ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Anglers will be able to keep some walleye during the open-water season on Mille Lacs Lake this year, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said Thursday.
The decision follows several seasons of catch-and-release-only fishing to protect and restore the population on the premier walleye lake in central Minnesota.
The agency is “happy to announce that, with some very conservative fishing regulations over the past three years, walleye are now at a level where we can cautiously allow anglers to start keeping some fish during the open-water season,” DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen said in a statement, calling it “good news for anglers, Mille Lacs area businesses and the resource.”
Regulators say anglers stayed well below Mille Lacs’ safe-harvest allocation for walleyes last year.
The state and the eight Ojibwe bands with fishing rights on Mille Lacs recently agreed to a safe harvest of 150,000 pounds of walleye, and 87,800 pounds of that can be caught and kept by non-tribal anglers.
Mille Lacs Band DNR Commissioner Bradley Harrington said the upward trend of the walleye population “reflects the conservation efforts of both the state of Minnesota and the Ojibwe tribes with harvest rights on Mille Lacs Lake.”
DNR fisheries chief Brad Parsons, though, sounded a cautious note.
“While the walleye population is on a positive trajectory, we need to strike a careful balance between expanding harvest opportunities and conserving the fishery for future angling opportunities,” Parson said in the news release.
The DNR’s goal is to cautiously open more walleye angling opportunities on the lake, Parsons told Minnesota Public Radio News . But he acknowledged allowing anglers to keep walleyes will bring more anglers.
“That’s the thing that gets tricky,” Parsons said. “We know there will be more people coming to the lake, which is great. But we don’t know how many, so we don’t know how that will affect (fishing) pressure.”
Mille Lacs’ walleye population has declined over the past two decades. That decline has coincided with changes in the big lake’s ecosystem, including clearer water, more invasive species such as zebra mussels, and declines in forage species such as tullibees.
But the walleye population has shown signs of improving health.
The lake’s walleye population is helped by the protection of fish born in 2013, which is starting to produce young fish that appear to be surviving, the DNR said.
The season opens May 11, and regulations for the upcoming season will be announced in mid-March.
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