Rockman's Report

[rockman]

We are officially done with the winter season; it was a short one to say the least. The walleye bite never really took off, unless you were fishing in shallow water. The perch would come and go, with no real commitment to one area. They are scattered around all over the place. I went out with Jonathan yesterday for his twenty first birthday, with no success. We moved all over the place. You could see them on the vexlar, and once again as it has been all season, they just would not bite.

Now, to have seen many buckets of perch this past 2 weeks and to not be able to get into them myself has been very frustrating. But as all good fishermen do, I will just keep looking until I find the right school of fish that are biting. I will have plenty of time over the next 5 weeks to hunt them down. They are out there; it is just going to take some patience until they start to bite. When they do, I will post it on the report. It will be fast and furious when they do.

Now, here we go with the new slot limits. The majority of the input group voted for an 18 to 28 inch protected slot on Monday. I did not vote for that slot myself, when they were offering us the 20 inch slot for this season with some stipulation that if it looks like we are going to go over our quota, they would have to revisit the 14 to 16 inch slot later in the season. I would have taken that chance this year, with the way the bite has been over the past 5 months. I have learned over the past 12 years that you take whatever you can get, if they are going to offer us a 20 inch slot, we should have taken it.

At least it would set Mille Lacs a part from the rest of the state and with the way the gas prices are and the economy in the toilet. Maybe that would give us the businesses in the area, the edge we need to make it through another season on Mille lacs. We will always have to set new limits every year anyway, with the band changing their take every year. The band has shown their true colors this year, with their quota going up and ours going down, when the lake is suppose to be in such bad shape.

You must be asking yourself, why then would their quota go up by 23,000 lbs and we lose 140,000 lbs. Should the bands not also be concerned, about the state of the walleye population in Mille Lacs? Yet they will net these fish while they are at their most vulnerable state, spawning. How will that go over, year in and year out? The bands quota goes up while the sportsman quota continues to go down every year. I really should not get into this discussion, being that it seems that I have a different opinion on the way things should be done with the slot limits on this lake, making me the minority not the majority.

This just seems to be the wrong way to go about managing any resource. You can not share in a resource and claim to be stewards and then up your quota when the lake is suppose to be on the decline in walleye population.

It just seems, way wrong to me!

We will see what the future holds for this lake soon. All I know is, we will be here to see it, I am sure of that. I have been doing this way to long to just jump ship and run for the hills.

The Rockman

[JohnWester]

thanks for the report and your opinion!