Would like to know (The Red Lake Story)

[bottom-bouncer]

Can some help me out with a few questions. I am curios about the collapse of the fishery was it a slow decline or more rappid I am just curios was still pretty young when this happened. on a more positive note we decided to make this our destination for opener this year would like to know who if anybody has rooms on the lake or if we should bring the camper up? also who would be the one to talk to about possible spots to try we will fish for some eye's but I really want to catch a big pike and maybe try to pick off a crappie or two I would appreciate any info

[knucklehead]

my one stop would be to Kelly P or Johnny P out of the Waskish minnow station. I have been with them for 5 years now and have never been lead down the wrong path......give em a shout

[Random guy]

Ah the Red Lake story

This should give you guys something to chew on for awhile. Lengthy but full of info. One from outdoor writer Brad Dokken and another from the DNR.

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By Brad Dokken. Photography by Eric Hylden

When Bill May talks about netting walleyes on Red Lake,he speaks as a man who grew up around fishing. He talks of honorable things such as family, tradition. In the years he spent growing up on the Red Lake reservation, he says, fishing didn't pay all the bills or buy all the food, but it did help out when times were tough.

Even on those days when fog would descend like an impenetrable shroud, May says he could find his nets on Miskwagami-wizaga-igoniyg--named by the Ojibwe for its beautiful sunsets. He'd look at the bulrushes along the shoreline. He'd check the wind and watch the direction it carried the waves.

"You'd know you had to keep your boat in line with those waves, and, if you got it right, you'd go straight to the nets," May says. "I did that many times and came right up on them."

But somewhere along the line, this knack for navigating the lake was lost among the younger tribal fishermen. May recalls heading out one foggy autumn evening to set his nets. Snow flurries filled the air. He didn't want to be on the water that day, but he kept his eyes on the shoreline, set his nets without incident, and returned to shore.

Back at the landing, May saw a pickup owned by two younger fishermen. It had been there when he launched his boat that evening. May knew the men had headed out to set their nets. They should have been back by now. Something wasn't right.

Later, May learned that many hours had passed before the pair got off the lake. They had lost track of the shoreline and eventually drifted to shore--wet and freezing--some 20 miles from their launching point.

The plight of the lost fishermen, in many ways, reflects what happened to the tradition of tribal fishing on Red Lake. The new generation, May says, got lost. They didn't respect the water. They didn't respect each other. Lured by banner prices, they converged on the lake to take fish and profits. They gave nothing in return.

Catches began to decline. In the end, May says, setting nets wasn't worth the effort. "The last year I fished was probably '95, and then we had it open the next year," he says. "I fished one week, but then I thought, 'I don't want to monkey with that.'"

A tradition, a way of life, had been driven to the point of collapse.

What happened to Red Lake's walleye population is no mystery. People took more fish than the lake could afford to give. Tribal netting. Sportfishing. Poaching. Greed. All played a role in the demise of Minnesota's largest inland lake.

Both the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians and the sportfishing operators on Minnesota's share of the lake say they saw it coming for many years. When the bottom fell out of the walleye population in the early 1990s, people on both sides of the lake--separated not only by 20 miles of bog-stained water, but also by race, culture, and generations of mistrust--found themselves sharing a tragic legacy.

Picking up the pieces and moving ahead would require people who typically didn't have much to do with each other to put aside their differences and work together. That's the bad news. And the good news.

Understanding relations between residents of the Red Lake reservation and the non-Ojibwe on the east side of the lake requires a quick lesson in geography and history. Red Lake itself actually is two basins. All of Lower Red Lake's 152,000 acres and 60,000 acres of Upper Red Lake lie within reservation boundaries; 48,000 acres on the east side of Upper Red Lake fall within the state's jurisdiction.

Reservation waters in Red Lake are off-limits to everyone who's not an enrolled band member, thanks to a decision tribal leaders made in 1889 to reject the Dawes Land Allotment Act. The act would have replaced the band's communal way of living by giving individual band members their own little pieces of land. By rejecting the act, the band maintained total control of the land within the reservation's boundaries; and, to this day, Red Lake remains a "closed" reservation. That control was crucial to the eventual development of Red Lake's commercial fishery.

Commercial fishing on Red Lake hasn't always been solely a tribal enterprise. Netting for profit dates back to 1917, when the state of Minnesota opened a commercial fishery on all of Red Lake in response to a food shortage triggered by World War I. Anyone could net back then. In 1930 the state got out of the commercial fishing business, and the non-Ojibwe who lived near Waskish turned their attention to resorts and sportfishing.

Meanwhile, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs took over commercial fishing on the band's share of Red Lake. That same year, the band formed the Red Lake Fisheries Association, a tribal cooperative that administered the day-to-day operations of the commercial fishery and divvied up the payments among Red Lake band fishermen, who were required to be association members.

Over the years the Ojibwe netted and the non-Ojibwe sportfished, and the two sides rarely crossed paths. Like commercial and sportfishing interests everywhere, they had a tenuous relationship, which became more contentious because race colored the picture.

As early as the 1970s, Red Lake was showing signs of overfishing, such as boom-and-bust cycles in walleye abundance. Still, fish prices soared, and membership in the fisheries association swelled from 200 to as many as 700 netters by the early 1990s. Association and federal rules limited each fisherman to eight nets, but band members readily admit that the regulation wasn't enforced.

The BIA, which regulated the walleye harvest on tribal waters, had set an annual quota of 650,000 pounds, but it regularly approved requests to increase that number. For example, in 1989 the band's commercial harvest was 950,000 pounds.

In reality, because bootleggers sold walleyes off the reservation and sidestepped the fisheries association, harvest numbers were even higher. How much higher is impossible to say.

May's interest in the business side of commercial fishing eventually won him election to the association's board of directors. He blames the lure of the dollar for Red Lake's demise. By the '80s, walleye in the round (not filleted) fetched 60 cents per pound. Throw in the association's annual bonus, which could triple a fisherman's income, and every fish was worth $1.80 per pound. That meant thousands of dollars to a family's bottom line.

"People were sitting around saying 'I want some of that money,'" says May. "You get one walleye, you get two, you get 1,000. You want more because people will pay good money."

Meanwhile as commercial fishing increased, walleye numbers fluctuated in Upper Red Lake. That didn't sit well with non-Ojibwe. Bar stool and coffee shop conversations spawned offbeat solutions, such as filling the lake with dog food to lure walleyes from reservation waters into Upper Red, where the fish would be safe from tribal netters. Some also wanted the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to erect a barrier between the band's part of the lake and the state's share.

"If we are going to help tourism and fishing on Upper Red Lake, we need to put up a permanent wall between Upper Red Lake and Lower Red Lake," a Princeton, Minn., man wrote in a Twin Cities outdoors publication. "Otherwise, don't stock the lake."

Despite the need to understand what was happening to the fishery, there was little scientific knowledge of the walleye population until the state and the band implemented fisheries assessments in their respective waters. The DNR began limited survey work in 1979 and has conducted annual assessments on the state's share of the lake since 1984. The Red Lake band created its own natural resources department in 1987.

The tribal DNR documented the decline in walleye numbers, says Dave Conner, fisheries biologist and administrator of the Red Lake DNR, but until the situation reached a crisis point, the fishing continued--on both sides of the lake.

"It was hard to talk to people about fishing because the netters were making more money than ever," he says. "There definitely was greed. There were greedy commercial fishermen and greedy anglers too. When fishing was good, everyone wanted it and took advantage."

Then the bottom fell out. By 1996 the band's walleye harvest had plummeted to 15,000 pounds. A year later the fisheries association voted to suspend its commercial fishery. In 1998 the tribal council banned all netting.

The netters, in a historic sense, had been hung out to dry.

There's a lesson to be learned from what happened, a lesson for the band, the state, and the federal government, which all played a role in Red Lake's decline by waiting so long to act.

"What happened was the way that commercial fisheries all over the world operate," Conner says. "Until a serious problem develops or a stock collapses, action doesn't get taken. It's not that we said, 'We're just going to wait until something happens.' It wasn't that at all. But there's just so much involved with it."

May recalls the warnings from biologists such as Conner. He also remembers the warnings of tribal elders, who attributed the decline to people who had lost their connection with the lake.

Robert Head is one of those tribal elders. In 1991, after 45 years of fishing, Head hung up his nets when his 18-year-old son, Kevin, drowned in a fall fishing accident. "I decided that was enough," says Head, who, like most tribal members, fished to supplement his income.

"The Indians, we think you take something out, you're going to have to give something back. Maybe I fished too many years. We had a lot of good years, but it's just that it couldn't keep on, that's all."

Still, Head says, to blame only the Ojibwe for what happened on Red Lake isn't really fair.

"They've got a point," Head says of the band's critics. "But in my younger days, I bet there were 5,000 boats up at Waskish, and they were catching fish. You just stood there, and they'd get their limit, run to the woods, fry 'em up, and go back out again. They can't blame the Indians for all of it. They had a pretty good black market on the upper lake too."

After the fishery collapsed, Bobby Whitefeather, Red Lake's tribal chairman, took a bold step: He initiated a meeting with then-Minnesota DNR Commissioner Rod Sando. When they met in February 1997, "we were shocked by the information we each had" on the lakes, Whitefeather recalls. But until then, "we just didn't share it."

The meeting between Whitefeather and Sando led to the formation of the Red Lake Fisheries Technical Committee, a team of state, federal, band, and University of Minnesota fisheries experts who eventually hammered out the walleye recovery plan. A group of reservation and Waskish-area citizens also offered input.

The agreement, signed in April 1999, called for stocking 40 million walleye fry up to five times during the next decade, a zero-walleye limit on all state and tribal waters until stocks recover, and stepped-up enforcement. The band, through the federal BIA, would pay $40,000 of the $68,000 annual cost of the stocking program; the state DNR would foot the remaining $28,000 from money generated by fishing license sales.

Reaching an agreement wasn't easy. According to Conner, the technical committee nearly fell apart in early 1998 because the band felt the Minnesota DNR was dragging its heels on reducing the walleye limit in state waters. "The band shut down the commercial fishery, and the state didn't do anything," Conner says. "At that point we were near saying good-bye."

It's not completely accurate to say the state was doing nothing, says Henry Drewes, DNR regional fisheries supervisor in Bemidji. While state fisheries managers wanted to reduce walleye harvest, they also recognized the need to gain public support before making any changes. To that end, they held public meetings and formed a citizens advisory committee to gauge support for everything from spending license dollars for stocking to closing the walleye season. "There was an amazing transformation from some of the earlier informational meetings where even the suggestion of reduced walleye limits and cooperation with tribal DNR generated anger and distrust," says Drewes. Eventually, fisheries managers could assure Sando of local support for recovery plan measures.

Whitefeather met again with Sando, and Sando agreed to reduce the walleye limit from six fish to two in the state waters of Upper Red Lake. The technical committee continued to meet, and the recovery plan moved forward.

May represented the fisheries association on the technical committee. Although he had some initial suspicions about the process, he says the talks were productive.

"I really listened to what the guys had to say, and everything they said made a lot of sense to me," he says. "The biologists were using all their techniques to develop a plan. And what I liked about it is nobody in the group was there to say, "It's because of you guys." Never did that attitude come out. It was just this group of people saying, 'What can we do together?'"

And despite perceptions off the reservation, May says, the band wasn't crying to the state for help.

"I don't remember ever asking for help," May says. "The biologists here, once the lake was closed, everybody knew what was going on, so they just started calling and talking to each other. I don't remember anybody saying 'Our lake has collapsed, please help us.' Because it's not only our lake, it belongs to the state too."

Fisheries managers for the Minnesota DNR view the recovery plan as a good investment. "It's a body of water with immense fish potential," says Drewes. "When you talk about the opportunity to restore 48,000 acres of prime walleye-fishing water, that's impressive. That lake during its heydays could support a quarter-million angler hours of fishing pressure. That's pretty amazing."

Perhaps even more amazing are the early returns from the 1999 spring stocking. Lakewide summer seining assessments of young-of-the-year fish averaged about 86 fish per haul, far exceeding any previous catch rates.

About 85 percent of the young-of-the-year walleyes sampled during 1999 were stocked fish, which had been marked by immersion in a solution of oxytetracycline, a chemical that shows up in a fish's middle ear bones when viewed under a microscope. The high percentage of stocked fish means the lake doesn't yet support a self-sustaining walleye population. Fish from the 1999 year class will start to contribute to the spawning population in 2002. Recovery won't be complete until multiple year classes are mature and reproducing, which could take many years.

"As the population starts to recover over the next few years, enforcement is going to become really important," Conner says. "People everywhere are going to see walleyes, and they're going to want them."

From a fishing standpoint, the Red Lake recovery is in the wait-and-see mode. Yet people along its shores are looking ahead. Last fall the band purchased Sunset Lodge, a victim of the walleye decline. According to tribal treasurer Dan King, the lodge could open doors to the sportfishing business because it's off the reservation. (Because Red Lake is a closed reservation, many band members say they are reluctant to open tribal waters to non-Ojibwe, fearing they eventually would lose control of the land.)

"We're kind of looking at options for developing that," King says of Sunset. "Even now, with no walleyes, perch numbers are coming back, and crappie fishing has been great. If you really marketed to Wisconsin, you could probably bring a bunch of folks up there."

Of course, if that happens, the people of Waskish also would benefit. Even without the walleyes, they feel there's plenty to offer tourists. That kind of positive thinking led to revival of the Upper Red Lake Area Association, the Waskish community's tourism group. The group thrived in the glory days of Upper Red sportfishing, but as the walleyes declined, so did the association. By January 1999 only seven or eight dues-paying members remained. The group wasn't dead, but its pulse was barely detectable.

Enter Joe Corcoran, a retired lieutenant and commander for the St. Paul police homicide unit. Corcoran and his wife, Karen, had built their dream home on Upper Red. A man who in his career earned a reputation for people skills and getting things done, Corcoran accepted the call to take over the association in April 1999. His mission was to break down barriers and revive enthusiasm. Thanks in part to his efforts, the association now has more than 133 dues-paying members.

"Adversarial relationships don't accomplish a lot of things," Corcoran says. "You don't look backward. Forget about blaming people and move on."

And that's exactly what the group is doing. Last winter, in an effort to lure crappies and anglers, the group constructed several log "cribs." Where there's structure, the thought went, there'll be fish, especially crappies. Sure enough, it's working.

For the first time in far too long, Waskish has new business--a restaurant and bar. Though still in the dreaming stages, Big Bog Interpretive Center has been proposed to attract tourists for a close-up look at the Red Lake Bog, one of Minnesota's last wilderness areas.

"It's going to make a big difference for this community if it goes through," Corcoran says. "I think people will come to see it, definitely. That's hard for people up here to realize. But rare birds and flowers don't exist in St. Paul. They exist in nasty, hard-to-get-to places. I don't think they realize what they've got up here. They've got a treasure, and they need to protect it."

Just as they need to protect the walleyes, when they come back. Talk to anyone, Indian or non-Indian, and that much is a given.

"I think this lake will surprise a lot of people," Corcoran says.

In many ways, it already has.

--Brad Dokken, Grand Forks, N.D., is Outdoors Editor of the Grand Forks Herald.

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Red Lake: Back to the Future

For the past seven years, nobody has been allowed to take walleye out of this famed fishery—until the 2006 walleye opener.

By Erika R.L. Rivers

When Minnesota anglers celebrate the walleye fishing opener on May 13, one of the biggest attractions will be 48,000 acres of bog-stained waters on the east side of Upper Red Lake.

In fact, both Upper and Lower Red Lakes now promise fine walleye fishing. The lakes consist of two shallow basins joined by a mile-wide channel. Of the lakes' 285,000 total acres, 237,000 acres lie within the Red Lake Indian Reservation, governed by the Red Lake Tribal Council.

The story of walleye in Red Lake is a boom and bust story of legendary proportion. In 1989 this fishery yielded almost a million pounds of walleye to commercial fishing by the Red Lake Band of Chippewa and another 180,000 pounds to sport anglers. But this harvest, along with unreported poaching, was too much for these big waters to bear. By 1996, the band harvested less than 15,000 pounds of walleye for commercial sale to restaurants and grocery stores.

The Red Lake Fisheries Association voluntarily closed commercial fishing on tribal waters in 1997, and the Red Lake Tribal Council suspended subsistence fishing in 1998. In 1999 the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources closed the walleye harvest in state waters, and the state and tribe formed the Red Lakes Fisheries Technical Committee to devise a 10-year recovery plan. (See "A Tale of Two Lakes," March-April 2000.) Now, just seven years later, the plan has largely succeeded, and sport anglers are being welcomed back to state-managed waters.

While closing the fishery enabled walleyes to repopulate, reopening it may be the key to full recovery of a self-sustaining walleye population—that is, one with multiple year-classes of mature fish that naturally reproduce. The return of the fishing harvest will be a combination of new regulations, revived traditions, and renewed respect for the amazing ability of a fishery to recover from ruin.

Two Lakes, One Fishery

The walleye population within Upper and Lower Red Lakes lives as one population that swims between basins. All waters and land within the Red Lake Reservation are held in common by the approximately 10,000 members of the Red Lake Nation. Unlike most U.S. Indian reservations, this one was never broken up into private ownership under the 1887 Dawes Land Allotment Act. Tribal waters, about 83 percent of the lakes, are off-limits to nonmembers. The other 17 percent, all within the eastern portion of the upper basin, are waters of the state of Minnesota.

The tribe and the state share management of the fisheries. By mutual agreement, the tribe and nonband anglers will share the walleye harvest—with 83 percent of the harvest allocated to band members and 17 percent to Minnesota sport anglers.

To manage the delicate fishery conservatively until it is fully recovered, the state DNR has set special fishing regulations for state-administered waters. The regulations for 2006-07 call for release of all walleye from 17 to 26 inches and a possession limit of two walleyes, only one of which may be more than 26 inches. If sport anglers' summer harvest reaches 108,000 pounds, state waters will be closed until Dec. 1. A winter harvest level will be set later this year.

On the western three-fifths of Upper Red Lake and all of Lower Red Lake, the Red Lake DNR is developing interim regulations and slot limits for band members fishing for subsistence, according to tribal DNR fisheries director Pat Brown.

"We've been working with the tribal council and meeting with band members on the reservation and in the Twin Cities," said Brown. "The message we keep hearing over and over is that the band wants rules and regulations that are based on good science and will protect the fishery. They don't want history to repeat itself."

For the time being, that means the band will not open commercial fishing operations as soon as subsistence and sport fishing resume this spring. Later this year, the band will decide how to structure a commercial fishery.

According to Brown, the return of some form of commercial fishery is a possibility. Subsistence fishing alone is not likely to reach the sustainable tribal summer harvest target of 413,000 pounds. The tribal and state DNRs together determined the harvest target for the season ending Dec. 1.

Special Fishing Regulations for the eastern 48,000 acres of Upper Red Lake:

WALLEYE. All fish 17 to 26 inches must be immediately released. Statewide possession limit of two Red Lake walleye, only one of which may be longer than 26 inches. If the safe harvest level is reached, state waters will be closed to walleye angling.

NORTHERN PIKE. All fish 26 to 40 inches must be immediately released. Statewide possession limit of three fish, only one of which may be more than 40 inches.

Opening Day

This year thousands of anglers are likely to come to Waskish, a tiny town on the eastern shore of Upper Red Lake, to launch their boats from a handful of private and public water accesses. There they can expect to see remnants of businesses that collapsed along with the fishery: The old Sunset Lodge and a few other bankrupt businesses stand empty and in disrepair. But along Minnesota Highway 72, they will also find an improved campground, a new gas station and convenience store, and a new full-service resort—complete with lakeside cabins, a bait and tackle shop, fish cleaning facilities, and a bar and grill.

"We're going to have a big celebration with the walleye reopening and old fishing friends coming back to the lake after so many years," said Barb Woltjer, co-owner of West Wind Resort. "We think the new regulations will keep some of the meat hogs away, which is OK with us. When you build a business on a fish, you're taking a big gamble. So we feel like we have to take some responsibility for helping maintain [the fishery] too. We want to encourage the kind of fishing that supports keeping our lake healthy."

Gary Barnard, Bemidji area fisheries supervisor for the state DNR, anticipates that anglers will be most successful trolling or drifting along the gradual break lines within eyesight of the Tamarac River light beacon. He is encouraging anglers to enjoy the fishing, but do so responsibly.

"It's taken seven years and a lot of work to restore this fishery," said Barnard. "I just hope that anglers realize their role in maintaining it. We need to stay within the safe harvest level to ensure a full recovery during the next few years. Everybody needs to do their part by observing the new regulations and handling fish that need to be released carefully."

On reservation waters, band members will be reacquainting themselves with a walleye heritage that has been painfully absent in recent years. Harvesting walleye from the lake has been an essential part of the Red Lake tribal practices of reliance on nature's bounty.

While its commercial walleye fishery was closed, the band developed Red Lake Nation Foods Inc. to market other traditional tribal products such as wild rice, jellies, and syrups. The online commercial venture helped the tribe diversify its economic base in the wake of the walleye collapse. Now the tribe is carefully calculating how to fold walleye into its food business.

"It's a different world today than it was when we closed the fishery," said Dave Conner, Red Lake DNR administrative officer. "When the commercial fishery reopens, it will be carefully structured to protect the resources and keep most of the profits, benefits, and jobs on the reservation."

Red Lake DNR director Al Pemberton says band members have been hungry for Red Lake walleye for a long time, and they intend to have some traditional celebrations before the tribal fishing opener in early May.

"We will have a blessing of the lake and other community celebrations like we did before the fishery was closed," said Pemberton, describing a traditional-style gathering with local churches and community organizations hosting meals of fresh walleye from the lake. "After the problems we've seen up here over the past year, the return of walleye fishing is one very positive thing on peoples' minds, even if they aren't fishermen," he said.

"People are dreaming about taking their kids and grandkids out fishing again." That's true on both sides of the lake.

More About the Plan

Red Lake's walleye recovery story goes back to a 1999 memorandum of understanding between the Minnesota DNR, the Red Lake Band, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Before reaching that agreement and forming the Red Lake Fisheries Technical Committee, the state and the tribe seldom discussed management of the lake they share.

According to Henry Drewes, Minnesota DNR northwest regional fisheries manager, members of the technical committee succeeded in attacking the problem, rather than each other.

"If we'd wanted to assess blame, there was plenty of it to go around," said Drewes. "Instead, we committed to sharing information, working together on all aspects of the recovery, and coming up with a plan that we thought would turn things around."

The committee drafted a two-phase plan to restore a self-sustaining walleye fishery on Upper and Lower Red Lakes.

During the recovery phase, the committee oversaw walleye fry stocking; strict enforcement of the walleye fishing ban on both sides of the reservation boundary; and monitoring and research to track the abundance, maturity, diversity, and natural reproduction of the recovering walleye population.

In the sustainable phase, the committee established goals that would determine when walleye harvest could safely resume. Those goals included measurements of the abundance of spawning-age walleye.

The committee has set safe harvest-ranges, which can be adapted according to the health of the walleye population. Conservative harvest can be accommodated at this stage of the recovery, according to the biologists.

Both the state and band DNRs will be monitoring harvest throughout the summer and winter fishing seasons using biological and creel surveys, and they will compare data biweekly. Stepped-up enforcement by both DNRs will ensure compliance with new regulations.

"The walleye population is well on its way to recovery, but it is still very fragile," said Pat Brown, fisheries director for the Red Lake DNR. "There are two strong year-classes spawning now, and the 2003 year-class is getting closer. But we've still got to manage harvest conservatively for three or four more years before we can really call this a complete recovery."

History of the Red Lakes Walleye Fishery

1917—State establishes commercial fishery on Red Lakes during World War I

1930—Red Lake Band takes over commercial fishery

1970s—Boom-and-bust population cycles begin

Early 1990s—Commercial, sport and illegal harvesting remove the last strong year class before it matures enough to reproduce

1997—Band closes commercial fishery

1998—Band closes subsistence fishery

State DNR reduces bag limit on state waters to two walleye

1999—Band, state DNR and Bureau of Indian Affairs agree to jointly recover walleye

DNR implements harvest closure on state waters

Band and state DNRs collaboratively stock 41.1 million walleye fry

2001—Band and state DNRs stock 31.5 million walleye fry

2003—Band and state DNRs stock 32.6 million walleye fry

2004—50 percent of stocked female walleyes from 1999 begin spawning

Natural fry production estimated at 105 million, equaling all three previous stocking efforts combined

2006—Walleye angling reopens in tribal and state waters

Erika R.L. Rivers is a DNR information officer for the northwest region.

[wanger29]

Wow, I'll have to print that. It will give me something to read on the drive up!

[knucklehead]

Thanks for sharing Johnny...cya on the 16th knucks

[kelly-p]

Brad Dokken, the only outdoors writer that cared about URL and got the word out. Until this article came out on the front page of the Grand Forks Herald the politicians would not even answer our phone calls.

The big one that got away

Feb. 6, 1999

By Brad Dokken

WASKISH, Minn. -- It's a sad wind that blows across

the expansive waters of Red Lake, now that the

walleyes are mostly gone.

This remote little town on state Highway 72 once

teemed with life, its famous and abundant Red Lake

walleyes attracting anglers both summer and winter.

"They used to say the population of Waskish went

from 70 to 7,000" when fishing season started, says

Ray Berger, who moved north from Arlington, Minn.,

in 1970 to start a grocery store. "It was a zoo."

That was before the walleye population collapsed.

Today, the zoo is empty. From 20 or so booming

resorts in the 1960s, not one is open this winter.

Gone, too, are the convenience stores, the grocery

stores, the gas stations.

Anglers who once flocked here now head for other

destinations, such as Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake

or Devils Lake.

Once world class

Waskish is a ghost town, a seemingly forgotten

legacy to a lake that Outdoor Life magazine 10 years

ago proclaimed a "world-class" walleye fishery.

Only the post office remains open.

"You'd think somebody's neck should be on the block"

for the lake's demise, said Berger, who now makes

his living in the wild rice business.

For Berger and the handful of other locals who

remain here on the shores of Upper Red Lake, ties to

the area run deep. There's no sense in pointing

fingers now, they say, but they still feel like

victims of a problem they didn't create.

Problems such as tribal overfishing and bootlegging

that frustrated even band members. Government

apathy. Bureaucracy that ties up money that might

help the area get back on its feet.

"It's so frustrating to watch your town and your

area and your family and your friends slowly

collapse," said Kelly Petrowske, whose family has

been "on, around or in the lake" since 1910.

Petrowske, who owned Sunset Lodge with his dad, Jim,

from 1985 to 1989, said the resort once boasted 35

to 40 employees.

Today, Sunset Lodge stands empty. Owners Gary and

Jane Bymark, who bought the lodge from the

Petrowskes, had moved up to Waskish from the Twin

Cities. They'd planned to spend the rest of their

lives on the lake.

Steady decline

Jane says life was good the first four years, but as

fishing got worse, the business began a steady

decline that bottomed out last year.

"People used to book for the (walleye) opener three

months in advance," she said. "Last year, I think we

had probably three people in the campground all

summer. We didn't rent one boat. We had nine boats

that just sat there."

The Bymarks closed the doors in early January. They

now live in Grand Rapids, Minn., where they own a

small bar and convenience store on Lake Pokegama.

"We did try," Bymark said. "Our main concern always

was the community and the people in it. We did the

best we could."

Sunset Lodge is for sale, but selling a resort on

Upper Red Lake these days is like trying to sell

refrigeration units at the North Pole.

"Would you be willing to take your life savings and

invest in a resort?" Ray Berger asks. "It's a [PoorWordUsage]

of a dilemma, really."

The stories of hardship and loss echo along the

lakeshore like the shifting ice on the lake. Gone

are the fish houses that once dotted the winter

landscape. Gone are the miles of plowed access

roads. Gone are the anglers.

The walleyes aren't completely gone, but they're few

and far between.

"It's a mess no matter what," Kelly Petrowske said.

"Sad, more than anything."

Minnow Station gone

Even fixtures such as the Waskish Minnow Station

have fallen by the wayside. Fred Petrowske, Jim's

dad and Kelly's grandfather, started the business in

1936.

Jim, now in his late 60s, had planned to retire on

the business's profits. Last week, he pulled the

plug. With no anglers, there's no demand for

minnows.

Since freeze-up in December, Jim Petrowske sold $150

worth of minnows and tackle -- less than he used to

sell in an hour when the fishing was good.

Instead of a retirement nest egg, Petrowske now

relies on a monthly Social Security check, a paltry

legacy to his years of hard work.

"I grew up in the minnow business, it's been my

whole life," he said. "That was going to be my

retirement; you can see how that went."

Kelly Petrowske, whose wild rice business is his

remaining economic link to the area, had to move to

Bemidji for the winter. He "pounds nails," as he

puts it, to make ends meet.

It's a far cry from the winter of 1987, when Sunset

Lodge rented every one of its 10 fish houses every

day from freeze-up until the walleye season closed

in mid-February.

"It didn't have to be this way," he said. "The Red

Lake Band and the DNR should have sat down 25 years

ago."

Glimmer of hope

Instead, they sat down two years ago. Because of

those efforts, there is a glimmer of hope on the

horizon, in the form of a recovery plan drafted by

the Red Lake Fisheries Technical Committee.

Members of the panel, experts from the Minnesota

Department of Natural Resources, the Red Lake Band

of Chippewa Indians, the federal Bureau of Indian

Affairs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and

others, have drafted a plan that calls for

restocking the lake with 40 million walleye fry

every year for the next five years, a zero-walleye

limit until stocks recover and stepped-up

enforcement efforts on both state and band-managed

portions of the lake.

Red Lake, at 260,000 acres, is two basins: Lower Red

Lake and Upper Red Lake. All but 48,000 acres of the

108,000-acre Upper Red Lake lie within the Red Lake

Indian Reservation.

The Red Lake Band quit commercial fishing two years

ago and banned subsistence fishing last year. The

band's Tribal Council last month approved the

Technical Committee plan and if the DNR and BIA

follow suit, as expected, the recovery effort could

kick in this spring.

But for the survivors of Red Lake's faltering resort

industry, it may be too late.

"Nobody's going to be left," Kelly Petrowske said.

Bymark, of Sunset Lodge, says she and her husband

did everything in their power to keep the place

afloat. She even wrote politicians in an effort to

publicize their plight.

Wrong topic

For her efforts, she said, she got one reply, from

Sen. Roger Moe, DFL-Erskine. He thanked her, she

said, for her concern ... about nursing homes.

"He was the only one who replied, but it wasn't the

issue I brought up," she said. "We've been trying to

get someone to listen to us for a year now."

That might happen during the current session of the

Minnesota Legislature. Sen. Bob Lessard,

DFL-International Falls, the chairman of the Senate

Environment and Natural Resources Committee who

often clashes with Moe, has said he plans to hold a

hearing on the Red Lake issue and maybe get Waskish

businesses some help.

Bymark says she plans to testify at that hearing.

"I don't know if that will help," she said, "but

you're talking about people's lives going down the

toilet over something we had no control over. That's

what is frustrating."

Others, such as Marie Hudec, say they'll stay on

Upper Red Lake no matter what happens. She and her

husband, Ed, own Hudec's Resort, a fixture since

1938.

No other place to go

At 57, she says it's too late to start over. Ed

Hudec, who's 81, remains hospitalized after

suffering two heart attacks in early January.

"What else can I do? I have to stay here," she said.

"I have no other place to go. To sell, I wouldn't

get nothing for it."

Like Bymark, Hudec says she remembers walleye

openers when the boats were so thick you could walk

from deck to deck without getting your feet wet.

As recently as a few years ago, she said, anglers

booked months in advance for opening weekend. Rarely

did the resort have a vacancy before July.

Fast forward to 1998, when Hudec's didn't have a

customer until May 30 -- two weeks after the walleye

opener. The resort's gross income, she says, was

down 90 percent to 95 percent from the glory days.

Her son, Don, moved back to the area a couple of

years ago, after working in Alaska on a fishing boat

and as a carpenter in the Twin Cities and Grand

Rapids. He now owns a used-car lot in Kelliher,

Minn., 17 miles down the road.

Don stands behind the bar and digs through a pile of

photos that tell the story of this once-proud

resort. Pictures of big fish, of high water that

flooded cabins and chased away customers, of rough

water.

Hudec's, he said, could survive anything -- as long

as the lake sported a decent walleye population.

"When you look at the bottom line up here, there's

only one thing you can do to help this community,"

Hudec said, "and that's put walleyes back in the

lake."

Biology changing

But with few walleyes remaining, the biology of the

lake is changing. Huge crappies weighing 2 pounds

and more show up along the shores of Upper Red Lake

every spring, Hudec said. That might attract

business for a week or two, he said, but the

crappies quickly disperse into the lake, where

they're difficult to find.

And crappies and walleyes, biologists say, don't get

along very well, which could pose another setback to

the walleye recovery.

Small perch also have overrun the lake, Hudec said.

He believes the perch will gobble up the walleye fry

as fast as they're stocked into the lake.

To prove his point, he heads for a solitary ice

house a half-mile off shore. Within half an hour, he

lands 34 perch. Three might qualify as keepers.

"How are the walleyes going to survive with all

these perch?" he says.

He lands another perch and heads back to shore.

Except for the wind, Red Lake is quiet.

Dokken is the Herald's outdoors editor.

[bottom-bouncer]

thanks for the info folks. I guess that answers my question.. I will stop at the minnow station in may.

[alex1]

Great reads by both you and Kelly, I never really new teh story myself as to when the decline started, and finally the collapse of the walleye population, not to mention the resorts demise.

[Random guy]

It was a pretty sad deal, most of my generation was forced to leave the area. No jobs or income to speak of other then a few small logging operations or small family farms. I remember the bus ride home from Kelliher High School when I was a senior, a full bus was five students from K-12, we never ran short of seats.

It was so dead on the lake when I came home from the service the big talk around town was some poor fool was out on the ice looking for fish. All the cabins and small homes (very few bigger houses in the area then) went empty, families that had been in the area for three or more generations just packed up and left even the boat ramps became hard to use from all the sand and silt that built up on them...and nobody cared about Waskish or its residents, basically they left the town and the area for dead.

Thankfully Bradd Dokken’s article brought the issue to the attention of few with future goals in mind...then a few crappies showed up, then a few more and all of a sudden Waskish was back on the map.

I guess that is why you see such fire and passion from guys like Kelly, Myself, families such Hillmans, the Bergers, Halamas, Leonhardts etc etc. We seen how easily it can get out of control and what can happen from bootlegging, illegal harvest and just bad conservation decisions, these families lived through what I could only call a small centralized depression or economic crash...no bailouts in those days.

[bturck]

Jonny/Kelly: Great info, thanks for putting it up for all to read. Pretty hard after reading all of this to point a finger in one direction for the downfall it spanned more than one ethnic or govt entity. Sure glad to read the posts on the site now and see people are enjoying the fishing and surviving the new business ventures that have been spawned. I also read the book by Fred Petroske, Kellys grandfather, which tells the tale of the area going back many years. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Thanks again guys and continued great success in all of your ventures on Red Lake. Bill Turck St Cloud

[kelly-p]

As long as we are reading of hard lessons learned.

Sunday, May 23, 1999

Greed depleted Red Lake's once-abundant walleye

Larry Oakes / Star Tribune

REDLAKE, MINN. -- In a state where the walleye

is among the most celebrated natural resources,

what happened to Red Lake was a disaster.

Decades of excessive netting and angling had by

the mid-1990s nearly obliterated the walleye

population on Minnesota's largest lake.

What happened is a story of greed and loss, and

of the failure of three governments to work

together to stop it. But it's also about how

people who never had much use for each other

have united in a plan to prevent the tragedy

from occurring again.

Experts say chances for Red Lake's recovery are

good, with the current ban on walleye

possession and a stocking program begun this

month by the state and federal governments and

the Red Lake Band of Chippewa.

But it may take a decade before walleye fishing

can begin again. And questions remain about how

this could happen in a place where people are

quick to talk about the value of nature.

How could American Indians decimate a

supposedly sacred resource? Why did so many

non-Indians aid the collapse by buying

black-market walleye for their restaurants,

civic clubs and kitchen tables? Why did Red

Lake often lead the state in arrests of

non-Indians for taking more than their limits?

'The water is sacred'

Some say Indians named Red Lake for the fiery

dawns and dusks on its two connected, oblong

basins, each stretching about 25 miles east to

west. Some say it was for the blood spilled

when the Chippewa and Sioux fought there in the

mid-1700s.

To them, Red Lake was a horn of plenty.

"The water is sacred," said Chippewa elder

Frank Dickenson, 69. "In the early days, you

could see the morning fires on the shoreline.

The fishermen had ceremonies before rowing

out."

It later became the centerpiece of the state's

only "closed" reservation, exempt from federal

allotments of most reservation land to

individual Indians, who often sold it or lost

it to whites. Red Lake Indians retained tight

control.

Of the 289,000 acres that make up Upper and

Lower Red Lake, only 48,000 of the upper half

is off-reservation and open to non-Indians. The

lake's walleye are prized.

"It's one of the finest tasting," said Byron

Dyrland, a state Department of Natural

Resources (DNR) warden and supervisor in the

northwest region for 23 years before retiring.

"They say it comes from the tannic-acid water.

They're sweet."

At first, both whites and Indians netted Red

Lake. In 1917 the state opened a fishery on the

reservation to help ease a World War I-era food

shortage.

In the 1930s, the state turned the fishery over

to the federal government and outlawed

commercial fishing on the off-reservation

portion. Waskish, Minn., residents responded by

building resorts for anglers.

Profit and loss

The Red Lake Chippewa were stuck between old

and new worlds. They were too confined to live

fully off the land, yet many weren't inclined

or able to fully join the non-Indian economy.

They supplemented wood-cutting and federal

handouts with sugaring, ricing, hunting,

fishing -- bittersweet remnants of a lost

self-reliance. Elders say an abiding grief set

in. Alcoholism flourished. Cultural values

faded.

Commercial fishing offered a bridge between the

old world and the new. But their culture paid a

price for crossing it. Walleye went from food

to a form of currency.

Once a walleye became a dollar, it became

tricky to decide how many were enough.

"When I was growing up in Ponemah, setting nets

was for family," said Bobby Whitefeather,

chairman of the Red Lake Band. "We remembered

the people of long ago, who said, 'Take only

what you need.' Then came a generation with

motorboats, four-wheel-drives and trailers.

Things began to get out of hand."

An association of Indian netters ran Red Lake

Fisheries under what all agree was scant and

unscientific federal supervision. The

association split the profits it made from

selling to wholesalers, most of whom were from

Chicago.

Until the reservation government created its

own natural resources department in the late

1980s, little data were collected to determine

if the walleye population could sustain

federally set quotas of about 650,000 pounds

per year, said the department's current

director, Lawrence Bedeau.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) expanded the

quota when the association requested, Bedeau

said, and "never provided money for

conservation or enforcement."

Commercial fishing grew from 200 Indian netters

in the 1960s to a peak of 600 in the 1980s,

with some individuals setting 80 nets, Bedeau

said. With large bonuses from the association,

some of them made $80,000 per season, he said.

"It was greed," Dickenson said. "The culture

got lost."

'Minnesota moonshine'

Greed spawned another problem: bootlegging.

Many netters illegally sold walleye off the

reservation.

"They went all over Minnesota and out [of]

state, too," said Dyrland, who chased

bootleggers for two decades. He and fellow

officers made 20 to 50 arrests a year, of

sellers and buyers, he said.

He estimates they got one out of every 100

sellers and one out of every 500 buyers, which

included restaurants and service clubs.

"You could buy a 1-pound walleye for a buck,

and it was $4 a pound in the store," Dyrland

said. "They'd go to the Cities with a trunkful

and pull into a stadium parking lot and sell

out in five minutes. . . . Nobody wanted to

notice. People were making money and getting

fish cheap."

Dyrland said he warned then-Tribal Chairman

Roger Jourdain that Red Lake might get fished

out. Jourdain replied that the tribe had no

authority over the association, Dyrland said.

Buying black-market walleye wasn't the only way

non-Indians helped decimate the Red Lake

population. Dyrland said Waskish was the site

in some years of 25 percent of the statewide

arrests of over-limit anglers.

The walleye bit so well and so close to shore

that anglers often took their limit in an hour,

and otherwise law-abiding citizens couldn't

bear to quit. They would drop the fish in camp

and go out for more, which wardens call

"tripping" or "gunnysacking."

"Some had unbelievable amounts over their

limits," Dyrland said. "We'd fillet 100 to 200

or more confiscated fish a night and give them

to nursing homes."

Said Kelly Petrowske, of Waskish, whose family

rented cabins and sold minnows for decades:

"The attitude some guys had was, take all you

can because the Indians were going to get them

all eventually anyway."

In 1989, the tribe's commercial netters

registered a record 948,000 pounds of walleye.

Anglers took an estimated 150,000 pounds. And

the bootlegger take "could have been as high as

the legal take -- nobody can put their finger

on it," said Henry Drewes, DNR fisheries

manager for the region.

Drewes said the DNR tried unsuccessfully over

the years to persuade the BIA to tighten quotas

and increase enforcement. (A request for

comment from the BIA for this article went

unanswered.)

Death and resurrection

The commercial take plunged from 486,000 pounds

in 1990 to 14,870 in 1996. Suddenly, walleye

were no longer a way to make a living. It

slowly dawned that a tragedy had occurred.

Of the 14 resorts, five stores and two minnow

stations in Waskish in the 1960s, only a single

resort, store, private campground and minnow

station remain, said Don Hudec, who runs that

resort -- Hudec's -- with his mother, Marie.

There was a time when anglers booked the Hudec

cabins five years in advance. Don, 37,

remembers 10,000 anglers in town in the 1970s,

when he made as much as $250 per weekend

cleaning walleye for 10 cents apiece.

Visitors last year couldn't even buy gas.

The Chippewa fisheries association, whose

members had ignored years of warnings by state

and tribal biologists to scale back, went

bankrupt in 1996, and the Red Lake Tribal

Council banned commercial fishing until further

notice.

Netters lost what Whitefeather says was, for

most, supplemental income. The reservation's

total general-assistance recipients rose only

by six, and the tribe's unemployment rate

remained at its historical average of 55 to 60

percent, he said.

Subsistence netting also has been outlawed,

putting an end to bootlegging. Walleye angling

ended, too.

Today, it's illegal to possess a Red Lake

walleye.

For Whitefeather, it was a low point in his

people's history. He believed Indians and

non-Indians needed to start cooperating with

the lake's best interests in mind. He invited

then-state DNR Commissioner Rod Sando to a

meeting.

That led to a committee of tribal, state and

federal political leaders and biologists, which

eventually wrote a plan for restocking the

walleye and jointly enforcing new limits once

fishing begins again. They plan to share data

and set quotas together, the way tribal, state

and federal biologists co-manage Lake Mille

Lacs, which many sport anglers consider

Minnesota's premier walleye lake.

"We were never in a position to do anything

about all of Red Lake," said Drewes, the

state's regional fisheries manager. "Under

Bobby Whitefeather's leadership, the doors have

opened."

Drewes cautioned against concluding that only

Indians would decimate a fish population.

Commercial fishermen did the same thing to cod

and haddock in the North Atlantic, striped bass

and flounder on the East Coast and halibut in

the Bering Sea, he said.

Cautious optimism is growing. With walleye

down, a nice crappie season emerged, helping

tide over the remaining Waskish businesses.

They're sinking DNR-approved log cribs to

attract more. The Upper Red Lake Association, a

group of businesses and homeowners, has tripled

in size to 75 members in recent years, boosted

by home-building retirees. Business is picking

up again.

"We'll wait until the walleye come back, and

then we'll probably remodel," said Hudec, a

third-generation resort owner. "My grandfather

fished this lake out once and didn't leave. Why

should I?"

Whitefeather said he wants to "end commercial

fishing as we knew it." He hopes to tap "a

growing desire to recover the cultural aspect

of our lives" to foster a resurgence in

traditional values, including stewardship of

the lake. He also wants to expand the tribe's

. economy. He said he's encouraging a dialogue on

a touchy but tantalizing subject: opening the

tribe's portion of Red Lake to sport angling,

once the walleye return.

"We could make a lot more per pound of walleye in through tourism than through commercial

fishing," he said.

Other tribal members worry about pollution and

erosion of tribal autonomy. "I hope it doesn't

happen in my lifetime," Bedeau said.

-- Larry Oakes

[jjohnson5150]

Holy smokes. Gulp.

I did not know the entire story.

Thanks for sharing that.

It will make me appreciate the lake even more the next time I am up.

Roger Moe is a tool.

[bottom-bouncer]

WOW! I want to really thank johnny and kelly for the info. I will print this so the next time we are in the ice house or on trip somewhere and are having one of those late nite debates that are always bsed on facts(never opinions) I can pull this info out and share it with those around me.. I really appreciate all the info cant wait to meet you this spring. chris

[Fisher J]

It 's a sad story what happened to that great lake. I just hope we all learned our lessons from that tragedy, and never repeat it.

The restoration of the lake is a wonderful thing. I was there a week ago and caught some beautiful walleye (and the first of the "hard water" season).

[cheets]

If you'd like a perspective from a game warden's point of view, pick up the books titled "They Used To Call Us Game Wardens" by Bill Callies. Callies was a C.O. stationed at Waskish starting in 1960. Sounds like he was a hard nose but fair guy that really protected the resource. There are 2 volumes of this book which make good reading.

Cheets

[shaky legs2]

Jim and Kelly P. are also mentioned in Callies book. This book along with "On The Trail" by A.J. Petrowske give an excellent first-hand account of what life was like in the Big Bog area from pioneer times up to the early 70's.

[Biggerfish]

Thanks for the history....very good read.

[leech~~]

Here's a shorter story! Glaciers formed the lake! Nets and Greed killed the lake! Then Sportsman healed the lake!

[JbuZZo]

best of luck to all you folks in that area. I have fished URL a couple times in the last 5 yrs, had a great time! Pretty sad story to read but the good news is that the rebound is already in progress. Here's to prosparity...!!!

[kgpcr4]

And now the nets are back in the lake. Not to stir a pot but with that small of a portion open to non band folk it sure was not sport fishing that killed the lake. We will never learn.

[kelly-p]

"And now the nets are back in the lake."

WHERE are the nets back in the lake????? Don't just repeat rumors or personal beliefs. Give us some facts!

"We will never learn."

Some of us have learned.

My response to your 5-16-08 post concerning the same subject.

"It sounds like the results from their hook and line fishery are getting better and better with more and more people fishing. I haven't heard any mention of gillnets being used again. They have talked of trying pond nets so they can return the slot fish back into the lake. Another tribe in Canada is using pond nets succussfully and is willing to come here and show the Red Lake Band how they are doing it."

Why keep beating the same dead horse?

[moose099]

I can't believe I just read what I read. It appears that your statement is without a knowledge base.

Clearly you didn't read ALL of the previous articles concerning the revitalization of Upper and Lower Red Lake.

Well said Kelly!!

[Big_Cahuna]

Thanks for the great stories. Some ignorance is astounding.

[cbrooks]

I'm a sucker for a good history lesson.thanks. The lake has gone from being crashed, to a crappie boom and to what it is today. What a success story it has been. You have to give credit to alot of people including the tribe that help make it happen.

I wonder what the next chapter in this lake will be. I heard they were stocking sturgen in there. I wouldn't mind it if the sheepies crashed from maybe small mouth bass taking them over, doubt that would happen. Do you think that the Tribe would ever consider opening up the entire lake to nontribal members and try to benefit from tourism instead of a fish harvest?

[JBMasterAngler]

Here's the next big headline for URL..."intensive muskie stocking by DNR pays off. URL now considered one of top muskie lakes in U.S.! HAHA

[matthothand]

In most of the red lake stories the crappie is not mentioned. When the crappies were going strong there were publications everywhere all the time depicting the slab boom on their pages. It seemed that every month in In-Fisherman, MN Sportsman, Outdoor News, or anything in between I was reading about those massive slabs. You just don't find crappie fisheries like that anymore and regardless of how we all think URL should or should've been managed the crappie fishing was incredible. I would like to see that part of the story acknowledged a little better.

[kelly-p]

Here is one story, I'll see what else I have laying around.

Posted on Sun, Mar. 03, 2002

Slab-happy anglers

The crappie boom at Upper Red Lake goes on, bringing in people from

all over the country.

CHRIS NISKANEN

Outdoors Editor

WASKISH, Minn.

Mike King could hardly contain his excitement over the cooler filled

with deep-chested "slab" crappies.

"Look at those babies,'' King said, flipping open the lid. "You

don't find crappies like this every day. There's a couple of

13-inchers in there.''

King, along with his son and two friends, were plopped on chairs

inside a fish house on Upper Red Lake last week, crowing about the

lake's famous crappies. They had driven more than 300 miles from

Afton, Minn., to catch perch on Lake Winnibigoshish and crappies on

Upper Red Lake, taking three days to indulge in Minnesota's

double-dose of ice fishing nirvana.

At Upper Red Lake, they rented a sleeper house outfitted with an

indoor biffy and bunk beds. Starting about 5 p.m., they settled into

some serious jigging for crappies and couldn't believe it when they

started hauling fish in as fast as they could get a line down the

hole. They caught the limit of 15 crappies each.

"It was like a switch came on,'' said Ron Tice of Grand Rapids.

"They bit like mad right around 6 o'clock. It was unbelievable.''

Tice's group wasn't alone. An estimated 10,000 anglers descended on

Upper Red Lake last weekend, according to the Department of Natural

Resources, a staggering number considering only about 50 motel rooms

or rental cabins are available within a half-hour drive of the lake.

If Upper Red Lake were a city for a weekend, it would easily be the

biggest town in northwestern Minnesota between Bemidji (pop. 12,000)

and the Canadian border during the winter months.

The attraction is crappies. When the lake's walleye population

crashed in the mid-1990s, the crappie population inexplicably

exploded. There's no such term, but "mega spawn" aptly describes the

crappie year class, or spawning season, that occurred in 1995.

Biologists say they've never seen anything like it on a Minnesota

lake.

Within a few years, intrepid ice anglers discovered schools of

crappies that were reported to be several miles long.

The bad news is fishing success has slowed this winter.

"There are fewer anglers catching their limits this year," said

Henry Drewes, DNR regional fisheries manager. "But the crappies have

grown another inch or two, so 13-inchers are pretty common."

Drewes predicts the population eventually will dwindle to former

levels. "It's a shooting star,'' he said of the crappie population.

Last week, local crappie guru Kelly Petrowske took me for a crappie

tour of Red Lake. But first, I needed to find a room. Since nothing

was available, Petrowske finally came up with an available "sleeper"

fish house for me to rent.

"It's just been nuts up here," he said of this winter's ice-fishing

traffic. "I had a group of guys who drove up from Nebraska just for

day fishing. They saw something on TV about Red Lake crappies. We

got people coming from all over the country."

Despite a few rough spots, ice conditions on the lake are good,

Petrowske said. He said the lake is covered with 30 inches that

should should hold up to vehicle traffic for several more weeks.

Petrowske dropped me off at the West Wind Restaurant, where I met

Tim Waldo, one of the anglers who originally stumbled across the

crappie schools. We drove nearly five miles across the lake to a

nondescript white fish house outfitted with a heater, bunk bed and

six holes.

The sun was still above the horizon — well before the crappie

witching hour — but Waldo wasn't concerned.

"You don't expect to catch 'em this time of day, but you never

know,'' he said. "Sometimes they just show up like ghosts."

Waldo put the transducer of his Vexilar FL-8 fish locator down the

hole and saw several promising red lines on the screen. We lowered

our jigs with fathead minnows to the bottom in 14 feet of water,

then raised them about a foot.

That's when Waldo began his play-by-play crappie announcing.

"OK, there's one down there,'' he said. "C'mon buddy.''

When the crappie began nibbling on his minnow, Waldo coaxed even

more.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon.''

When his rod suddenly bent over and Waldo reeled up a hefty

10-incher, he wondered aloud whether to throw it back.

"Kinda small,'' he said.

"It's bad luck to throw back the first fish,'' I replied.

So the crappie went in the cooler, and Waldo dropped his jig back

down the hole.

A few minutes later, Waldo's rod took a powerful downward turn, and

this fight lasted a little longer.

"Now this one feels pretty good," he said.

When a dinner-plate-sized crappie began squirming around the hole,

Waldo reached down and scooped it up with one hand. This was no puny

crappie; its back was thick as a pine board and its mouth looked big

enough to swallow a pool ball.

"Is that one big enough for ya?" Waldo crowed.

The action quickly picked up. Waldo caught five in the next half

hour, and I caught three. Waldo noted they were biting lighter than

normal.

"You probably wouldn't catch a lot of them unless you had a fish

locator," he said.

When Waldo left around 7 o'clock to attend to his restaurant, our

tally stood at 10. I caught another crappie around 9 o'clock, then

awoke at 5 a.m. and caught two more. I added three more crappies by

9 a.m.

It wasn't the hot action of past years, but for anglers who are

willing to drill lots of holes, or just wait to get lucky, the

crappie fishing on Upper Red Lake still is remarkable.

Petrowske said the crappie boom has inspired the opening of five new

bait shops around Upper Red Lake, and folks who moved away years ago

are buying land and moving back. Nearly a ghost town several years

ago, the tiny burg of Waskish, Petrowske's hometown, is back on its

feet again.

"The area has life in it again,'' Petrowske said gleefully.

And all because of crappies.

For crappie fishing information, call the West Wind Restaurant at

(218) 647-8998. On the Web, check out www.waskishminnowstation.com

or www.upperredlakeassn.com. Chris Niskanen can be reached at

[email protected] or (651) 228-5524.

one story, I'll see what else I have laying around.

[kelly-p]

Published: Monday, January 3, 2000

* Town awakening slowly with anglers

WASKISH, MINN.

It almost seems like old times on Red Lake, except

the quarry is crappie instead of walleye.

Lots of big crappies are biting near Waskish, Minn.,

where shuttered resorts and dilapidated cabins have

lined the northeast shore of the giant lake since the

Water walleye fishing crashed and then was closed. But the

area seems to be undergoing a modest rebirth with the

crappie boom and return of anglers.

A snowmobile trail is also bringing in some visitors.

A new resort is set to open in the spring. Abandoned

cabins are being bought. Hudec's Resort is adding a

gas pump, and the family is thinking about adding a

few new motel rooms.

Babe Winkelman featured the lake's ``slab'' crappies

on his nationally syndicated television show

Saturday. Other outdoors writers, broadcasters and

magazines have been calling nearly daily.

``The phone rings about every seven minutes, all day.

We started taking names and numbers. But we gave that

up pretty quick,'' said Marie Hudec at Hudec's

Resort. ``People were calling at Thanksgiving. But we

had open water until Dec. 12. Is there anything more

impatient than a fisherman?''

The hubbub started about a year ago, when a few local

ice anglers found a big school of crappies and caught

their limits of big fish. And they kept catching

them, quietly, day after day.

``Finally, about March 1, they must have felt guilty

or something -- they started to talk about it,'' said

Don Hudec, Marie's son. ``Within 10 days of that we

already had 1,200 cars come through our resort'' to

pay $5 each to drive onto the frozen lake on a plowed

road.

Nearly everyone left with the limit, 15 crappies.

``I'd leave here at 45 minutes before sunrise, and

I'd have my 15 crappies shortly after the sun came

up,'' said Jim Petrowske, owner of the Waskish Minnow

Station bait store. ``You could not use two lines. It

was that fast. . . . But it took us until March to

find them last year. I really don't know how fast

we'll find them this year.''

Anglers who were there last winter recall schools of

crappies a quarter-mile wide and ice anglers

stretched out for hundreds of yards, all catching

fish at the same time on the lake, made up of Upper

and Lower Red lakes. A local pilot claims he saw a

school of crappies below calm summer waters that was

more than two miles wide.

The best ice angling has been about six miles out, in

the middle of the lake, in about 12 to 14 feet of

water. Big schools of crappies move around some in

the winter, but usually not too far and not too close

to shore.

``People are just getting out to the hot spots from

last year now. We just got enough ice for people to

start exploring,'' Hudec said.

The only decent crappie fishing so far this season

has been near the lake's new crappie ``cribs.'' The

cribs are large piles of tamarack logs and brush, 8

feet square, fastened together and sunk in about 12

feet of water.

In March, the state Department of Natural Resources

gave permission for local anglers and business owners

to sink 40 cribs at two sites. The cribs act as

crappie magnets on an otherwise featureless lake

bottom. Small bait fish go there to hide, and

crappies follow. Last summer the cribs provided an

opportunity to catch fish on a lake that had been

considered dead. Forty more cribs will be sunk this

winter.

``It's purely an effort to allow people to catch the

fish. There's no benefit to the crappies. . . . But

without the cribs, in the summer anyway, crappies are

nearly impossible to find and catch,'' said Bob

Ekstrom, large-lake specialist for the DNR. ``It's an

effort to fill the void for the businesses and people

up there since they can't fish for walleyes.''

Ekstrom expects the crappie bonanza to peak this year

and slowly drop off as walleyes come back. Within a

decade, crappies will become a ``background'' species

once again, he said.

``The walleye crash left a void, and nature won't

leave a void open very long,'' Ekstrom said. ``The

crappies have exploded (in number and size) to fill

that void. But when the walleyes come back, the lake

can't sustain both. That's too much biomass. I'd bet

that you'll see the crappies decline in correlation

with the walleye resurgence. But that's the way it

should be. This is a natural walleye lake.''

Red Lake's walleye population collapsed in the

mid-'90s after years of commercial and sportfishing.

Federal, state and tribal officials signed an

agreement last year halting walleye fishing while

restocking the walleye population.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2000 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press - All Rights

Reserved

[kelly-p]

Red Lake rising (4/01/2001)

Published: Sunday, April 1, 2001

Red Lake rising

CHRIS NISKANEN OUTDOORS EDITOR

Waskish, Minn.

Kelly Petrowske says he might be the crazy one.

There's a wad of crappie fishermen in the middle of Upper Red Lake,

perhaps 200 people and vehicles huddled together on nearly four feet of

ice. Petrowske -- he with the earring and the incessant smile -- drives

right past them.

Maybe a mile later, Petrowske stops at a nondescript spot and drills a

half dozen holes with an ice auger.

``Gotta get away from the crowds,'' he says. ``You and Joe fish there, and

I'll start over here.''

My other fishing partner is Joe Corcoran, the former commander of the St.

Paul Police Department homicide unit who retired to Waskish three years

ago. Joe and I spear tiny minnows on jig, drop them down our holes and

start thinking about large crappies known as ``slabs.''

``Got one,'' Petrowske says a few minutes later, lifting a 12-incher

through the ice.

``Got another,'' he says moments later. ``They're over here. You better

get over here, and quick.''

Corcoran and I slide over to Petrowske's extra holes. From 6 p.m. until 8,

the three of us catch 45 crappies and lose countless others. Several are

giant 13-inchers.

Our buckets bulging with fish, Petrowske seems anything but crazy for

driving past the rabble of other fishermen.

Nor is it odd that Corcoran built his dream retirement home overlooking a

body of water once dubbed ``Dead Lake.'' Nor is it daffy that hordes of

anglers drive great distances for a taste of the incomparable crappie

fishing on Red Lake.

``It's something else, isn't it?'' Petrowske says of the crappie

phenomenon.

The big boom

Even professional fisheries biologists have been flabbergasted by the

crappie boom on Red Lake.

``It's the likes of something we've never seen,'' said Henry Drewes, a

Department of Natural Resources regional fisheries manager based in

Bemidji.

In 1995, Red Lake's walleye population had collapsed, due mostly to

commercial fishing by members of the Red Lake Indian Reservation. The

walleye's demise, along with idea spawning conditions in the spring of

1995, combined to create an explosion in black crappies.

``They pulled off the mother of all year classes that year,'' Drewes said.

And anglers have responded. On busy winters days, 3,000 to 4,000 anglers

are fishing on Upper Red Lake for crappies, according to some DNR

estimates. With only a handful of resorts operating on the lake, some

anglers are forced to stay at motels an hour's drive away. Some are

driving 300 miles from the Twin Cities and back in a single day.

``People are driving from the Twin Cities, Hibbing, Rochester and

Willmar,'' Drewes said. ``It's a commuter fishery. And when gas got to $2

a gallon last winter, it didn't put a dent in it.''

With walleye fishing closed indefinitely on Upper Red Lake, the crappie

fishery has been a ``godsend'' to the local economy, which relies heavily

on sport fishing.

``It's had a tremendous impact here,'' said Corcoran, president of the

Upper Red Lake Area Association. ``Nobody saw it coming. It has had a

tremendous impact.''

Local t-shirts now proclaim Waskish, which was in danger of disappearing

after the walleye collapse, ``Crappie Capital of the World.''

The discovery

Like the California Gold Rush, Red Lake's crappie ``discovery'' is often

attributed to one man.

Bill Thayer, a bank examiner from Thief River Falls, grew up in Kelliher

and fished Red Lake his whole life. Thayer was ice fishing one February

evening in 1999 when he started catching crappies. After quickly filling a

pail with six or eight fish, he came back a second time with several

friends and caught even more crappies.

One of those friends was Tim Waldo of Waskish.

``We went out with the hope that if we caught 12 or 13 crappies, we'd have

a fish fry. But caught our limit,'' Waldo said. ``Billy was really the one

who did it. After we found them, you'd think a good fisherman should keep

his mouth shut.

``But in Waskish, nothing was open anymore. We had to talk one of the

local guys into grading a road for us. We told Jim Petrowske (Kelly's

father and owner of the Waskish Minnow Station) about the crappies and

within two weeks, we had 500 people on the lake.''

How large is the crappie population. No one knows.

But Petrowske said a local angler last summer found a school of crappies

while he was fishing for northerns. After marking it with his fish

locator, he set out to see how big it was.

''He drove his boat around and figured out it was about 300 yards wide by

three miles long,'' Petrowske said. ''Imagine that. And what we're fishing

here is only one-eighth of the lake.''

Crappie cribs

Last week, Petrowske and a corps of volunteers pulled 40 crappie ``cribs''

on the ice. The square, six-foot-high cribs are made of stacked logs and

filled with brush. Since the bottom of Red Lake is mostly featureless and

bowl-like, the cribs will provide a structure that will attract small bait

fish and, in turn, crappies.

The cribs won't improve crappie spawning, but they will help anglers find

the fish once the ice leaves the lake. Placing the cribs on the lake has

required a lot of work, Petrowske said, because holes have to be cut in

the lake with chain saws and the cribs sunk. That way, the lake's ice floe

doesn't move them around the lake.

Two years ago, volunteers placed the first group of 40 cribs in the lake

and local businesses pitched in and printed a map with GPS coordinates to

the structures. A new map is planned, with a new hitch: Anglers and

businesses who helped pay for the cribs will get their names on the map.

The entire effort was coordinated by the Upper Red Lake Area Association

and volunteer labor and highlights how people pitch in to help a small

community.

``It's a great place to live because of that,'' said Corcoran.

How long will it last?

Almost all the crappies in Red Lake appear to come from the 1995 year

class, Drewes said, with fish ranging in size from 10 to 13 inches.

``We have very little data on these explosive year classes, but my guess

there are certainly several more years of good fishing ahead,'' he said.

``But in the next five or six years, the catch rate would go down and the

size of the fish go up. There will be a trade off from numbers to size.''

As the crappies die (probably more of old age than angling pressure),

walleyes will probably take over again.

``I've heard people say we should manage just for crappies and not for

walleye, but we couldn't do that if we wanted,'' Drewes said. ``It's not

the sort of lake you can manage for a panfish. It's ecologically suited

for walleye, perch and northern pike.''

In the meantime, anglers and local businesses are riding the crappie

wave...and waiting for the day walleyes are once again a legal fish in

Upper Red Lake.

``I have friends who want to be in my boat when we go on that first

walleye fishing trip,'' said Waldo. ``I think it's going to be great.''

Chris Niskanen's outdoors column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Send

items of interest to him at Pioneer Press Sports, 345 Cedar St., St. Paul,

MN, 55101. Fax at (651) 228-5527, or call him at (651) 228-5524. E-mail at

[email protected]

© 2001 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press / TwinCities.com- All

Rights Reserved

[shaky legs2]

Oh yes, the good old days! What memories. At 8:00 p.m. on a weekend night it looked like vehicles leaving old Met stadium after an evening Twins game. A steady string of tail lights for as far as you could see ahead of you on the way to Blackduck and a steady string of headlights following in the rear-view mirror. I wonder how much the ice was depressed on a typical week-end night from the weight of all those vehicles and houses. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.