Dnr Walleye Research Project

[LunkerLover84]

Has anybody else seen this? Actually seems like a pretty decent plan. 

http://kstp.com/news/minnesota-dnr-launches-walleye-project-mille-lacs-lake/4109646/

Edited April 18, 2016 by LunkerLover84

[leech~~]

4 hours ago, LunkerLover84 said:

Has anybody else seen this? Actually seems like a pretty decent plan. 

http://kstp.com/news/minnesota-dnr-launches-walleye-project-mille-lacs-lake/4109646/

Yes do-try something for petesakes! Better late then never.

[gregg52]

Looked like an ok plan on the news last night

But not one word about nets

I prefer they spend my tax and license money else where until the nets are done

Or go across the street and get the money from the casino

[Sculpin]

The show shot yesterday for the most part was a planned Media event.  The DNR had already gathered all the eggs they set out to get a couple days prior.  A week or so ago the nets were only producing an abundance of mostly large females, but the males eventually showed up, and they harvested over 100 quarts of eggs. Note that these fish are all caught live in large hoop nets, placed in large aerated stock tanks on the boats, then brought in and kept for a short period in holding nets, stripped, fertilized and released on the spot.

The eggs will go to the hatchery in the Metro, and when the fry are hatched they will bring them back to Mille Lacs.

It's a start.

 

 

[leech~~]

14 minutes ago, Sculpin said:

The show shot yesterday for the most part was a planned Media event.  The DNR had already gathered all the eggs they set out to get a couple days prior.  A week or so ago the nets were only producing an abundance of mostly large females, but the males eventually showed up, and they harvested over 100 quarts of eggs. Note that these fish are all caught live in large hoop nets, placed in large aerated stock tanks on the boats, then brought in and kept for a short period in holding nets, stripped, fertilized and released on the spot.

The eggs will go to the hatchery in the Metro, and when the fry are hatched they will bring them back to Mille Lacs.

It's a start.

 

 

I think gregg52 was talking about the gill nets not the live trap nets the DNR are using. Which brings up a good point. Why can't the Tribes use live nets and then they can throw back some of the by catch they don't want like pike or jumbo Perch?

[Sculpin]

To the best of my knowledge there were no nets placed in the lake specifically for walleyes this year. Lots of spearing by multiple tribes, which was still underway last night. I know they dropped a few nets in the lake, supposedly for perch, but not sure what they got. I would guess those nets have a much smaller mesh size. They did net in Knife, North Long, Sullivan, and a couple other lakes west of Mille Lacs.  

Can't speak for the Tribes on live nets. I would say they would cover far less ground, and not be as effective as gill nets, and you need a pretty big boat, and a couple guys to handle them. Plus, they don't give a rip about by catch, unfortunately.     

  

[gregg52]

Ya  I'm not talking about the DNR nets for pete sakes

I'm talking about the nets that are the reason why the DNR is there !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In that news clip they said they were going to try and find out the mystery where all the walleyes went

in the best walleye reproducing lake in the world .......DAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

[Bandersnatch]

Yes, they will give the fry a genetic marker, reintroduce them to the lake, and then attempt to follow up.

 

Which is really giving me a chuckle, since their aim is to find out what is happening to the YOY fish.

If a fish is gone, will it tell you where it went?

 

[leech~~]

2 hours ago, Bandersnatch said:

Yes, they will give the fry a genetic marker, reintroduce them to the lake, and then attempt to follow up.

 

Which is really giving me a chuckle, since their aim is to find out what is happening to the YOY fish.

If a fish is gone, will it tell you where it went?

 

[Sculpin]

At the end of the day/game, what the DNR would LIKE to do is establish a couple of years of base analysis WITHOUT the Indians gill netting, and be able to go back and say: Here is what the outcome is/was without nets, and establish that the nets are in fact harmful. I may not necessarily agree, and  perhaps many others will not either. But its a start, and a little bit different tact. The Tribes have speared about 6,000 LBS thus far. So they may not hit their quota.  A pretty small dent overall. So a good base year at the bottom of the cycle......maybe

They have moved over into Gregg 52'S area, and they are right under his nose....Get em Greg !!!  

Edited April 20, 2016 by Sculpin
sentence completion

[leech~~]

1 hour ago, Sculpin said:

At the end of the day/game, what the DNR would LIKE to do is establish a couple of years of base analysis WITHOUT the Indians gill netting, and be able to go back and say: Here is what the outcome is/was without nets, and establish that the nets are in fact harmful. I may not necessarily agree, and  perhaps many others will not either. But its a start, and a little bit different tact. The Tribes have speared about 6,000 LBS thus far. So they may not hit their quota.  A pretty small dent overall. So a good base year at the bottom of the cycle......maybe

They have moved over into Gregg 52'S area, and they are right under his nose....Get em Greg !!! 

The only way to run a true and thorough test of any process is to change or remove the variables one at a time and document the out comes of each change. Since line fishing has been stopped, Netting would be one of the logical next variable to remove and document. Good luck with that.

[delcecchi]

20 hours ago, Bandersnatch said:

Yes, they will give the fry a genetic marker, reintroduce them to the lake, and then attempt to follow up.

 

Which is really giving me a chuckle, since their aim is to find out what is happening to the YOY fish.

If a fish is gone, will it tell you where it went?

 

They use a substance that marks the bones of the fry.   Later on when they sample the fish they can use that to tell if it was a hatchery fry.   The idea is they put some fry, say for example, one million of them, that are marked into the lake.  

Next year they electrofish and take 100 yearlings.  They test them and see how many have the marker stuff.  If 2 out of 100 do, that means that the lake started out with 50 times one million fry or 50 million. 

Up until now, they really had no way of knowing how many fry are produced in a particular year. This will tell them.   And that will let them more accurately judge survival. 

I hope my explanation was understandable. 

[gregg52]

Kinda get what you saying but not sure how accurate that is

Also I'm not sure exactly how those gill nets work,but if they check them next they could still be there as are they small enough to go through the gill nets ??? I dunno they said on tv they were wondering where all the 13 to 16 inch fish are

in the nets in the spring ?????......if so check for the stocked fish in a couple 3 years

Sculpin how do you they are netting over here and where are they netting  here

Again I 'm not sure how those nets work but I think it might be alittle more challenging in smaller lake's

but not sure

[Bandersnatch]

14 hours ago, Sculpin said:

At the end of the day/game, what the DNR would LIKE to do is establish a couple of years of base analysis WITHOUT the Indians gill netting, and be able to go back and say: Here is what the outcome is/was without nets, and establish that the nets are in fact harmful. I may not necessarily agree, and  perhaps many others will not either. But its a start, and a little bit different tact. The Tribes have speared about 6,000 LBS thus far. So they may not hit their quota.  A pretty small dent overall. So a good base year at the bottom of the cycle......maybe

They have moved over into Gregg 52'S area, and they are right under his nose....Get em Greg !!!  

Actually only about half way though the spearing.

http://www.twincities.com/2016/04/20/mille-lacs-walleye-netting-tribal-spearing/

 

Dave's article also lays out an explanation (the first that I have seen) of Ceremonial Gill Netting, which has been going on as well.

[delcecchi]

The sample young of the year in the fall with electrofishing.  As for accuracy, it is a numbers sampling game.  

Say you had a huge vat of white marbles and wanted to know how many there are.  If you dumped in a bunch of black marbles, counting them first of course, and stirred up the vat you could get a pretty good idea of how many white marbles there were by taking out some and seeing what proportion of them are black.   If your sample is 1% black then there were 100 times as many white marbles.   But you have to take a big sample so you get like 20 black ones because if there are only a couple it could have just been luck that you got 2 instead of 1 or 3. 

I just used 2 as an example before.  Depends on how much accuracy you want. 

They did this exact same study on Vermilion a few years ago.  I don't know if they are still doing it or not. 

[Bandersnatch]

43 minutes ago, delcecchi said:

They use a substance that marks the bones of the fry.   Later on when they sample the fish they can use that to tell if it was a hatchery fry.   The idea is they put some fry, say for example, one million of them, that are marked into the lake.  

Next year they electrofish and take 100 yearlings.  They test them and see how many have the marker stuff.  If 2 out of 100 do, that means that the lake started out with 50 times one million fry or 50 million. 

Up until now, they really had no way of knowing how many fry are produced in a particular year. This will tell them.   And that will let them more accurately judge survival. 

I hope my explanation was understandable. 

Do they kill a Chicken over a campfire at midnight as well?

[Sculpin]

3 hours ago, gregg52 said:d

Kinda get what you saying but not sure how accurate that is

Also I'm not sure exactly how those gill nets work,but if they check them next they could still be there as are they small enough to go through the gill nets ??? I dunno they said on tv they were wondering where all the 13 to 16 inch fish are

in the nets in the spring ?????......if so check for the stocked fish in a couple 3 years

Sculpin how do you they are netting over here and where are they netting  here

Again I 'm not sure how those nets work but I think it might be alittle more challenging in smaller lake's

but not sure

Gregg: To your question on the netting at North Long:  This came thru the DNR, I believe via GLIFWS. The various Tribes must declare well in advance the lakes they wish to harvest. I am not able to tell you how many fish they harvested, or what they declared for lakes other than Mille Lacs.  Bear in mind, any lake in the Treaty area is fair game. Fond Du Lac, Mille Lacs, and two WI. Tribes are netting/spearing all over the county in various lakes. They also post it all up on their respective web sites.

I think many folks have the mistaken belief that this is only a Lake Mille Lacs issue. Not so.

[SmellEsox]

On 4/21/2016 at 9:25 AM, delcecchi said:

The sample young of the year in the fall with electrofishing.  As for accuracy, it is a numbers sampling game.  

Say you had a huge vat of white marbles and wanted to know how many there are.  If you dumped in a bunch of black marbles, counting them first of course, and stirred up the vat you could get a pretty good idea of how many white marbles there were by taking out some and seeing what proportion of them are black.   If your sample is 1% black then there were 100 times as many white marbles.   But you have to take a big sample so you get like 20 black ones because if there are only a couple it could have just been luck that you got 2 instead of 1 or 3. 

I just used 2 as an example before.  Depends on how much accuracy you want. 

They did this exact same study on Vermilion a few years ago.  I don't know if they are still doing it or not. 

They must estimate what the survival of stocked fry is.  Because obviously there is no way to know how many of your stocked fry will survive.  No way you assume they all survive.  So you are estimating the population by estimating based on an estimate.

[delcecchi]

The assumption is that the survival of marked fry is the same as the survival of lake hatched fry.  That seems reasonable to me, especially for fry hatched from eggs taken from the same lake.

[SmellEsox]

50 minutes ago, delcecchi said:

The assumption is that the survival of marked fry is the same as the survival of lake hatched fry.  That seems reasonable to me, especially for fry hatched from eggs taken from the same lake.

I suppose if the estimate is a Peterson estimate, that is the assumption.  But I would think that there would be some mortality as the fry must soak in the OTC bath for quite a while and then they must be hauled from St. Paul which would also put some stress on the fry.

[delcecchi]

Which hatchery are they using to incubate the eggs and bathe the fry?    Is there a hatchery in St Paul?   Does hauling a few gallons of fry for a couple hours really stress them that much? 

I guess that the dunk in the tetracyclene or whatever that marks them could perhaps introduce a bias, but they must not think it is significant.   Not sure how they would tell. 

What is a Peterson estimate?  The whole thing seems plausible to me, for what that is worth.  

[Bandersnatch]

Google: petersen estimate formula

[SmellEsox]

19 hours ago, delcecchi said:

Which hatchery are they using to incubate the eggs and bathe the fry?    Is there a hatchery in St Paul?   Does hauling a few gallons of fry for a couple hours really stress them that much? 

I guess that the dunk in the tetracyclene or whatever that marks them could perhaps introduce a bias, but they must not think it is significant.   Not sure how they would tell. 

What is a Peterson estimate?  The whole thing seems plausible to me, for what that is worth.  

I believe the fry must soak in the OTC for 3 or 4 hours.  They could overlap that with the ride up to Mille Lacs, but they must be in the fry bags for that long at least.  The Peterson estimate is (M)x(C)/R where M=# of fish marked (# of fry marked with OTC), C=number of fish captured (which they would do with fall electrofishing), and R = number of C which have the OTC mark.  Does that make sense?  You would have to assume that marked and natural fry have the same survival rate and that the marked fry are evenly distributed throughout the lake (amongst other assumptions).  Not sure if that is what they are doing or not though.

[ANYFISH2]

Feels like I am in fisheries management class all over again!

Thanks Smellesox.

[delcecchi]

Ok that is what I was trying to explain, I think.   I didn't put in any math though.   Basically you can tell what the total population is by seeing what proportion a known number of marked individuals show up.  Just have to capture enough so the number of marked specimens is statistically significant.  

I didn't know some guy had his name on the calculation.

Edited April 29, 2016 by delcecchi

[i'majigger]

I'm thinking maybe they need to update the books in fisheries class because the ones they are using do not seem to be working!

[SmellEsox]

LOL

[SmellEsox]

Just learned they changed and now the fry must soak for 6 hours.  Apparently there is not much mortality associated with the soaking process.

[GTE]

On ‎4‎/‎21‎/‎2016 at 7:44 PM, leech~~ said:

The only way to run a true and thorough test of any process is to change or remove the variables one at a time and document the out comes of each change. Since line fishing has been stopped, Netting would be one of the logical next variable to remove and document. Good luck with that.

I wouldn't consider line fishing stopped at all. Catch and Release, especially with live bait, is the same scenario as previous years. Just you cannot keep any walleye, Netting was more effectively stopped this year, the spearing will likely be far less than line fishing mortality.

How to restore balance to the lake will take time, and likely not please everyone. In some ways, although it would be nearly impossible to enforce, put a minimum size slot with no catch and release. You catch it and get off the lake. At least then you would reduce the mortality rate. I have a hard time understanding how a restricted slot, with unlimited catch and release, and expected mortality rate is helpful.

There are other factors - like the decline in tulibee - that may be a larger factor into what is going on. Could be the walleye find their own young an easy meal substitute.

When you have promotion of Catch and Release promoted as a 'season', and allowing live bait, the message is very mixed. Are you truly concerned about the resource, or people's pocketbooks? Since fishing is allowed all year, and you can use the same methods and baits, you have done nothing in effect. Caching an incidental walleye during crappie fishing on open water is the same as our 'season'.

Tough choices will have to be made, and likely a few mistakes along the way. The lake did not get this way over night, and will take years to get back into balance.

[ifish4food]

 

On April 20, 2016 at 6:31 PM, Sculpin said:

At the end of the day/game, what the DNR would LIKE to do is establish a couple of years of base analysis WITHOUT the Indians gill netting, and be able to go back and say: Here is what the outcome is/was without nets, and establish that the nets are in fact harmful. I may not necessarily agree, and  perhaps many others will not either. But its a start, and a little bit different tact. The Tribes have speared about 6,000 LBS thus far. So they may not hit their quota.  A pretty small dent overall. So a good base year at the bottom of the cycle......maybe

They have moved over into Gregg 52'S area, and they are right under his nose....Get em Greg !!!  

Don't we already have data on a couple years with no nets or little netting? 2013 we had ice on opener and 2014 ice out was pretty darn close to opener. Hard to net when there is ice on the lake.  PS posts on the DNR website state there was a strong 2013 year class, but anyone who fishes the lake could tell you that.  I suppose it could be a coincidence.