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The Donk

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This is the problem hardest to explain to poeple outside of the area and not staring it right in the face everyday. Non-reservation Minnesota has its own culture, society and way of life, the reservation has its own culture, society and beliefs that they value just as strongly as we believe in ours. Until you have spent time and learned some of differences on each side of the line it is a hard topic to discuss past the newsprint.

Big problem is many poeple followed the crappies to Waskish, settled in and gained politic power or careers that effect the area stongly without truly understanding extreme rural living, smalltown rules and reservations nieghbor conduct. Most of the headlines about the small burg of Waskish and the Red Lake Nation are printed with metro ink without local edititing.

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Big G i asume your a city person, i wouldnt be so forward about movin on blah blah etc, people up there arent "poor" like you think just because they arent swimmin in $$$ i grew up on the iron range and didnt have all the fancy toys and all any you know what i was happy having what i had, money and all the expesive electronics doesnt mean anything. its just stuff. life up north is totally different any if your not from there you will have no idea what its about i know live in the cities and ya i have i nice boat and all that stuff and id trade it all in to beable to move back home and raise my kids in a non materailistic environment so lay off the people that tolerate your weekend get aways with out them you would have no where to go "show off" your $$$ sorry to all the locals for my rant

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There is some truth to what you say. I have grow up dirt poor and decided to make something of myself. I still am not much but i am not dirt poor. I can send my kids to college and hunt and fish when i want and live in a nice house. Nothing fancy just comfortable. as for the topic on hand this is very bad news. This is what got the lake in trouble the first time. With non band members only fishing such a small part of the lake there is NO WAY they could have crashed the population like it did. You could go open season with no limit on that part of the lake and not kill both lakes! I just hope they remember what they did to the lake the last time. Gill nets and the like will kill the lake again in my opinion. when you stick that much money into a processor for fish you will want to keep it running! But i really dont care there are alot of good walleye lakes in the state so if they crash it again i say leave it be. let the crappies come back.

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I don't have a problem with them taking their quota of fish, be it by hook and line or netting. As long as they (and us) do it in a managed fashion. By that I mean, neither side should take more than what the lake can handle. Hopefully both sides keep a very close eye on things and always keep the long term health of the lake in mind. As far as the guy who's out on the lake in the terrible weather to feed his family.....Each man has to decide what is most important to him and his family. If they chose to live on the reservation, they must value many of the things that reservation has to offer. If they decide to move somewhere else to give their family opportunities, that is also their choice. When I was growing up, both sides of my family farmed, I knew at a young age that wasn't for me and I felt their were easier ways to make a living than working 18 hour days for 7 months of the year. I grew up getting paid by the hour, no matter how hard I worked or how good of a job I did I got paid the same, for the amount of time I put in. It wasn't hard to figure out that I didn't want to go through the rest of my life being told what to do and being compensated for how long I was there. I chose to go to college, which I paid for myself, and got a job I enjoy. I look at people working jobs that I consider tough, and feel for them, thinking that there are easier ways to make a living. But the fact is this, in this country, we have a choice, I know of people who grew up with NOTHING, dirt poor who are millionaires today. Sure, some have a much easier time than others and have endless opportunities to succeed, but some start with nothing and through some (Contact Us Please) hard work and common sense end up with everything (whatever that may be) they ever desired. Sure, I feel bad for some people but not for able bodied, sound minded people who complain about what they have or don't have and don't do anything to better their situation. I'm not saying these people don't work their (Contact Us Please) off, but EVERYONE has a say in what they do for a living. I'm not trying to undermine you Kelly as I can see you work your tail off day in and day out, I'm assuming you LOVE what you do for a living, otherwise it would be pretty tough to get out of bed each day and work as hard as you do. What I am saying is this, if I didn't enjoy what I was doing for a living, I'd continue to do it until I put myself in a position where I could do something else that I enjoyed/believed in.

One thing that doesn't make sense to me is why only $1/75 a lb. It seems they should get much more per lb. than that. I never buy fish but if I remember correctly it costs about 10-12 a lb. Where is all the other $ going? They need to cut out the middle man and get at least 1/2 of the profit.

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The lake was commercially fished with Gill Nets by both Whites and Indians for 1st couple decades of the 1900's and then solely by the band for the next 60 years without a problem. The lake can withstand a large take in terms of poundage. By the way, the fish in our part of the lake may have been on their water's last week... they do move around! So to say we have no impact on the total fishery because we only can access a portion of the lake is erronous! Where did all the crappies go? The band has very little interest in them. I'd bet their yearly take of crappies would not equal one busy weekend on Red on our side of the line. WE took them out! We have an impact on the entire lake! We could do the same to the walleye too!

To say we had "No role" in the walleye collapse is going through life with blinders on! The downward spiral began with illicet nets being set and band members selling boot-legged walleyes... to guess who? White people! off reservation. All those fish were never counted in any quota... and it amounted to a lot! Some say as much as many pounds as went through their fishery! Without the white man buying all those fillets, there would've been no market and no illegal harvest! We were as cullpable as they were in that regard.

Then there was umpteen million double dipping trips by us White men throughout the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's.... my father-in-law even admits to it! Lot's of freezers filled up with Red Lake walleyes in that time span. After fishing for 3 days and keeping 6 limits or so, they'd stop at the bar parking lot on the way out of town and buy another 20-30 pounds of fillets...

But alas, the final nail in the coffin was when they shrunk the opening in the net size from 2 1/2" to 1 1/2" to net the perch. Lake Michigan shut down it's commercial fishery on perch and "WE" the public wanted more perch. Prices went up and it became lucrative for them to net the perch.... problem was the nets couldn't decipher a perch from a small walleye... too many year classes of walleye were removed in a short period of time and the lake crashed. All this under the authority of the BIA in Washington (which I'm sure has plenty of white people in it).

In each of those instances, we played a roll in the walleye's demise. I'm not saying the band has no guilt associated with their actions, quite the opposite, I'm just not willing to 'throw stones at glass houses'!

Unfortunatley in America the Natural Resource 'grab' is never controlled until it's to late. The end is never in sight until it's reached! Logging, the gold rush(es), hunting Buffalo, market gunning ducks, the list goes on. We learn from past mistakes and take a conservative roll form that point forward.

Let's be glad the band is willing to try to use hook and line and trap nets first, before the gill nets. I think they ought to be applauded instead of condemned. It's their water's and they are going to try to make a living off it again much as their ancestors did. There were hard lessons learned on both sides... I don't think anyone (including the band) wants to see the lake suffer again. They have many checks and balances in place to insure strict compliance of the members for commercial fishing. They have their own 'true' DNR set-up on the res. now to make sure all members are complying with the rules. I heard their punishments are worse than ours by the state if you get caught breaking those rules.

And as far as the crappies coming back... that was good luck, an act of God or the stars and moons lining up just right (and maybe even all 3) for a once in a lifetime boom. The odds of repeating that ever again are very slim. The lake level was up, increasing the spawning area, water temps were above normal that spring, the lake was calmer than normal that spring (which in itself is very rare), it was a later than usual freeze up and an easier than normal winter for the young of the year crappies. Red has pulled off 2 spawns of crappies bigger than the 1995 class, but ultimatley they dissappeared throughout their 1st winter. Winter is the deciding factor if the young crappies make it on Red or not. If everything doesn't align themselves just right for a crappie boom, you may see an explosion in the Sheepshead population instead of the crappies. You think the masses are going to come to Waskish and knock their doors down to fish Sheepshead? It was a blessing that it happend to keep Waskish alive and with it's own zip code, butin the end big Red wants to be a walleye lake and she is again. At this moment I do not have too many concerns, the lake is healthy, I truley believe it's being monitored well on both side of the line and it can handle a lot of harvest. If it begins to fall apart, we can all raise our voices in unison and try to avert a collapse, but until then, I'll choose to go up and enjoy the lake and not waste my time worrying about things that are not happening!

Good Luck!

Ken

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The $1.75 / pound the fishermen get is for the walleye in the whole (or in the round, I can't remeber which). There is a lot of bone, skin and head they are getting paid for. From there it is filleted and packaged and I'm sure "Red Lake Foods" is getting more than $1.75 pound for finished packaged fillets. Everytime somone touches it, the price goes up... so you have trucking (price goes up) a wholesale foods distributer (price goes up) trucking again, then either the store (which will need to re-package it for retail sale) or restaurant (which will need to cook it and clean-up those dishes). So in the end the fishermen getting 1/6th the amount is probably about right and they are enjoying a portion of the profits. It's no different than farmers elling their grains to General Mills to be made into cereal...

Good Luck!

Ken

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Something to remember with those laws is non tribal waters have two maybe three wardens on the lake at any one time trying to watch 2,000+ anglers.Red Lake nation has a tiny fraction of that with just as much law looking over their shoulder AND it looks like the fisheries is keeping a close eye on things as well. I like the tail altering clause, "you cheat we are gonna bust ya".

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Ken, Very good post. You took the words right out of my mouth.Very well stated. The one thing is in 2000 they say they had the biggest hatch of crappies,bigger the 95 or 97 Have you ever heard this or know of a way to verify this.I was also told that in the fall they had dissapeared.How bout you Jon did your grampa see lots of little crappies in 2000 when he was trapping minnows?

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Cookie Cookie Cookie of course they dissappeared by fall and never showed up the next few winters, they where not old enough or big enough to spawn so they remain in the holding pen on tribal waters...thankfully they are safe there until big enough to cruise the crappie highway.

These litle guys started showing up last winter...although they where left on the ice with the trash by licensed MN spotsmen because they were to small and got culled out of the keep.

littlecrappiepv8.jpg

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Quote:

Big G i asume your a city person, i wouldnt be so forward about movin on blah blah etc, people up there arent "poor" like you think just because they arent swimmin in $$$ i grew up on the iron range and didnt have all the fancy toys and all any you know what i was happy having what i had, money and all the expesive electronics doesnt mean anything. its just stuff. life up north is totally different any if your not from there you will have no idea what its about i know live in the cities and ya i have i nice boat and all that stuff and id trade it all in to beable to move back home and raise my kids in a non materailistic environment so lay off the people that tolerate your weekend get aways with out them you would have no where to go "show off" your $$$ sorry to all the locals for my rant


Dude;

you are waaaaaaaaaaaaay off on your guess about me being a "city person". crazy.gif

You can even ask JonnyP..... shocked.gif.....If he still acknowledges who I am! blush.gifgrin.gif

PS:

Thanks for that insight Jonny!!!!!

That explains A LOT!!!!!

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  • 'we have more fun' FishingMN Creators

Quote:


Cookie Cookie Cookie of course they dissappeared by fall and never showed up the next few winters, they where not old enough or big enough to spawn so they remain in the holding pen on tribal waters...thankfully they are safe there until big enough to cruise the crappie highway.

These litle guys started showing up last winter...although they where left on the ice with the trash by licensed MN spotsmen because they were to small and got culled out of the keep.

littlecrappiepv8.jpg


I continue to be amazed by how wasteful some people who go fishing are, (note that I didn't call them fisherman). We've been catching a few of these little guys the past 3 years and they always go back into the water.

Sounds like there was a very good hatch in 2006 based on the little guys showing up in the river fall.

It also looks like things have returned to the way it was before the boom. Still a fair number of crappies for those who look for them. Plenty of walleyes and pike to eat a lot of the little ones.

Balance is being restored.

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Quote:

Dude;

you are waaaaaaaaaaaaay off on your guess about me being a "city person".
crazy.gif

You can even ask JonnyP.....
shocked.gif
.....If he still acknowledges who I am!
blush.gifgrin.gif

PS:

Thanks for that insight Jonny!!!!!

That explains A LOT!!!!!


Ya I've known Big G for a some time. He is not rich by any means, does not have a nice truck (only guy in the cities with a truck worse then mine). As you guessed he is a married working man that spends most of his money on his kids and not shiny stuff.

...and his head is to big for his body. laugh.gif

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well then i guess i asummedn wron but whats with the attacks?????? anyway reguardlwss we have no control over what happens on the lake the only thing we can control is us as sportsman to stay with in the limits we have and not to waste the resources that we have. once again sory for the assumption i just hate when people say then just move and do somethin better etc its not that easy all the time theres more to it

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I have change my opinion 180 degrees on this subject. All I'm going to say is they need to make a living and if they destroy the lake in the process, there is another ten years without a pay check. The Band will take care of the lakes.

Only time will tell.

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