Home › Forums › Lake & River Forums › Mille Lacs Lake › Town Hall Meeting on Mille Lacs walleye
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March 3, 2014 at 3:25 pm #120954
I really wish I could go, I’m sure it will just be a scream and shouting match but I would still like to go. Cut back from 250,000 lbs to 60,000 lbs?
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3345934.shtml?cat=1
>>>>>>>>>>>> CARRY ON <<<<<<<<<<March 3, 2014 at 3:36 pm #607211Get ready for catch and release only or a 1 fish limit where the slot is 12-30 inches.
Brandon Zumwalt
Attorney, Dad and Fisherman-sometimes all at the same time.March 3, 2014 at 3:39 pm #607212justwanaicefish wrote:
I really wish I could go, I’m sure it will just be a scream and shouting match but I would still like to go. Cut back from 250,000 lbs to 60,000 lbs?If you have fished the lake this winter you can see they HAVE to cut back. I don’t think there is much to scream about at this point, they are trying to fix the mess that has been made and save the lake.
March 3, 2014 at 4:03 pm #607213Oldstar wrote:
justwanaicefish wrote:
I really wish I could go, I’m sure it will just be a scream and shouting match but I would still like to go. Cut back from 250,000 lbs to 60,000 lbs?If you have fished the lake this winter you can see they HAVE to cut back. I don’t think there is much to scream about at this point, they are trying to fix the mess that has been made and save the lake.
Oldstar my wife & I own a cabin on the lake, no I did not get a chance to fish it this winter and truthfully the few times I did fish it in the winter I have not done that good, better fishing in the summer.
>>>>>>>>>>>> CARRY ON <<<<<<<<<<March 3, 2014 at 4:52 pm #607214Ba advised: That 60,000 pound figure also includes the thousands of pounds of “hooking mortality”. My guess the final “take” for sport fishing will be in the low 40,000 pound range.
March 3, 2014 at 5:36 pm #607215Anonymous
Member Since: Jan 1970
Posts: 19694Wonder how many 1000s of lbs are already on the 2014 harvest estimation books…
March 3, 2014 at 6:27 pm #607216I heard mid Jan. it was under 1000. I was up alot and i didn’t talk to anyone who kept a walleye this winter. there was a few but not many.
March 3, 2014 at 6:57 pm #607217If they were smart they would close it to all harvest for a couple years. That’s the only way things will ever be fixed.
Let's GET EM!March 3, 2014 at 7:09 pm #607218Anonymous
Member Since: Jan 1970
Posts: 19694Fish harvested in Jan and Feb are applied to 2013’s quota, not 2014’s
March 3, 2014 at 7:21 pm #607219Let’s see if some of these issues that Joe Fellegy has outlined are addressed.
Mille Lacs treaty-management mess: state’s ‘day of reckoning’ is here!
By Joe Fellegy – Outdoor News, Feb. 7, 2014Just five weeks into 2014, the annual devastating Mille Lacs news cycle is cranked-up and more negatively powerful than ever before. Thank the too-costly workings of “treaty fisheries management” and official inaction to protect state and citizen interests. Expect more horrible impacts on Mille Lacs-connected businesses and people. Understandably, there’s a new level of impatience with state leaders, who show more loyalty to a flawed system than to their own citizens and to a major state natural resource, Mille Lacs.
The shocking 42,900-pound 2014 “safe allowable harvest” (quota) for Mille Lacs walleye anglers, announced by DNR last week, is the lowest-ever through 17 years of treaty management. (Historically, fisheries biologists considered 500,000-pound Mille Lacs walleye harvests normal and acceptable.) Even with fewer walleyes, a mediocre bite, and reduced angling pressure, this low cap could be reached by mid-June, by late July, or whenever. What then?Add it all up. Fish population quandaries. DNR’s management challenges under a system where “common sense” and the “right way” often can’t apply. The only major gill-net fishery in the country targeting spawning walleyes with miles of 100-foot tribal nets strung over zebra-mussel-covered rocks. Anglers punished with “hooking mortality” assessments for releasing fish, adding to shut-down worries.(Countless fishing waters carry bag limits, size limits, tournament rules, and angler ethics promoting release. Naturally, some released muskies, northerns, bass, crappies, and walleyes die. But, except at Mille Lacs, conservation-minded anglers and fisheries managers focus on the released-fish majorities that survive.
Where in Minnesota, other than at Mille Lacs, does a fishing community face shut-down threats via “hooking mortality” assessments?) Public confidence has plummeted. Many observers worry about the futures of walleye-oriented Mille Lacs resorts and fishing-related businesses. Mille Lacs has traditionally starred as the state’s largest walleye fishery, in terms of angler use and overall walleye catch, and has hosted the state’s largest ice-fishing community. Given the new 42,900-pound walleye quota, can 2014-2015 Mille Lacs ice-fishing even happen? (Hey, kids! winter-lazy smallies won’t fill the gap! Neither will those darn walleye-eating muskies. They’re sluggish in winter, and their numbers are way down.)
Typically, the Mille Lacs news flood begins now, following the annual late-January Treaty Fisheries Technical Committee meeting where Minnesota DNR and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) review data and determine new safe-allowable-harvests. Then come announcements about angling bag limits and size restrictions; reports on the spawning-time tribal gill-net harvests of walleyes and other species; periodic updates on the nearness of both sides to their respective quotas; guesstimates on walleye hooking-mortality tonnage assessed to state anglers; possible in-season reg changes; and speculation about possible “shut-down” of the sport fishery.
This year, the flow of ominous headlines began a month early. DNR put Mille Lacs prominently on its Roundtable agenda last month. A Jan. 21 headline-generating DNR press release hyped its “new plan” for Mille Lacs. You know, that new Blue Ribbon Panel of Outside Experts, plus new state aid in promoting non-walleye Mille Lacs tourism themes. And now comes the present media blast. Tally the newspaper pages and column inches, the radio and TV airtime, plus the internet hyper-chatter. Translated into ad dollars, this barrage—forced by “treaty fisheries management”—pelts the Mille Lacs community with the equivalent of millions in negative advertising. Even hot walleye bites bring scary news about “exceeding the quota.” (Where else is good fishing a crisis?)
And so much more
• Certain journalists and politicos have ill-served the public by suggesting that court affirmations of basic treaty-rights harvests and tribal co-management somehow AFFIRM tribal managers’ decisions to allow gill-net use, and AFFIRM all aspects of the “treaty management” system. No treaty or court ordered gill nets in Mille Lacs, or set in stone the specific approaches employed by state and tribal managers, or freed managers from the scrutiny and hard questions (smart and stupid) that policymakers should face.
• Contrary to Minnesota DNR’s past claims, state government hands aren’t tied. Neither are their mouths taped shut. No court or treaty rendered Minnesota government impotent. And the big Mille Lacs treaty case needn’t be reopened for the state to use its legal and political clout to push for needed change. Consider the enormous costs of the Mille Lacs fiasco—the negative impacts on fish, on Mille Lacs-connected economies, on state resource managers, on a community’s social fabric, on the lake’s image, and even on citizen well-being. If state leaders remain callously indifferent then maybe endangered Mille Lacs-related businesses, and suffering others, should be exempted from state taxes.
• State politicians and media wrongly free taxpayer-funded tribal governments and management bureaucracies, like GLIFWC, from accountability. No hard questions about their policies, priorities, funding sources, political influence, and their misguided “racism” charges against those who discuss, debate, or question their actions. Tribal-government campaign contributions to state legislators, including those on Senate and House natural resource committees? Muscular tribal lobbying efforts?
• Mille Lacs is victimized by gone-mad public policy and intolerable impacts on business, resource management, and people. There’s near-universal agreement that the walleye gill-netting and related “treaty management” must go. Will state government move to defend state and citizen interests?March 3, 2014 at 10:14 pm #607220moose-hunter wrote:
Ba advised: That 60,000 pound figure also includes the thousands of pounds of “hooking mortality”. My guess the final “take” for sport fishing will be in the low 40,000 pound range.“The Department of Natural Resources announced in January that the lake’s safe walleye harvest level will be 60,000 pounds, compared with 250,000 pounds last year. Sport anglers are allowed 42,900 pounds while eight Chippewa bands with treaty rights get 17,100 pounds.”
Don’t see any mortality allowance in there.
March 3, 2014 at 10:28 pm #607221FISHPOLE,
This was the best read I’ve seen in regards to the issue at hand regarding mille lacs,I’m glad Joe let’em have it and tell it the way it is.
We know some of our dnr,state senator’s and media folks tune into this site and read the chatter amongst 1000’s of lsf members even tho many don’t chime in,BUT they read and listen and can make their own descision on what to believe.
Thanx to Joe and his brother Steve for being @ the fore front of this battle.
Its sad watching history repeating itself once again,all the arguing,bantering did’nt help the lake,community one bit,the lake is all but done regardless of what or who caused the collaspe,just like Red lake,finger pointing back and forth,in the end Red was shut down for 10 years,walleyes gone,the community gone except for one resort that toughed it out on URL..
March 3, 2014 at 11:57 pm #607222Yeah, snow……….. bites, don’t it?
Here’s from last year’s meeting:
Mille Lacs Fishery Input Group ResolutionWe, the Mille Lacs Fishery Input Group, formally request that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources draw on Minnesota’s legal and political resources, and use its authority as primary manager of Minnesota’s natural resources (including the Mille Lacs fishery,) to respond to the massive gillnetting of Mille Lacs walleyes and pike, the only such spawning-time gill-net fishery in the United States.
‘Business as usual’ is unacceptable.
Examples of compelling reasons and serious concerns:
Major Conservation Issues
• Enormous selective gill-net harvests of male walleyes
• Discriminatory impacts on walleye subgroups that home to the same spawning areas
• Massive by-catch and kill of northern pike by walleye gill-nettersLack of Transparency
• Minnesota DNR Fisheries managers and Enforcement personnel know little about who’s doing what, where, and when during weeks of intense spring gillnetting around Mille Lacs.
• Mille Lacs-related treaty fisheries co-management by Minnesota DNR, eight tribal DNRs, and the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) escapes public information and media scrutiny.
• Minnesota DNR leadership’s viewpoints and policy plans regarding tribal-related resource-management issues at Mille Lacs are unknown.High Costs
• Big dollar costs to taxpayers for treaty fisheries management (state and tribal agencies) and related costs.
• Dollar costs and public-relations costs to the fishing community because of Mille Lacs’ image as a gill-netted lake, and because “Mille Lacs is always an issue.”
• Public anger and distrust because of unequal harvest rights, and because gill-netting of spawning walleyes confronts the conservation values of most citizens and resource managers.Disproportionate Allocation of Mille Lacs Fish
• Under treaty fisheries management, the state-tribal allocations of Mille Lacs fish are weighted heavily against the state.
• Present state-tribal 50-50 splits of Mille Lacs pike and perch allocations bring fears about possible future 50-50 walleye allocations and their impacts on anglers and managers.”Lake Mille Lacs / Eight of 15 missing fishnets recovered
Loose ‘ghost nets’ a greater fish hazard
By Chris Niskanen
[email protected]
POSTED: 05/06/2008 12:01:00 AM CDT
UPDATED: 05/06/2008 12:32:24 AM CDTChippewa band members have recovered eight missing gillnets on Lake Mille Lacs and are searching for seven others.
The gillnets were lost early last week after a wind shift pushed ice into the lake’s western shore at Garrison. Officials with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission said Monday the eight recovered nets contained 29 walleyes weighing 67 pounds, which were recovered and filleted because they still were edible.
Commission officials revised the number of lost nets from 12 to 15, saying 12 were lost early Wednesday south of Garrison and three were lost north of Garrison the previous day. Chippewa game wardens are looking for the remaining seven nets.
The recovered nets belonged to a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, based in northeast Wisconsin. In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an 1837 treaty gave eight Chippewa bands — six in Wisconsin and two in Minnesota — off-reservation hunting and fishing rights in east-central Minnesota. Those treaty rights included the controversial right to spear and net walleyes on Lake Mille Lacs, Minnesota’s most popular walleye lake.
Some anglers have criticized the bands for losing the nets, saying band officials should have known that shifting winds posed a danger to the nets in Garrison Bay. Last Tuesday evening, band members set 233 nets in the bay but had to pull them quickly the next morning when ice was pushed into the bay.
Department of Natural Resources officials said tribal nets occasionally are lost on the lake but usually are recovered quickly. They said they are concerned that nets lost for long periods could become “ghost nets,” which continually catch and kill fish until being recovered.
Commission spokesman Charlie Rasmussen said the recovered nets “were balled up and only had a couple of fish in them.” Tribal authorities are subtracting 400 pounds from the bands’ allocated quota of 122,500 pounds of walleyes and would recalculate the total if all the nets were recovered.
Tribal authorities are investigating the lost nets, and no citations have been issued, Rasmussen said.
As of Monday, DNR officials said Lake Mille Lacs was mostly ice-free.
Chris Niskanen can be reached at 651-228-5524.
Saving Mille Lacs: Minnesota’s Walleye Stadium
By Ron Schara – Outdoor News, April 12, 2013The bad news gets worse. One of the best natural walleye lakes in North America has now become a tragedy.
The number of walleyes swimming in Lake Mille Lacs these days, according to DNR surveys, has declined to a 40-year low. Minnesota’s largest single lake fishing economy is now threatened with collapse as dozens of resorts and businesses face uncertainty when the 2013 walleye season opens.
And worse, it’s a walleye crisis of our own making. Mother nature didn’t cause this collapse of the state’s most popular sport fish. Rather, this is a story of walleye abuse on Mille Lacs, including walleye-collapse warnings ignored by state and tribal fish managers.
For more than a decade, Mille Lacs has been subjected to a combination of voodoo walleye rules by the DNR and spring netting assaults by eight bands of Ojibwe. Since 1998, the DNR and the bands have relied on paper walleyes to set harvest quotas on real walleyes. The results are now in—a population collapse of real walleyes.
It’s time for a reality check.
Those Minnesota anglers who love the lake and its history should be outraged.
Those Minnesotans who depend on Mille Lacs for a job or a livelihood should be outraged.
The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe whose ancestors settled on its shores and who now prosper with the largest business on those same shores should be outraged over the lake’s decline in walleyes.
Gov. Mark Dayton should be outraged and maybe he is, but he’s been silent.
DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr should be outraged and maybe he is, but his DNR fish managers just held a news conference to announce their new strict walleye restrictions on MtD6 Lacs. More of the same voodoo. DNR’s new walleye game plan was not only underwhelming but almost guaranteed to achieve two results: harm resorts and businesses around the lake and accomplish nothing long-term to boost the lake’s walleye fortunes.
Tribal fish managers also played with mirrors. The Ojibwe bands agreed to reduce their walleye-netting quota by 50 percent to something like 70,000 pounds but that changes nothing. In reality, the new netting quota is the same netting harvest attained last year and, what’s more, continues to target the size of walleyes that DNR now declares need protecting from hook and line. As Star Tribune columnist Dennis Anderson wrote: “The bands are using nets during the spring spawn to virtually ensure a highly effective harvest of some of the same fish that, come the sport-fishing opener on May 11, everyone else will try to protect.”
Are we watching fish management lunacy? Where are you Gov. Dayton? Isn’t it time (and long overdue) to hold a Mille Lacs summit? Get everybody in a room to discuss the lake’s walleyes ills and do so with everything on the table in a transparent fashion, free of political correctness and racial overtones.
If you start shouting racial slurs, you’re going out the door. We don’t need that. Rather, the DNR and tribal leaders need to be present to hear and respond to other ideas for the sake of the lake’s fisheries. I find it interesting that former DNR fish biologist, Dick Sternberg, actually predicted the lake’s walleye population demise more man a decade ago. Sternberg based his dreary walleye forecast on the DNR’s mode of fish management when tribal netting began. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
Secondly, the Mille Lacs Band should be asked to consider a moratorium on spring netting and, instead, harvest its quota by fall netting or hook and line or a combination of both. History says the lake needs a break from gill netting. If you look back at walleye population issues in recent decades—Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake, Red Lake—all have a common denominator, gill netting walleyes. Gill nets are effective and invite over-harvest. It’s that simple.
DNR officials seem reluctant—as least publicly—to ask the bands to temporarily modify their spring harvest methods. On the contrary, the Mille Lacs Band has a history of wanting to be good neighbors and is equally concerned about the lake’s walleye condition. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with asking.
Thirdly, DNR’s new walleye restrictions for 2013 ought to be modified before the season opens. DNR seems unwilling to target the lake’s unnaturally high number of large walleyes, despite the problems attributed to them. Perhaps the quota can be modified to be a hybrid between pounds and/or numbers. That’s not going to happen unless Gov. Dayton speaks up.
The DNR also did nothing to reduce hooking-mortality losses, despite anglers request to do so. Hooking mortality estimates could easily be reduced if DNR had listened years ago.
Sternberg, a fish biologist who also sees fishing from the angler’s viewpoint suggested these commonsense steps:
1. Avoid tight slots during warm water periods.
2. Require barbless hooks. It can’t hurt and most likely increases walleye survival, especially in warm water.
3. Distribute catch-and-release guidelines to anglers and emphasize release methods that will lead to reduced hooking mortality.None of Sternberg’s recommendations were ever adopted by DNR.
OK, Gov. Dayton, it’s your call. Look at it this way: You and other state leaders jumped into the Viking Stadium funding crisis when the pulltab predictions flopped.
Well, Mille Lacs is Minnesota’s walleye stadium.
March 4, 2014 at 7:14 pm #607223fishnpole wrote:
OK, Gov. Dayton, it’s your call. Look at it this way: You and other state leaders jumped into the Viking Stadium funding crisis when the pulltab predictions flopped.
Well, Mille Lacs is Minnesota’s walleye stadium.
So you want Dayton to tax smokers more to bail you out too?
March 4, 2014 at 8:29 pm #607224The voters spoke and the state sales tax was increased from 6.5% to 6.875%.
Does anyone truly know where this extra money is being spent?
Why not for Mille Lacs? -
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