DNR To Stop Trout Stocking

[BRULEDRIFTER]

DNR smelt catch in test nets decreased because the smelt were smaller (stunted)and were swimming through them.

We advised them of this.

They went to a smaller mesh size when they ran their next test nets, and doubled their catch of smelt.

[delcecchi]

Don't have a video and I know this is way late, but I caught a nice pike in Quetico using a lake trout as "bait". I had hooked a small trout on a sonar in about 40 feet of water in the spring. About half way up it stopped fighting. I continued to reel in the dead weight and looked down and there was a pike with the trout crossways in its jaws.

The pike let go of the trout and it blew down towards the bottom. When I brought it up again, the pike hit it again. About the third time this happened the pike got the sonar in its mouth. the rest is history.

[delcecchi]

Of course it is possible to overharvest the trout on burntside. If the walleye on Vermilion were in danger of over harvest and ML too then Burntside could get it. What is the safe harvest? 5000lb or so? lake is 10,000 acres.

BTW there is an interesting paper at http://www.pca.state.mn.us/publications/reports/wq-lar69-0118.pdf

about burntside.

[delcecchi]

And another paper suggests 5000 lb/year is on the high side.

http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/publications/fisheries/investigational_reports/487.pdf

So how many guys does it take to catch 800 5 pound lake trout a year. Steve must make a dent in that all by himself. :-)

[Lee Lane]

None of those lake you named (with the exception of leech, and only temporary) are stocked with walleye.

Do you believe everything you read in those stocking reports??

Just curious. Ohhhh my bad they just take the fry and stock them in thousands of other lakes.

Anyways Ill let the intellectuals of the fishing world figure out the problems Of the fishing world.

[Great Outdoors]

BRULEDRIFTER

I said the fin clipping comment in a previous post was meant to be "tongue in cheek"

As far as the natural reproduction, stop in the shop when you have about an hour to discuss the lake, and I can explain what I've seen happen over the last 35-40 years.

DNR officials can't answer my questions about the trout.

I'll throw the coffee pot on

[Great Outdoors]

Of course it is possible to overharvest the trout on burntside. If the walleye on Vermilion were in danger of over harvest and ML too then Burntside could get it. What is the safe harvest? 5000lb or so? lake is 10,000 acres.

Burntside has a much larger food supply for fish, a much deeper average depth, and far less fishing pressure than the lakes you mention.

Without commercial netting, you could never overharvest trout in Burntside.

[delcecchi]

did you read the 487.pdf document I posted the link for? It cites a number of lakes in which the trout are believed to be overharvested by angling.

a kg/ha is about .8 pounds per acre. Why do you say anglers couldn't overharvest trout? The paper suggests that .4lb/acre per year might be too much. That would be 4000 pounds for Burntside.

[Great Outdoors]

If I interpret the info you sent correctly, the over harvesting possibility of lakes is determined by many things.

Burntside has more than enough forage with all the smelt to feed many more lake trout, walleye, bass, northern, etc, than are currently in it.

This is proven by the consistantly high smelt population.

The oxygen level throughout Burntside remains high in both summer and winter.

Many like to compare Burntside to other lakes, but it is a very unique body of water, and rules that hold true on other lakes may not apply.

This is why I feel that over harvesting with rod and reel is not possible.

[delcecchi]

If there is plenty of food, then I would say that angling harvest pressure is holding down the population of trout. And I would say that further harvest pressure would further reduce the population of trout since they would be removed faster than they grow.

Why do you say Burntside is unique? The smelt? To me it doesn't look that different from many lakes in Quetico and that part of Ontario, except it gets a lot more fishing pressure. But I am certainly open to information.

[JBMasterAngler]

Personally I think burntside could be overharvested easily. Lake trout don't lay nowhere near as many eggs as walleyes do...walleyes can lay up to 400,000 whereas lakers lay only about 15,000 or so. Perch/tullibee make up the majority of the food source in all the good walleye lakes, well those fish aren't as voracious of feeders as the main food source (smelt) are in burntside. I'm sure inspite of that, the lakers can survive on their own, but to maintain a quality fishery I think some stocking will need to continue. This whole thing might only be temporary anyway, so the one positive thing is, unlike walleyes (in stocked lakes), a quality fishery can still exist if stocking was eliminated for a few years. That's just my 2 cents though

[ditchpickle6996]

I would have to agree that if BSide continues to become more popular and doesn't add some special regs (ie slot limit) that it could get over harvested. The internet and word of mouth have made it MUCH busier than it was 8 or 10 years ago. Just my opinion.

[Steve Foss]

I would have to agree that if BSide continues to become more popular and doesn't add some special regs (ie slot limit) that it could get over harvested. The internet and word of mouth have made it MUCH busier than it was 8 or 10 years ago. Just my opinion.

+1

My buddies and I were talking Friday night about what the fishery would be like with a Bside slot on lakers, say 24-32 slot with one fish allowed over 32. You'd be protecting the 5-12 lb fish. I think that would become particularly important when stocking ceases, because those are the bulk of the current population of spawning fish, and with no numbers being bolstered artificially, the spawn would rest on the shoulders of those fish. Their productivity should be protected.

For the sake of discussion, you could also make it a straight trophy fishery, with no fish under 36 inches allowed to be harvested. A potential problem with that is that lakers easily bleed out through their gills if they are allowed to slap themselves silly once they hit the ice (they'll do it every time if you let them), so C&R mortality could be higher than with other species. Anyway, that option would radically change the makeup of the angling population on Burntside, and would raise quite a bit of hue and cry in some circles, particularly among those who have a very strong and longstanding tradition of viewing lake trout as meat fish as well as sport fish. But it is one possibility.

Or Burntside could simply be left to fend for itself as far as lakers are concerned. While it is my home lake and I feel protective of the fishery, there are many, many laker lakes, and leaving it wide open to overharvest isn't going to hurt laker fishing in Minnesota as a whole, nor would putting in a slot or making it a trophy fishery have an impact on the statewide laker fishery. Particularly off the Gunflint Trail, there are a lot of accessible and populous laker lakes in NE Minnesota.

I'm one of those who believes Burntside could get fished down if traffic continues to build and people continue to get better and better at catching them, especially if they keep a lot of the fish they catch. I toss back the large majority of fish I catch, and I know a lot of other laker anglers do as well, but there are plenty out there who keep every laker they can legally take, and I don't believe there's anything wrong in any way with that, simply that the fishery over time will be impacted, particularly with stocking being interrupted.

And if it does actually go through, this move to eliminate lake trout stocking in Burntside, I still have hope it won't be forever. The DNR is politically driven by the Legsilature, and with politicians, everything is negotiable and nothing is permanent.