M Lacs ice fishin details

[Lee Borgersen]

DNR: Mille Lacs ice fishing details expected in October.

  09/12/2015



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Details about a walleye ice fishing season on Mille Lacs Lake are still a month away, Minnesota's natural resources commissioner said Friday.

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Commissioner Tom Landwehr said he is hoping for "the most liberal season we can get," echoing Gov. Mark Dayton's public insistence on an ice-fishing season for Mille Lacs walleye that caught some in the Department of Natural Resources by surprise. Dayton said Thursday it was crucial to area resorts and other fishing-dependent businesses that there is as a robust winter season, given the economic hardship resulting from this summer's abrupt end of walleye fishing.

Landwehr said he spoke with the governor Friday morning about the process for moving ahead with the ice-fishing season, but the timing and harvest limits depend on an assessment of the lake's walleye population that has yet to begin and negotiations with American Indian tribes under their treaty rights. Recommendations are expected in mid-October.

Scenarios range from a delayed start of ice fishing to catch-and-release requirements to traditional limits on the size and number of fish that anglers can keep in a day.

"We're not going to make any decisions until we have the data in hand," Landwehr said.

An exceeded walleye harvest quota for 2015 caused the DNR to close the open-water season in early August. The quotas usually extend through Dec.


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31 and encompass the first month of ice fishing. Landwehr said opening the lake this December to walleye anglers -- if ice thickness conditions allow -- would require new limits to be set sooner.
Although DNR data show ice fishing on Mille Lacs keeps anglers on the lake for much longer hours than other times of the year, the strain on the fishery is usually less. That's because stationary ice houses slows catch rates and the cooler temperatures reduce mortality for fish that are thrown back.

Even if there are restraints on walleye fishing this winter, officials stress that the lake would be open for catching perch, northern pike and other game fish.


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