Gim= That article is nearly all BS, as is your comments. Re: Your comments: The MN DNR does not weigh any fish, nor track the tribal harvest in any manner. GLIFWC has it’s members self report, they tell the DNR and the DNR accepts that as fact.
Re: The Article: A dead fish is not a dead fish. A fish can die from a long list of things throughout the year, so a fish that survives all of them and makes it to spawn is more valuable and should be allowed to complete it’s spawn before being taken. Fish recruitment is done by the billions of eggs, and a very small percentage get fertilized, hatch and live beyond year 1. So every female that is removed has some % negative impact. It’s similar to compounding interest, and every miniscule change in egg production/availability lowers the long term return in adult walleye. Weather has a bigger impact on recruitment, but the same philosophy applies. Think of your mortgage, and whether you have a 2% interest rate, 2.5%, 3% or 9.5%. It adds up.
Secondly, “they don’t net the whole lake”. They don’t have to, anyone even remotely familiar with fish/walleye spawning knows they congregate in the same small, relative to the overall lake, area to spawn, so you don’t need hundreds of miles of nets, to effectively net the “whole lake”.
Finally, “Every fish that comes into the landing, whether speared or netted, is counted and weighed.” Again not true as anyone who has every watched them filling totes and driving them away can attest to. Or the general lack of GLIFWC at the landings. And if true, why isn’t that info shared with the public? A little transparency would go a long ways in rebuilding the trust in MN DNR and Glifwc’s management of the lake. We can’t even get transparency in the meetings between the DNR and GLIFWC, let alone actual data.
