3000 walleye!!!

[Texeye]

I was thinking the other day about how many walleye get taken out of our lake a year, and came up with a pretty scary figure! I personally know 30 fishermen who could catch their limit of walleye(5 walleye per person)at least 20 days out of the year.This is 3,000 walleye a year! This does not include all the other fishermen who are catching and keeping walleye.This figure is probably on the conservative side,it could easily be many times more than this. When you think of it in this light it helps us to see the need of catch and release.Just out of curiosity, what is the limit where you live?

[Jack G]

I personally almost never keep a fish. That is not a knock against any fisherman who keeps whatever the law says is legal, I just keep a couple fish once in a while for that evenings meal, none for the freezer.

I mostly fish for walleyes but for the past 15 years I have fished for bass in Florida for the entire month of March. At the beginning I found a 5000 acre lake that was loaded with large bass. On almost every trip onto the water you could expect to tangle with a bass ten pounds or better, landing it was another story. At that time I was already releasing all fish.

I saw many, many fishermen keep limits of bass that probably averaged over five pounds per fish, many of these fish would be up to eight pounds. I would talk with my fishing friends about the impact that must have on that lake and over the years the size of the bass dropped significantly. Several years back the Conservation people put slot limits into effect to try to bring back the quality fishing.

I think it was working but in Sept 1999 that lake drained out thru a sink hole and at this time is less than half full.

I firmly believe that a pressured lake can be negatively impacted by limits that are too liberal and fishermen that are not willing to turn back trophy fish.

Jack

[chadk66]

I recently read an article in either walleye insider or in-fisherman that was talking about the estimated number of walleye in all the lakes in minnesota. The article stated something to the fact that if every licensed angler in minnesota caught one or two daily limits during a year it would extinguish the walleye population. The article really blew me away. That tells you how many people never catch fish or just fish a day or two out of the year and don't catch anything. Makes you feel more fortunate that you do actually catch some. One other thing I thought was that there must be alot of catch and release going on.

[Eyez]

Wanna know what happens when people keep more fish than the water can handle? Look at Waubay lake (walleye and perch), Long lake (Perch, completely fished out in 3 months), Maynard's slough (Perch, lasted 2 winters), and Warner's slough (perch, lasted longer, but basically empty now). All in ne south dakota. The new limits on perch should help those waters come back, but I doubt Waubay will ever be like it used to be for walleyes. It's still a great walleye lake, don't get me wrong, but the fish were so easy to catch, that all of the 500 or so boats on the lake each day on weekends took home limits almost every day for nearly 2 years. I realize that waubay was maybe overpopulated at the time, and that it has stabilized now, but most people that fish it will tell you that fish over the 20 inch slot are more common than those in the 16-20 inch slot. I'm not saying that anyone did anything wrong by keepin their limit (different story for those dirtballs that double-dip), but just cause it's legal, doesn't mean that the lake can handle it. That's why catch and release is important. It's a way for fisherman to voluntarily show their respect for the fishery. Keep a few for a meal, but don't fill the freezer. The legal limits rely on the fact that not everybody keeps everything they catch. If that were the case, the daily limit would be 1 walleye, it would be the only way to maintain a fishable population.

Now that you know how I feel :) , I'll say that I've cleaned a total of five fish since ice up, all perch, for one meal, everything else I'v caught has gone back, either because I didn't feel like eating fish that day, or because the lake I was fishing has been fished down so bad that I couldn't stand to keep anything from it.

I'd like to see GF&P designate certain fished out waters as "recovery" waters, or something like that, encouraging people not to keep fish from those lakes so that they can recover from the beating that they took in past years. Maynard's slough and Long lake come to mind in particular.

<end vent> :)


Eyez

[livebait]

id have to agree with those thoughts, two years ago on meynards id guess the average pearch wah 10 inches last year id guess 7 and this season i was up there during early ice and caught about 6 in the 6inch bracket that i saw others still keeping for the freezer. I hav enow decided to fish more remote sloughs and take only enough for one dinner if the wife tells me she wants them for that nights meal.

With all the over harvesting thats going on we all might have to sell the boats and take up golf!

[BD]

I HATE GOLF!!!!!

[BigAL on BAGO]

I hate Treaty rights exercised with modern high tech equipment !!!

[TBO/MN]

Here is another one for you. The MN DNR stated a couple of years ago that for every 100 people that fish on any given day, only 6 will take a limit of walleye. Over a years time that reduces down to less than 2 people per hundred. So, less than 2% of the anglers in MN take daily limits of walleyes. That means 98% of the angling public don't take a limit of fish. We could go on and speculate as to how many anglers we have and the amount of out of state anglers, etc., etc.,etc. The fact remains that there aren't as many taken as one would think. The real shocker is, the amount of money that is spent in this state alone on the persuit of the walleye, and other game fish. No matter how many are taken, I still believe in CPR.

Good Fishin'
TBO/MN

[Dinky]

Didn't know you could eat bass!