Mille Lacs walleye: DNR plans panel, admits mistakes
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 10:28 am
16 January, 2014
By Dave Orrick, ST Paul Pioneer Press
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will appoint a “blue ribbon panel” to examine “past, current and proposed management practices,” in Lake Mille Lacs, officials announced last week.
And yes, top agency officials acknowledge, the DNR has made mistakes in how they’ve managed the lake.
The statements came last week in Bloomington at the DNR’s annual “Round Table,”a gathering of some 300 stakeholders. The event was the first time Don Pereira faced constituents as the agency’s fisheries chief, a position he was appointed to in November after seven years as DNR research and policy manager.
In advance of a presentation updating the situation on Mille Lacs, Pereira, who says he frequently fishes the big pond, made several noteworthy remarks. “It’s a beleaguered lake,” he said. “But it’s fascinating. … I ask you to keep an open mind. … I ask that you be patient and take your favorite hypothesis and put it on hold.”
Stating the obvious in perhaps more precise terms than many have heard, he stated: “The fundamental challenge is that the mortality rate of small walleye in the first year of life is rising.”
So it is.
Exactly why is the vexing, complex and ever-controversial question.
Our bad
Many have pointed fingers at the DNR, saying the agency’s limits and sizes have contributed.
In what — as far as i can tell — is the closest thing to an “our bad” to ever come out of the DNR, Pereira said this: “We put our best foot forward, but we’re finding out now that wasn’t the best way.”
He was specifically referring to a more technically phrased “our bad” included in a slideshow presentation by researcher Melissa Drake. One slide stated the following: ”Allowable harvest was set at 24 percent of biomass of all walleye over 14 inches, which in retrospect was likely too high.”
Drake explained that neither the DNR nor the tribes with which the agency negotiates the allowable kill of walleyes fully appreciated how self-selective their users would be: Tribal members’ nets tend to grab small spawning males, while non-tribal members tend to favor those same size fish for the frying pan. (It shouldn’t be lost on many readers that slot limits in recent years forced non-tribal members to put certain size fish on the stringer, unless they happened into a lunker.)
Click here to download Drake’s PowerPoint presentation.
Blue ribbon panel
Perhaps such conclusions will also be the result of the blue ribbon panel the DNR is planning to convene.
It will included plenty from outside Minnesota, including researchers from Cornell University and Michigan State, Pereira said.
Details on exactly when the panel will be named, when it will meet, whether those meetings will be public and so on have yet to be worked out.
Pereira said the panel is part of the agency’s “five-point action plan.” Here are the five points:
•Habitat and aquatic systems
•Fish management
•Local Economies
•Public Engagement
•Tribal relations
Again, details are sketchy, but the ultimate goal is a “sustainable fishery and recreational economy.”
“It could be more diverse,” Pereira said of the future fish population.
For those looking for a primer on the basic cast of variables in the lake’s drama, check out this story I did last year. The fundamentals haven’t changed, but the views of DNR biologists appear to be evolving.
Clearer water
The waters of Mille Lacs began to clear up more than a decade before zebra mussels were discovered there, and clear water seems to be growing as a prime suspect for coinciding with changes in the lake among state and tribal biologists.
Pereira said the Clean Water Act, not zebes, might be behind this.
“We think this fundamental change in the ecosystem could have a lot to do with what’s going on,” Pereira said, describing increased clarity as an “unintended consequence of a federal piece of legislation that this country badly needed.”
(Again, check out Drake’s PowerPoint to see this illustrated.)
Maybe young fish are moving off-shore sooner as a result, Drake said, and they’re more vulnerable out there. Or maybe predators are pushing them off-shore — predators like sight-based northern pike that might be benefiting from clearer ambush waters. Or both. There appears to be a correlation between survival of young walleye and water clarity, which varies from year to year but has generally been increasing since 1994.
And yes, while walleye gillnet catches were at their lowest in 40 years, northern pike catch rates were at the highest.
Habitat/reproduction
Drake also cleared up a number of issues that might have remained murky for many Mille Lacs observers. Among them:
•The lake still has good spawning habitat.
•There are still plenty of spawning adult females. In fact, Mille Lacs has about the same female spawners as Upper Red Lake today and three to four times more than Upper Red before its crash.
•Natural reproduction is still cranking along. Last year, Mille Lacs produced about the same number of young walleye, naturally, as the entire Minnesota DNR walleye-rearing program.
•No, there are no more bumper crops coming up. The 2008 year class was the last big one — and the entire walleye population might depend on it
•Smallmouth bass are increasing, but the DNR doesn’t know how they might be affecting walleye survival. A study of predators’ stomach contents currently under way is looking into that. DNR officials note that smallies are on the rise in a number of laeks across the Upper Midwest.
•Tribal kills generally account for 28 percent of the total kill on the lake.
As for that last one … I get hammered every time I mention this, but this is why the DNR can’t challenge netting in court. It can’t argue the netting alone is destroying the resource because we — non-tribal members — kill three times as many walleyes. Moreover, the fish are still successfully reproducing, so the netting, which occurs while the fish are spawning, doesn’t appear to be disrupting reproduction.
No, that’s no defense for netting a struggling population during the spawn, but you have to respect the logic.
But no discussion of Mille Lacs would be complete without some talk of the nets.
By Dave Orrick, ST Paul Pioneer Press
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will appoint a “blue ribbon panel” to examine “past, current and proposed management practices,” in Lake Mille Lacs, officials announced last week.
And yes, top agency officials acknowledge, the DNR has made mistakes in how they’ve managed the lake.
The statements came last week in Bloomington at the DNR’s annual “Round Table,”a gathering of some 300 stakeholders. The event was the first time Don Pereira faced constituents as the agency’s fisheries chief, a position he was appointed to in November after seven years as DNR research and policy manager.
In advance of a presentation updating the situation on Mille Lacs, Pereira, who says he frequently fishes the big pond, made several noteworthy remarks. “It’s a beleaguered lake,” he said. “But it’s fascinating. … I ask you to keep an open mind. … I ask that you be patient and take your favorite hypothesis and put it on hold.”
Stating the obvious in perhaps more precise terms than many have heard, he stated: “The fundamental challenge is that the mortality rate of small walleye in the first year of life is rising.”
So it is.
Exactly why is the vexing, complex and ever-controversial question.
Our bad
Many have pointed fingers at the DNR, saying the agency’s limits and sizes have contributed.
In what — as far as i can tell — is the closest thing to an “our bad” to ever come out of the DNR, Pereira said this: “We put our best foot forward, but we’re finding out now that wasn’t the best way.”
He was specifically referring to a more technically phrased “our bad” included in a slideshow presentation by researcher Melissa Drake. One slide stated the following: ”Allowable harvest was set at 24 percent of biomass of all walleye over 14 inches, which in retrospect was likely too high.”
Drake explained that neither the DNR nor the tribes with which the agency negotiates the allowable kill of walleyes fully appreciated how self-selective their users would be: Tribal members’ nets tend to grab small spawning males, while non-tribal members tend to favor those same size fish for the frying pan. (It shouldn’t be lost on many readers that slot limits in recent years forced non-tribal members to put certain size fish on the stringer, unless they happened into a lunker.)
Click here to download Drake’s PowerPoint presentation.
Blue ribbon panel
Perhaps such conclusions will also be the result of the blue ribbon panel the DNR is planning to convene.
It will included plenty from outside Minnesota, including researchers from Cornell University and Michigan State, Pereira said.
Details on exactly when the panel will be named, when it will meet, whether those meetings will be public and so on have yet to be worked out.
Pereira said the panel is part of the agency’s “five-point action plan.” Here are the five points:
•Habitat and aquatic systems
•Fish management
•Local Economies
•Public Engagement
•Tribal relations
Again, details are sketchy, but the ultimate goal is a “sustainable fishery and recreational economy.”
“It could be more diverse,” Pereira said of the future fish population.
For those looking for a primer on the basic cast of variables in the lake’s drama, check out this story I did last year. The fundamentals haven’t changed, but the views of DNR biologists appear to be evolving.
Clearer water
The waters of Mille Lacs began to clear up more than a decade before zebra mussels were discovered there, and clear water seems to be growing as a prime suspect for coinciding with changes in the lake among state and tribal biologists.
Pereira said the Clean Water Act, not zebes, might be behind this.
“We think this fundamental change in the ecosystem could have a lot to do with what’s going on,” Pereira said, describing increased clarity as an “unintended consequence of a federal piece of legislation that this country badly needed.”
(Again, check out Drake’s PowerPoint to see this illustrated.)
Maybe young fish are moving off-shore sooner as a result, Drake said, and they’re more vulnerable out there. Or maybe predators are pushing them off-shore — predators like sight-based northern pike that might be benefiting from clearer ambush waters. Or both. There appears to be a correlation between survival of young walleye and water clarity, which varies from year to year but has generally been increasing since 1994.
And yes, while walleye gillnet catches were at their lowest in 40 years, northern pike catch rates were at the highest.
Habitat/reproduction
Drake also cleared up a number of issues that might have remained murky for many Mille Lacs observers. Among them:
•The lake still has good spawning habitat.
•There are still plenty of spawning adult females. In fact, Mille Lacs has about the same female spawners as Upper Red Lake today and three to four times more than Upper Red before its crash.
•Natural reproduction is still cranking along. Last year, Mille Lacs produced about the same number of young walleye, naturally, as the entire Minnesota DNR walleye-rearing program.
•No, there are no more bumper crops coming up. The 2008 year class was the last big one — and the entire walleye population might depend on it
•Smallmouth bass are increasing, but the DNR doesn’t know how they might be affecting walleye survival. A study of predators’ stomach contents currently under way is looking into that. DNR officials note that smallies are on the rise in a number of laeks across the Upper Midwest.
•Tribal kills generally account for 28 percent of the total kill on the lake.
As for that last one … I get hammered every time I mention this, but this is why the DNR can’t challenge netting in court. It can’t argue the netting alone is destroying the resource because we — non-tribal members — kill three times as many walleyes. Moreover, the fish are still successfully reproducing, so the netting, which occurs while the fish are spawning, doesn’t appear to be disrupting reproduction.
No, that’s no defense for netting a struggling population during the spawn, but you have to respect the logic.
But no discussion of Mille Lacs would be complete without some talk of the nets.