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DNR to stock walleye in Mille Lacs Lake as experiment 2/17/16 at 9:55 p.m. 
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GARRISON—The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources plans to experimentally stock Mille Lacs Lake with walleye this spring, Central Region Fisheries Manager Brad Parsons said Tuesday
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Parsons updated the Mille Lacs Fisheries Advisory Committee about the plan during the committee's meeting at the Garrison city office.
The DNR formed the advisory committee in order for citizens to give input on the agency's policy toward Mille Lacs, following public outcry
last year when the DNR closed the summer walleye fishing season early amid a decline in walleye population.
The committee has met since early October, hearing from a variety of DNR experts on its fisheries operation and populations studies, as well as occasionally weighing in on proposed regulations for the lake.
The difficulty on Mille Lacs is not that there aren't fry (baby fish) but that the fry are not surviving to be 1-year-olds.
After ice-out this year, the DNR plans to take between
10 million and
20 million eggs together with milt (semen) from the lake's walleye to its hatchery in St. Paul, where the fertilized eggs will be nurtured, marked and then put back into the lake almost immediately after they hatch, Parsons said.
By tracking the Mille Lacs fish spawn from the beginning the DNR hopes to get a better understanding of how many wild fry are produced in the lake, Parsons said.
There are other lake stocking projects where the DNR cares for fish until they grow all the way to the fingerling stage, but the resources required to raise fish for that long for a lake as big as Mille Lacs would likely be prohibitive, he said.
Fisheries manager Dale Logsdon gave a presentation on how the DNR marks its stocked fish with a chemical absorbed and retained in the fish's tissue at least eight years. This lets researchers tell it apart from wild-spawned fish in the lake.
Mille Lacs has the purest genetic strain of any walleye lake in the state, he said.
Advisory Committee member Dr. Paul Venturelli of the University of Minnesota appeared skeptical of the stocking idea. If you have a problem with your vehicle's carburetor, you don't put in more gas, he said.
Tom Neustrom, an angler on the committee, said the stocking idea should be heard out.
"We have to start making some decisions," he said. "There's no quick solution, we know that. But what is our best option?"
Advisory committee members also suggested stocking perch as a food source for walleye or lowering the allowed fishing limit on perch.
DNR Fisheries manager Doug Schultz presented to the committee on how stocking had mixed results on lakes such as Leech Lake, with some cases where it could have helped and some where overstocking could have hurt.
The data showed "not great odds" if the committee was looking for stocking alone to solve issues with recruitment into the population, Schultz said.
"There is such a thing as stocking too much," he said.
Stocking requires planning, time and reasonable goals in order to be successful, Schultz said.
"Stocking is not going to be a cure-all," he said.
Tom Jones, DNR regional fisheries treaty coordinator, gave a presentation on how hooking mortality (the unintended death of fish due to handling by anglers) is measured and how it could be prevented. Live bait is more likely to result in a fish dying than artificial because it swallows the bait, and the hook with it.
Don Pereira, DNR Fisheries chief, also presented preliminary information on potential regulations for the coming open water season.
DNR staff and the committee will discuss open water regulations in more detail at their next meeting, Feb. 24 from 5:30-9 p.m. at Izaty's Golf Resort, the DNR said.
ZACH KAYSER may be reached at 218-855-5860 or
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Topic: DNR to stock M. Lacs W/E (Read 5100 times)
