Recent

Check Out Our Forum Tab!

Click On The "Forum" Tab Under The Logo For More Content!
If you are using your phone, click on the menu, then select forum. Make sure you refresh the page!
The views of the poster, may not be the views of the website of "Minnesota Outdoorsman" therefore we are not liable for what our members post, they are solely responsible for what they post. They agreed to a user agreement when signing up to MNO.

Author Topic: Red Lake 15 years later:  (Read 4752 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Lee Borgersen

  • AKA "Smallmouthguide"
  • Pro-Staff
  • Master Outdoorsman
  • *
  • Posts: 15328
  • Karma: +40/-562
  • 2008-2011-2018-2019 2020 Fish Challenge Champ!
    • Lee's Lake Geneva Guide Service
Red Lake 15 years later: Historic agreement the Red Lake Band of Chippewa and Minnesota DNR signed in April 1999 produced walleye recovery

 Apr 5, 2014



  



RED LAKE - As Al Pemberton recalls, it was about three years after the Red Lake Band of Chippewa and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources signed an agreement to restore walleye populations in Upper and Lower Red lakes that he saw the true potential for the big lakes' recovery.


:coffee: It really can happen :happy1: .......

The agreement, which state and tribal officials had signed on a perfect afternoon in April 1999, resulted from the collapse of the walleye population in Minnesota's largest inland lake, a once-unthinkable outcome caused by years of overfishing.

Two sides united by adversity, people that historically had very little to do with each other, now were working together to reverse the damage - and the pain - on the lake they shared.

"When it first started, it was kind of pointing fingers at everybody," said Pemberton, director of the Red Lake tribal DNR and a member of the Red Lake Tribal Council. "They were doing their thing, and we were doing our thing."

That spring day in the early 2000s, Pemberton and tribal biologist Pat Brown had stopped at a site near the mouth of the Blackduck River where fisheries crews set trap nets every year to sample spawning walleyes.

The Blackduck River flows into Lower Red Lake, and in 1998, Brown's first spring on the job, the trap nets had captured only two male walleyes during two weeks of sampling.

"I told Pat - this was like the third spring - we're going to start lifting up the nets, and he said we should probably have a few walleyes in there but didn't think we'd have that many," Pemberton said. "We lifted the net up, and there were like 3,000 in there. I'd never seen walleyes that big in Red Lake - they were 17, 18, 19 inches already. They just grew like crazy.

"I think God was with us when all that happened."

Rapid recovery

Wednesday April 9 marks 15 years since the band and the state signed that historic agreement, and players on both sides of the lake say it would have been difficult to envision the recovery that ensued.

Today, Red Lake sports several age-classes of walleyes, the resort industry in Minnesota waters is thriving, a state park on Upper Red Lake draws visitors to camp, fish and explore the Red Lake Bog, and Akina Red Lake Fishery, the tribal fish-packing plant in Redby, again is a major employer on the reservation.

Gone are the days of widespread netting - tribal members are limited to hook-and-line fishing except for a small crew the fishery hires to supplement the catch in the slow months of July and August - and state and band fisheries experts meet twice a year to share information on population surveys and harvest rates.

"We're taking care of it now," Pemberton said. "We're watching it.

"It's been good. All of the partners seem to work together."

Henry Drewes, regional fisheries supervisor for the DNR in Bemidji, said "there were certainly unknowns" in the recovery plan, developed by the Red Lake Technical Committee, a team of state and tribal fisheries officials and other experts assembled in the wake of the collapse.

Not until Red Lake, Drewes said, had Minnesota ever used the word "collapse" to describe a walleye population.

"The construct of the committee was very focused on fixing the problem, not fixing blame," Drewes said. "There was plenty of blame to go around. We were looking forward, not backward."

Confident, but uncertain of the timeline, is how Drewes describes the mindset when the recovery plan was signed that day 15 years ago. Highlights included three stocking efforts of mosquito-size walleye fry, stepped-up enforcement in state and tribal waters and a moratorium on walleye fishing until stocks recovered.

"We had determined three (stocking) efforts, and if they were not successful, we weren't going to continue," Drewes said.

Coupled with the harvest moratoriums, the stocking campaigns - about 30 million walleye fry each in 1999, 2001 and again in 2003 - provided the necessary jumpstart. By 2006, Red Lake's walleye populations had recovered to the point where fishing resumed in state and tribal waters - albeit with tight harvest quotas the committee had developed.

"We thought it would be eight to 10 years before we could reopen the fishery," Drewes said. "And it ended up being quicker and more successful than we possibly could have imagined, and that's why we were able to open after seven years."

Local benefits

Kelly Petrowske of Waskis was there in the late '90s when the small community on the east side of Upper Red Lake was all but a ghost town. His family had once owned a resort on Upper Red, trapping minnows, renting boats in the summer and plowing ice roads and renting fish houses in the winter.

But the tourism dried up when the walleyes collapsed. Today, both are back, and Petrowske again plows roads and rents fish houses in the winter and farms wild rice in summer.

It's not an easy life, he says, but at least he can call Waskish home.

"I think we have to be extremely happy everything worked," Petrowski said. "We've got fantastic fishing. Hopefully, the band and the state can keep working together."

Strict wetland laws likely will limit opportunities for new resorts and other businesses on Upper Red, Petrowske said, and employment remains a challenge for recruiting young people.

"The one good thing I've seen is the sons of the people my age that started the rice business are moving back home and taking over," Petrowske said. "Almost every farmer in town has young kids coming back - plus they can work on the lake in the winter."

Jerry Stensing, who operates a tree nursery near Waskish, was among the area residents to explore other options for tourism after the walleyes collapsed. One of his ideas was a bog walk that would allow visitors to hike into the heart of the Red Lake Bog, a harsh environment that supports a vast array of plant species.

The bog walk, completed in 2005, is a centerpiece of Big Bog State Recreation Area, a DNR-managed facility that offers camping, fishing, hiking and birding, along with a new visitor center and interpretive displays highlighting the area.

"In the entire area, after the walleyes collapsed, it was pretty sad around here, and we've had some very significant changes to the area," Stensing said.

Those changes also have presented challenges, he says, such as managing ATVs and the increased hunting and fishing pressure that has occurred.

"The flipside of that coin is there are tremendous opportunities here, and sportsmen, both fishermen and hunters and just recreational users of the woodlands, enjoy tremendous opportunities, and there are a lot of things to see and do," Stensing said.

Crappie boom

For several years in the early 2000s, Upper Red Lake also became a premier destination for crappies, a secondary species that filled the void left by the walleye collapse.

Anglers came by the thousands. So heavy was the traffic, the DNR's Drewes recalls, that the Minnesota State Highway Patrol deployed additional officers to work the area during busy weekends.

Only in the past couple of years, Drewes says, has the DNR finally stopped hearing Red Lake should have been managed for crappies instead of walleyes. Less desirable species such as freshwater drum or bullheads could have filled the void, Drewes said, but instead, it was crappies from a massive 1995 hatch that carried the population for the next 10 years.

"It's not a subjective position, it's just a fact - that was a rare, way more infrequent than once-in-a-blue moon" occurrence, Drewes said. "The bottom line is we couldn't have done that if we tried."

Crappie numbers dwindled in the mid-2000s, and the fish again are a secondary species, but the boom was really something while it lasted.

"It was a highly desirable species that flourished," Drewes said. "It's a memory that you have, I have and thousands of other Minnesota anglers will have.

"It was a perfect scenario not to be repeated."

Looking toward the future, Drewes said the state and the band are in the process of drafting another walleye agreement, which will be similar in scope to the pact signed in 1999 and renewed in 2010. Both sides are committed, he said, to staying within the annual walleye safe harvest range of 1.75 pounds to 3.5 pounds per acre, a maximum of 168,000 pounds annually in state waters and 829,500 pounds annually in tribal waters.

Despite bumping close to the harvest quotas, Drewes said the lake today holds a diverse population of spawning walleyes from multiple age-classes, with especially strong numbers of 15- to 17-inch walleyes from the 2009 hatch and 12- to 13-inch fish from 2011, which Drewes calls "one of the biggest year-classes we've ever seen."

Larger, older walleyes measuring 25 to 30 inches also are showing up more regularly, something that rarely occurred before the recovery agreement.

For a total state investment of about $500,000, Drewes said Upper Red Lake has provided 7 million hours of fishing opportunity and a walleye harvest of slightly more than 900,000 pounds - just in Minnesota waters - since fishing resumed in 2006.

The recovery, Drewes says, is one of the finer stories in Minnesota.

"If someone would have said to me in 1999, 'Where would you like to be in 2014?' I would describe right where we're at right now," Drewes said. "If they'd asked the likelihood of that happening, I would have said 'remote.'

"We're in a really good place."

 

Fisheries workers Rick Barrett (left) and Merrill Neadeau of the Red Lake DNR empty containers of walleye fry into Lower Red Lake in May 1999. (file photo)
« Last Edit: April 04/06/14, 10:19:00 PM by Lee Borgersen »
Proud Member of the CWCS.
http://www.cwcs.org

Member of Walleyes For Tomorrow.
www.walleyesfortomorrow.org

              Many BWCA Reports
http://leeslakegenevaguideservice.com/boundry_%2712.htm

If you help someone when they're in trouble, they will remember you when they're in trouble again

Offline Cody Gruchow

  • Master Outdoorsman
  • Posts: 4060
  • Karma: +3/-0
  • 2016 Mno rockbass challenge champion
seems there weren't to shy to point the finger at what was responsible for the lakes decline in the first place...unlike mille lacs where they point the finger at everything else other then the #1 reason... history repeats itself only its mille lacs this time after they learned there lesson on Red.

Offline Lee Borgersen

  • AKA "Smallmouthguide"
  • Pro-Staff
  • Master Outdoorsman
  • *
  • Posts: 15328
  • Karma: +40/-562
  • 2008-2011-2018-2019 2020 Fish Challenge Champ!
    • Lee's Lake Geneva Guide Service
seems there weren't to shy to point the finger at what was responsible for the lakes decline in the first place...unlike mille lacs where they point the finger at everything else other then the #1 reason... history repeats itself only its mille lacs this time after they learned there lesson on Red.

Come on Cody! Is it necessary for you to always tell the truth :Clap:
Proud Member of the CWCS.
http://www.cwcs.org

Member of Walleyes For Tomorrow.
www.walleyesfortomorrow.org

              Many BWCA Reports
http://leeslakegenevaguideservice.com/boundry_%2712.htm

If you help someone when they're in trouble, they will remember you when they're in trouble again

Offline kenhuntin

  • Master Outdoorsman
  • Posts: 2037
  • Karma: +0/-5
  • FISH CHAMP#1 2010#10 2009#4 2008 colapsed 2011
Does anyone know the answer of how many of the Wisconsin tribal members spear and net Lower Red Lake? Are the People from Wisconsin tribes welcome to also enjoy the spearing and netting of Lower Red?
A gun owner is a citizen
Those without are subjects

Offline Lee Borgersen

  • AKA "Smallmouthguide"
  • Pro-Staff
  • Master Outdoorsman
  • *
  • Posts: 15328
  • Karma: +40/-562
  • 2008-2011-2018-2019 2020 Fish Challenge Champ!
    • Lee's Lake Geneva Guide Service
                            Great Lakes Indian
                        Fish & Wildlife Commission
                                   (GLIFWC)


http://www.glifwc.org/
Proud Member of the CWCS.
http://www.cwcs.org

Member of Walleyes For Tomorrow.
www.walleyesfortomorrow.org

              Many BWCA Reports
http://leeslakegenevaguideservice.com/boundry_%2712.htm

If you help someone when they're in trouble, they will remember you when they're in trouble again

Offline corny13

  • Master Outdoorsman
  • Posts: 1668
  • Karma: +2/-0
  • 2012 ROCKBASS CHAMPION 2014
Doesnt look like Leech, Cass, Winni, or the Red's are in their area from Lee's Map.  Kinda explains it.

Red Lake has always kinda kept to itself.  When I was a kid, none of the kids on Red Lake spoke english only Ojibwe...went up there a couple times was like a foreign country but we kids spoke the same language of sling shots and hunting frogs etc..

Historically their res included all of the northern Red river valley in ND and Mn...bad move to sell it for penny's a acre..

Offline snow1

  • Master Outdoorsman
  • Posts: 3518
  • Karma: +5/-42
Good read,feel good story...However guess who paid for the rebound folks?,we non-natives,every stinkin nickle,from the labor of roe stripping on lake vermillion to the millions of $$$ associated with stocking,but wait...some say the BIA helped too,sure they did,but guess what,the BIA is federally funded by none other than us tax payers.This cycle is beyound sickening,and now the commercial netts are back in URL.

Further,the red lake band is a sovereign nation,other bands are not allowed to harvest there.
« Last Edit: April 04/07/14, 12:11:40 PM by snow1 »

Offline kenhuntin

  • Master Outdoorsman
  • Posts: 2037
  • Karma: +0/-5
  • FISH CHAMP#1 2010#10 2009#4 2008 colapsed 2011
.

Further,the red lake band is a sovereign nation,other bands are not allowed to harvest there.
[/quote]
 And that is how it should be.
A gun owner is a citizen
Those without are subjects

Offline Cody Gruchow

  • Master Outdoorsman
  • Posts: 4060
  • Karma: +3/-0
  • 2016 Mno rockbass challenge champion
exactly right Ken!  :Clap: :Clap:

Offline snow1

  • Master Outdoorsman
  • Posts: 3518
  • Karma: +5/-42
Actually this is the 21st century,gill netting should be banned period,I can understand the heritage stand point,no problem,but for economic gain it is truely a sin,destroying a natural resource for the sake a making a few bucks and then having the responsible non-natives bring the lake/lakes back to life so they can continue to pilage the lake/lakes is a sickening cycle,just like all the millions of $$$$ we non natives funnel into these tribes nationally,give them an inch and they take a mile,just wait when you read about the tribes wanting to hunt buffalo in yellowstone park,but that will be another thread.

Offline cookie

  • Master Outdoorsman
  • Posts: 1243
  • Karma: +8/-1
the fishing has been fantsatic all summer. Last weekend we got our 12 in less then 2 hours. Sounds like they mey go to 3 under 17 for the winter to keep the harvest down.
Cookie's on Upper Red Lake
e-mail: cookie16@paulbunyan.net
website: www.cookiesonupperredlake.com