Trigger wrote:Catching a stocked walleye on a boring piece of water has never appealed to me.
What are you talking about? The only fish they stocked in Mille Lacs are Muskies. All the walleyes, and other fish, are from natural reproduction.
Scroll down to view fish stocking.
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/lakefind/sho ... m=48000200Mille Lacs is an incredible fishery. There's no other lake like it in the world. The amount of pull on its resources from different angles is immense. It blows my mind that there's even fish left in the lake...let alone that 7 out of 10 years it is one of the best walleye lakes in the state.
As far as what to do to "fix" Mille Lacs the answer is nothing. It's like people can't remember what happened ten years ago; the exact same scenario played out. There was little forage in the lake, a hot bite for a couple years, then the lake sucked for a few as baitfish came back and a couple good year classes of walleyes were produced.
Last year's year class will be phenomenal. All signs point to that. The lake is full of forage, the bite sucks, the walleyes are fat, and last year's year class isn't getting gobbled up because of all the other forage. This year there will be another great year class and in two years the lake will be great again as all these young walleyes start to consume more of the lake's biomass creating a better bite until where the lake will be in the same situation in ten years.
It's a cycle.