Mille Lacs Pike...Not Surprising

[delcecchi]

Have there been any "creel censuses" or other estimates of the harvest of big pike done, both for angling and spearing?

[Sculpin]

I had to chuckle when Captain Musky said "they had to know" in reference to the DNR. Guess what, they had no idea. They continue to have no idea, and it appears long term they will never know, or have any idea as it relates to the "management" of a once great fishery.

This complete debacle has been going on for fifteen years now. There is no end in sight, and there will be no end in sight for another fifteen years.

2014 was supposedly the bottom, but 2015 will be even worse.

All the blather about one year class of fish is nothing more than additional speculation and a reason to do more "studies". Additional tagging, presentations, focus groups, blue ribbon panels, electro-shocking, slot tightening, pike slaughters, bass slaughters. It would be almost comical if it were not so sad, and it's virtually an admission by the DNR that they are clueless for any sort of long term fix.

I'm afraid they have only scratched the "management" surface.

Check back in 2025.

[jentz]

Sculpin what's your name on the anti netting site??You sound so familiar.Deny science and not being educated in any sciences.But complain the DNR is ruining the lake.When in reality it is the resort owners,guides wanting laxer rules,So they can rape the lake along with all the limit takers. I wonder who gets sued next and from what angle? I believe you have exhausted all donaters for the unwarranted cause!

[Sculpin]

Anti netting, did I say something about gill nets ? Little paranoid are we ?? I'm simply throwing the blanket over the whole mess. Science ?? Please Jentz, anything scientific was tossed in the scrap heap of guesswork, studies, tagging studies, creel studies, et al. years ago. What possible "science" came into play with the most recent pike debacle ?? It was nothing more than wishful thinking. In the words of Dan Pereira, DNR Fisheries Chief, while speaking about the potential over harvest of big pike "if this keeps happening, we won't have any big pike left". (Outdoor News, March 06, 2015.)

Perhaps Mr. Pereira should have gotten his slide rule out a bit sooner, and pulled up all the "science" on this before changing the regulations. But now the genie is out of the proverbial bottle, so lets change the reg's again. The "limit takers" in this case simply did not show up to validate the science.

Everyone is culpable, no question. But I'll say again, the DNR has botched this at the end of the "scientific analysis". The Blue Ribbon panel was assembled as a call for help.

The law suits will keep coming, undoubtedly, they always do when you have a majority of the people who feel that justice was not served, or a wrong needs to be righted. Its how this country rolls.

Please give me your best scientific analysis as to just when the lake will be restored to some semblance of normalcy.

[leech~~]

Sculpin what's your name on the anti netting site??You sound so familiar.Deny science and not being educated in any sciences.But complain the DNR is ruining the lake.When in reality it is the resort owners,guides wanting laxer rules,So they can rape the lake along with all the limit takers. I wonder who gets sued next and from what angle? I believe you have exhausted all donaters for the unwarranted cause!

Is this a free country or not? Yes, it's ok if you want to be anti-netting. Again there have been resorts on the lake for who knows 80 or more years and there has never been such of a low fish count in the lake.

[Juan Grande]

Next week's headline in the Star Tribune sports section...

"DNR liberalizes muskie regulations on Mille Lacs. In addition to a year round season, anglers are now required to keep any muskie that is caught. Resort launches will be allowed to harpoon muskies in an attempt to stimulate business. DNR Fisheries Chief Dan Pereira commented "We're hoping subtle changes to the management of muskies on Mille Lacs will pay long term dividends to the walleye population."

[pushbutton]

They made a bunch of these posters up as well.......

[Juan Grande]

LOL, good one Push!

[merkman]

If I ever had the urge for a dust collector, I'd get a replica. There is a win/win here but I understand people have different opinions. So be it ...

yep... looks good.

[laker1]

Actually the early 60's the walleye population was lower. To us old timers it was called the dead sea and the lake was never going to come back again.

[Sculpin]

I'm old enough to have a good recollection of the 60"s also, but not so sure I agree with your statement of the actual population being lower. I'm not even so sure they had the type of lake assessment material in those years like they do now. It's been called the "dead sea" many times over the decades, but the current situation ranks it right up there with truly "dead"

[Cooter]

A shame to see it happen on the big pond - that lake with proper regs can grow just about any species big, thank goodness its size offsets some of it.

[JP Z]

And here are the new regs for Mille Lacs. Notice you can still take one over 30" but you need to have 2 under 30" in possession first.

Northern Pike: Possession limit is ten, except only one may be over 30". However, two northern pike less than 30" taken that same day must be in immediate possession before harvesting one 30" or greater. The angling season for northern pike extends through the last Sunday in March.

[20lbSloughShark]

I'm afraid when Mille Lacs is the only lake in hundreds of miles with liberalized regulations like that, especially the extended season, it is going to get hit hard.

[RK]

Have there been any "creel censuses" or other estimates of the harvest of big pike done, both for angling and spearing?

According to the DNR, as reported in the Strib by Doug Smith, 20% of the population over 36 inches. That's all sources of harvest.

That's a pretty astonishing number frankly.

[JP Z]

I'm surprised they haven't closed down Pike fishing again then. That is a horrible number of big fish that were taken in 1 year.

[mwal]

Some of you guys do realize the problem on Mille Lacs is caused by protecting to many large fish for the forage base available? That is the reason for the walleye crash perch crash and tulibe crash. The young walleye get to the preferred size of the predators IE: larger walleye etc a they are eaten. One cannot have a lake of all large fish. Wait till the crying starts as muskie numbers keep going down statewide as size goes up. The biologists in Bemidgi have already started to see the results. Article have been in Outdoor news stating that you you will have to bee willing to put more time in for the chance of a larger but fewer amount of ski's

Mwal

[CaptainMusky]

According to the DNR, as reported in the Strib by Doug Smith, 20% of the population over 36 inches. That's all sources of harvest.

That's a pretty astonishing number frankly.

Astonishing is right. Wow.

[JP Z]

mwal, I understand you don't want just trophy fish. But to take out 20% of that trophy population in one year....and mostly just an ice season at that is crazy.

[RK]

Some of you guys do realize the problem on Mille Lacs is caused by protecting to many large fish for the forage base available? That is the reason for the walleye crash perch crash and tulibe crash. The young walleye get to the preferred size of the predators IE: larger walleye etc a they are eaten. One cannot have a lake of all large fish. Wait till the crying starts as muskie numbers keep going down statewide as size goes up. The biologists in Bemidgi have already started to see the results. Article have been in Outdoor news stating that you you will have to bee willing to put more time in for the chance of a larger but fewer amount of ski's

One of the biggest problems on Mille Lacs is they don't completely understand the root cause of the biggest problem, which is recruitment of YOY walleyes. Pike may have something to do with it, but it's the juvenile pike that were the concern there - their numbers in inshore netting went through the roof all of a sudden. Mille Lacs has had a model pike population up until very recently - moderate numbers overall, good size distribution, good numbers of mature fish. That changed, and changed rapidly, and THAT, not the numbers of big fish, was the reason behind the change in pike regs. If you look at perch, and perhaps even the walleyes, a surge in small pike numbers and corresponding decline in perch tracks with what is occurring and has occurred on lakes all over the state. We're just so used to it we don't notice anymore. I think encouraging harvest of smaller pike was a good decision, even though I wish they'd done something to protect the big fish in there, because the hammering they took was completely predictable. But if high numbers of small pike are part of the problem, hammering the big pike doesn't seem to be part of the solution, especially when the main predator of small pike is big pike.

This is another case where sportsmen as a group, when given the opportunity to exercise some self-restraint, don't. Individuals may, but as a group, not so much. There is an essay by Garret Hardin called The Tragedy of the Commons, to which I've referred many times, which states that individuals acting independently and rationally according to each's self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting a common resource.

This is a classic example. Individuals take their one or two big fish, and individually, one or two big fish out of a lake the size of Mille Lacs isn't a significant impact, but collectively, those one or two big fish each individual is 'entitled' to add up to 20% of the pike over 36" in a single winter angling season.

There's another element to Hardin's essay that is important here too... He states that there is a class of problems for which there is no technical solution. Science and technology can't get us out of the mess... Only changing human behavior can.

The ciscoe decline...that's mixed up in it too but the reality there is ciscoes are likely doomed in Mille Lacs anyhow due to climate change. Mille Lacs is at the lower end of their range to begin with, and has always had die-offs in hot weather. There, and on other lakes, those die-offs are happening with greater frequency. In the past populations could recover because enough juvenile ciscoes (which are far more tolerant of warm temps than adults) survived to rebuild the population. With a greater frequency of die-offs, there is less time to recover the population fully between each event. The population goes down the stairs one step at a time and eventually drops below a sustainable level. Mille Lacs will be one of the first to go because it's shallow and doesn't stratify. Deeper, cooler lakes will hold out longer, but along the lower edge of the ciscoe's range, they're pretty much toast due to a warming climate - no pun intended.

The muskie piece in the ODN - that's me, and believe me, the crying has already started. A totally separate issue from ML, but the peak fishery we had when that first generation of stocked fished reached maturity was a predictable artificial high, and has played out on stocked lakes with muskies and other species over and over and over. For muskie anglers who started fishing during the heyday and think that's what muskie fishing is like, it's a letdown. But, as I said in the ODN, muskie anglers asked for a world class trophy fishery, and that's what they got. If what they wanted was big fish and lots of them, that was never in the cards.

[delcecchi]

ODN?

[Getanet]

Outdoor News. RK writes for it...or at least I think he does.

[merkman]

Have there been any "creel censuses" or other estimates of the harvest of big pike done, both for angling and spearing?

[merkman]

Some of you guys do realize the problem on Mille Lacs is caused by protecting to many large fish for the forage base available? That is the reason for the walleye crash perch crash and tulibe crash.

I would have to agree mwal.

One 42 inch northern pike harvested in Mille Lacs lake had 47 perch in its belly and still was not full.

Imagine the forage base it takes to keep just one 50+ inch muskie alive.

Then add trophy walleyes, trophy bass, etc etc.

It is very interesting that the blue ribbon panel's preliminary reports did not even once mention muskies or musklunge in their review. It is almost as if they don't exist in the lake. Ignoring a large apex predator in the your findings.... real science or political science... you decide.

Cherry picking data and ignoring the fact that pure trophy lakes are simply not sustainable is going to get the MnDNR and those that lead it in heck of a predicament in the future.

What the lakes need is balance not all trophies all the time.

Not happy confining the damage to the existing lakes managed this way... the MnDNR blindly pushes forward with placing the same type of regulations that got Mille Lacs into this predicament statewide for northern pike and other fish ignoring the fact that they don't work for every lake in Minnesota..... I just hope the resort owners across the state wake up and force the MnDNR to stop experimenting with our lakes when the know blanket regulations for all trophies all the time just will not work.

.

[delcecchi]

Do you have a cite for the northern with 47 perch? Please provide a link?