I was living on the Wisconsin River in Wisconsin Rapids when the DNR finally enacted a slot limit, against the protests of nearly every fisherman. By this time walleye were scarce and sizeable fish were non-existent. The slot protected fish between 15 and 24 inches, with only one fish over 24" allowed.

   I tell you what, if I hadnt been there to see it myself I wouldnt have believed that in just 2 years 24" walleye were common and fish below the slot were abundant. If fishermen would voluntarily limit the fish they keep these results are possible in any waters. All these fish need is to be given a fair chance.

   I see all too many boats sit on a spot for a few hours in the morning and never move, and in late afternoon they are back on the same spot again. They wouldnt keep hitting the same spot if they werent catching fish, and I think we all know whats going on there.

On 3/30/2020 at 11:25 PM, Ogandrews said:

I noticed a very similar thing when I lived in Iowa, and to an extent here in Minnesota too. It seems that the goal of every walleye fisherman in this state is to get their limit every time they are on the water. I don’t care how big the lake is that isn’t sustainable. Everyone wants to blame the low walleye numbers on musky eating them all but in reality it’s the people that are complaining about the muskies who are the ones destroying the populations. Every year or so they try to make new legislations to stop musky stocking in MN and change lakes that have them to have no limit on them to try to get them out of the lakes. Doesn’t matter that there are 20 or more lakes with walleye in them for every one lake with Muskies. I could go on for hours about how ridiculous of an idea this is.

Here's this years attempt. I think it's part "muskies eat walleyes" even though a study just completed on Lake Miltona showed 2% of the muskies diet was walleye, and they don't want stocking because it will bring more traffic to "their" lake. If I remember correctly the rep who is behind all this owns lakefront property that would be affected.

7 hours ago, Vilas15 said:

Here's this years attempt. I think it's part "muskies eat walleyes" even though a study just completed on Lake Miltona showed 2% of the muskies diet was walleye, and they don't want stocking because it will bring more traffic to "their" lake. If I remember correctly the rep who is behind all this owns lakefront property that would be affected.

Every year it is pushed and funded by a group of lake front owners in the Detroit lakes area and the rep is part of them. It is honestly laughable their reasoning behind the bill, I’m not worried it will ever pass because musky fishing is only getting bigger and more people are realizing that the best musky lakes in this state are also the best musky lakes a lot of the time. LOTW has arguably the highest population of musky (partially) in the state and is also one of the best walleye fisheries in the world. Same with vermilion, leech, winni, Cass, Detroit lakes area, ect ect. I hope that the population of this state has enough common sense to realize how stupid these bills are and keep turning them down like they have in the past.

I just can't deal with this anti-muskie crowd anymore.  They are so blind from the truth its incomprehensible.  "The muskies are eating all of our walleyes and panfish" even though stomach content studies in a fabled MN water says otherwise.  There is absolutely no data to support their theory.  In fact, the only thing decimating their walleye and panfish populations are themselves!

 

As for the pike issue, well that may take quite a while to get fixed.  They allowed the harvest of large pike for so many years that we dug ourselves a really deep hole that simply won't take a short amount of time to reverse.  It can be done though over time.  Remove the small ones and release anything that is bigger than 26 inches.  The bigger lakes in our state of Minnesota all have better size pike structure because they've had slot restrictions on pike for a longer period of time, as opposed to statewide "catch all" regs.  Plus winter spearing has been banned on most of them because they have muskies.