As state officials craft tighter walleye regulations for Lake Mille Lacs, anglers, resort operators, bait shops and other stakeholders are left to grapple with two paradoxes.
As described last week by the Department of Natural Resources, the lake’s total walleye population has dropped by 10%, reducing this year’s allowable harvest. But despite the population decline, the catch rate in Mille Lacs this winter rose to its highest level in at least 35 years.
Second, despite poor ice conditions and a massive drop in fishing pressure this winter, anglers reportedly caught an astounding 7,991 pounds of walleyes – more than triple the amount harvested last year. winter when there is 70% more fishing pressure.
“When you have so few ice fishermen, how are they going to catch more fish than the masses caught last year?” asked Jason Bahr, owner of Tutt’s Bait & Tackle in Garrison. The estimated harvest of about 8,000 pounds of walleyes so far this winter, as it counts against the state’s 2024 walleye allocation of 91,550 pounds – an amount that would surely require a return to catch-and-release-only fishing for a portion of upcoming season.
Bahr sits on the DNR’s Mille Lacs Fisheries Advisory Committee. He said the DNR is not lying about the data, but he and others suspect the agency’s data collection is inaccurate.
Bahr said he agrees that the walleye fishing in Mille Lacs is fantastic right now. But he believes the high catch rate is caused by walleye abundance, not a decline.
“When anglers are catching a lot of fish, it’s hard to imagine the walleye population going down,” said Brian Nerbonne, DNR regional fisheries manager in St. Paul.
The following is the agency’s explanation for the counterintuitive conditions:
The DNR shares management of Mille Lacs with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and several other Native American tribes with treaty rights. Together, they recently estimated an overall 10% decline in the lake’s walleye population based on a trio of datasets: Computer modeling, fall netting surveys and a population estimate, once every five years, by an independent expert.
Beginning last year, face-to-face surveys of anglers by DNR creel clerks identified strong walleye bites and rising catch rates. Fisheries managers argue that fish are hungry, not overstocked. The reasoning is based on past parallels between a strong walleye bite in Mille Lacs and a lack of natural forage for walleyes to eat.
The hypothesis is supported by forage netting surveys and the DNR’s annual assessment of the body condition of walleyes netted in the fall.
Forage netting showed very low abundance of baby perch and almost no tullibee – the two main food sources for Mille Lacs walleye. Fall netting crews also found a decrease in walleye fatness by measuring the length and weight of netted fish and comparing them to previous ratios. Fat loss is most pronounced in younger walleyes.
“It’s not that the fish are incredibly skinny right now, but they’re less fat than last year,” Nerbonne said. “They don’t get as much food as they want to get.”
Last fall, Mille Lacs managers predicted high catch rates to carry over from fall into winter. They are right. Based on creel surveys, the DNR recorded a winter walleye catch rate of .23 fish per hour, or one fish for every four additional hours of fishing. In 35 years of recordkeeping, it nearly doubled the previous winter high set in 2016.
But by the DNR’s own calculations of fishing effort this winter, Mille Lacs could almost be considered a ghost town. Surveys put winter fishing pressure so far this year at 175,712 angler hours (one angler fishing one hour is one angler hour). That’s the lowest winter fishing value estimated for Mille Lacs in the past decade.
Nerbonne said several factors contributed to this year’s bumper crop of nearly 8,000 pounds. A year ago, the winter harvest was estimated at 2,294 pounds of walleyes while fishing pressure was estimated at 578,000 hours.
But unlike typical years when fishing on Mille Lacs grew out of casual hours spent by groups staying on the ice for days at a time in ice shacks and wheelhouses, this year’s effort is centered on a more experienced set of anglers shopping for the best times. to catch fish and move around to find hotspots.
Additionally, anglers showing up in Mille Lacs have benefited from the relative calm, Nerbonne said. Many ice fishermen believe that catchability is negatively affected by heavy vehicle traffic, lots of fishing line in the water, vibration and noise from electric generators, electric augers and other disturbances. Combining favorable surface conditions with a strong bite this winter and the high skill level of active anglers, the DNR is not backing down on its winter harvest estimate.
Now in hand is the job of setting a new open-water walleye regulation that Nerbonne hopes to announce before the March 14 opening of the Northwest Sportshow. For the past two years, the DNR has allowed Mille Lacs anglers a daily bag limit of one walleye-size on a narrow slot up to 23 inches long, or one over 28 inches.
But Nerbonne said the uninterrupted harvest opportunity afforded anglers in 2022 and 2023 will end this season depending on when the DNR designates a catch-and-release period for walleyes. . As usual, staggered harvest opportunities are meant to prevent unplanned closures of walleye fishing (not even catch-and-release.)
According to the 2024 safe harvest level agreement reached between the DNR and the bands, the total quota is 157,500 pounds of walleyes, down 10% from 175,000 pounds last year. The state’s share is 91,550 pounds, but the completion of winter fishing could bring it down to 83,000 pounds. By 2023, neither the state nor the tribes have exceeded their quota, Nerbonne said.
