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| http://walleye.outdoorsfirst.com/walleyenews.asp |
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| Establishing the safe allowable harvest is but the first step. As the articals said, in a couple weeks there will be a meeting of the Lake Mille Lacs Advisory Board, the Mn.DNR, and state and local public officials to discuss possible slot restriction senarios. Usually the state will present one idea and several others will be presented by our different members, and all are discussed, until we decide on one. Usually within a week the state will announce the decision of the meeting and establish the restriction for the upcoming year. I will be at the meeting and will report to you what we decide as soon as I can. |
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| Last night was the meeting of the Mille Lacs Advisory Board and the state officals. I was not able to attend last night because of reasons outside my control, but have been told what happened.
There are a couple issues here that need to be understood, and which were the basis of some lengthy discussion last night. The state came with an idea for new regulations that was met with mixed response. The arguement over this idea was based on what was the managment plan based on? What is good for the lake, or what is good for the businesses on the lake? Presently we have a very large number of walleyes coming up that are in the under 10" size. We also have a disproportionate segment of the population that is in the 20-24" range. One school of thought is to take out some of these larger fish, because of the competion being to great for the smaller fish to compete with them for forage. The obvious risk here is, what damage will we do to the spawning bio-mass, since this size female are the most prolific spawners. On the other hand, there is concern that if we move the slot (harvest) to the bigger fish, in a couple years we will have to harvest a million pounds in order not to have the lake over populated when these small fish grow up and become the dominate year classes in the lake, as well as all the off spring of this current spawning year class, and they eat themselves out of house and home. Including not just their normal forage base, but also their own young of the year if competion is to tough! Thus, leading to a crash of the system.
We will have another meeting next Wed. which I will not miss. The state, with their fisheries people will reveal what plan they are going to propose for the up coming season. As of last night, the 2 ideas that seemed most likely were 4/day, 17-20" harvest slot with 1 over 28" allowed in your bag/person, or, 4/day, with a 18-22" harvest slot, with 1 over 28" allowed in you bag/person.
Either way it shakes out, there will be a more liberal slot this year and alot of fish to catch. It promises to be a great year fishing on Mille Lacs! |
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| More updates on the issue on the trawler:
http://walleye.outdoorsfirst.com/walleyenews.asp |
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Location: Rockford MN | Jack
Who was at the meeting? I would like to know who was representing us. I have strong feelings as to what they should do and would like to know who will have the final say on my behalf.
Thanks |
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Location: Rhinelander | Jack,
Thanks for the additional information on this issue. Us Wisconsinites have already seen this process work it's way to conclusion, and we hope things can go smoothly in Minnesota. |
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| We had an interesting haggle with the state tonight over the regulations for this year. What were 8 different purposals when the meeting adjourned last week came back as just 3, and one of those was not in the group from last week at all.
In the end, we had a sealed vote, and Ron Payer and Jack Wingate, (Fisheries, and Fish and Wildlife) along with the Deputy Commissioner will tabulate the votes and present them to the Commissioner for his final decission in the next few days.
The final vote came down to choosing:
1. Either a 4 or 6 fish daily bag limit. I voted 6.
2. Either, any fish under 20" with 1 over 28 allowed per/person/day,( very much like the old regs we had for so long and enjoyed) OR, 17-21" Harvest slot with 1 fish over 28 allowed per/person/day. (I voted for the under 20" )
The DNR also said that if we are under our quotas like we were last year, they might open the slots up a bit in July, maybe....!
I expect to see the slots opened up in July myself because there is such an abundance of forage in the lake that it will probably be a tough bite after the first couple weeks after the spawn. I don't see us having another '02 bite this year. As for my reasoning for voting for the under 20". We have a couple year class gaps in the population of the lake right now. Mostly because the majority of the harvest preasure the last couple years (both Indian and angler) has been centered on a small slot length. This year there just are not many of those size fish in the lake ( 14-17" ). We do have though a couple huge year classes of walleyes under the 10" size that will be getting caught later in the summer, usually around the end of June and on from there. Unfortunately, many of those fish tend to be gut hooked and die so it is better to keep them as part of your limit than it is to throw them back into the lake to float around and have some newspaper take pictures and say we are killing all the fish! Those big year classes are going to be our harvest fish in 2 years when they are in that 14-17" size. Also, we don't expect to see another large perch hatch for a third straight year, so competition for the available forage will be tough for them this year, so thining them out even a little will help the lake in the long run.
As for the 17-21" slot, the only problem there is the number of females (spawning bio-mass) that would be harvested when you go over the 20" mark. Yes, there are males over 20" also, but the majority are females and it is important for us not to deplete any year class of spawning females if we don't have to. We will be dealing with the gap in year classes already from the previous 3 years harvest, and we don't want to reduce many other classes if we can avoid it.
All in all, this promises to be a much better situation for everyone in the long run. You will be able to catch fish you can keep, and it could get better as the season goes!
Edited by JLDII 2/11/2004 11:53 PM
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