the permit process.
in 2023 94 different Band members were issued 155 permits and set 240 nets. A new permit is issued each night. The process:
– Each day at noon I send out a notification declaring which landing will be open to our Band. Band members call and get signed up for the night. I do this in case there is a permit limit for the night.
– We staff the landing with myself, 2 game wardens, and a invasive species boat washer. Each Band member is issued a permit for the night, this allows them to set 2 nets. I take the carbon copied permit and tag each net.
– The next morning I have a stack of the carbon copied permit. Nets are pulled and I check them back in by checking off the net tags. Then the carbon copy goes to the creel team.
– Each Band member must get their fish checked at the creel trailer before they leave the landing. I know we’ve creeled everyone once we’ve entered the info on every carbon copied permit. Then I compile that data that afternoon.

#4 I know why your asking this and I expect is due to the misconception that band members are not getting their fish counted. It is very rare that a landing is open but unstaffed. I think it happened a few times last year, we were having a hard time hiring creel clerks becuase of the low wage we offered. I don’t think it happened at all this year. But we have the carbon copied permit and if a landing was used but unstaffed that band member would be required to stop at a staffed landing and get creeled. If not, they are non-complaint and subject to citations. Mille Lacs during tribal harvest is the most heavily patroled fishing season in existance.

I have an example: I monitor the mille lacs facebook pages during harvest to watch out for potential incidents. We have had some serious violent threating calls etc. Last year I saw a post while I was sitting at Cedar Creek that read something like “I was at Cedar Creek and the netters are driving away totes full of fish that arn’t being checked!”
I was like huh? I’m here right now checking permits. Our staff dosn’t wear beige shirts like DNR nerds. I say I look more like a pirate than a biologist on the landings.
Again, I was very impressed with the tribal system when I started this job. It provides shockingly accurate harvest data. The MN DNR and various politians have sent staff to observe our process. They finally stopped when their observation data matched 100% with our report. I would no longer allow outside folks into our creel trailer, I take pride in our harvest reporting system and would be offended if they felt the need to double check us again. Any extra funding or energy would be better spent with more rigorous state angler creeling estimates.
Currently the tribal angling harvest only is registered by the DNR creel clerks and a few band memebers that self report. The Bands are usually 10,000+ pounds under quota and band member angling is pretty minimal. One year we tracked it best we could and it was like 1,500 pounds. So we reallocated our staff efforts.

Tuffyguy, good questions.

The tribal harvest demographics are documented. I made a video harvest report back in December. It’s on YouTube. https://youtu.be/VAYFUOzRQHQ?si=6VollsONpdJkifzk

Myself, and the creel team measure, sex, and age ~25% of the harvested walleye. The rest we just count and weight. These are those results.

I can calculate the proportion per year class and report it as a percentage tomorrow. Cause now I’m curious…

Watch the video but I’d rather it dosnt get shared all over the internet. Or I’ll never be allowed to make another.

There are 4 reasons hooking mortality is such a topic at Mille Lacs:
1) High temps, I’ll try to confirm this but my guess is for the large MN lakes Mille Lacs is the warmest. Temps above 68 degrees have been shown to stress walleye. LOTW probably sees 68 degrees pretty late in the summer?
2) Lack of stratification. Mille Lacs is shallow and wind driven. It’s often similar temps top to bottom. No deep cold water for a stressed fish to recover in.
3) Pressure. again Id have to confirm this, but Mille Lacs location close to the metro puts it in a highly pressure per square mile category. A poop load of fish get caught and released. Making hooking mortality more of a concern.
4) Management strategy, Mille Lacs is unique with the tribal harvest system requiring a quota based management system. Hooking mortality probably entered the conversation back when angling tournaments were more prevalent.

?I wonder the temp/stratification dynamics at Red Lake, similar lake type.

I’ll get the hooking mortality estimates for May in three weeks. I’ll take a look at temps and make a post. My hunch is ~ 1%. Which for May hooking mortality is probably under estimated. Not to a point of concern however.

Oh you know what I could use, water temp reports.
It got hot again yesterday. I’m curious how much the lake warmed up. Cooler temps = less hooking mortality = open the fishery Aug. 16th = happy state anglers = easier job