Memorandum Of Understanding

[kelly-p]

Minnesota DNR, Red Lake Nation renew Upper, Lower Red Lake fisheries management agreement

Written By: Forum News Service | Dec 4th 2019 - 12pm.

 

The new memorandum of understanding closely parallels previous 1999-2019 agreements that facilitated restoration of high-quality walleye fishing to Minnesota’s largest inland body of water. The agreement states that each entity will support the Red Lake Fisheries Technical Committee, a joint panel of experts that recommends policies and practices to maintain a healthy fishery.

 

RED LAKE, Minn. -- The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Red Lake Nation and Bureau of Indian Affairs on Wednesday signed a new 10-year memorandum of understanding to continue cooperative management of the walleye population in Upper and Lower Red lakes in northwest Minnesota. The signing took place during a ceremony in Red Lake.

“Red Lake Band members are pleased that our walleye have come back and our fishing community is revitalized,” said Darrell Seki, chairman of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, in a release. “We are committed to ensuring that Red Lake walleye are managed sustainably in the future.

“Renewing this agreement will enable the Fisheries Technical Committee to continue its work to help protect this valuable resource,” Seki added. “While the walleye fishery has rebounded, we must now focus our attention on ridding Red Lake of invasive species.”

Wednesday’s MOU provides an opportunity for the partners to address other issues that arise such as the prevention and eradication of invasive species.

The new MOU closely parallels previous 1999-2019 agreements that facilitated restoration of high-quality walleye fishing to Minnesota’s largest inland body of water. The agreement states that each entity will support the Red Lake Fisheries Technical Committee, a joint panel of experts that recommends policies and practices to maintain a healthy fishery.

“We’ve come a long way in the past 20 years,” DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen said in a statement, noting that the combined state and tribal harvest continues to average about 1 million pounds per year. “By renewing this agreement, we are reaffirming our commitment to a successful partnership and working together for the future of this outstanding fishery.”

Historically, Upper and Lower Red Lake was a highly productive walleye fishery, but it collapsed in the mid-1990s from overharvest. That led to the Red Lake Fisheries Technical Committee in 1997, followed by a moratorium on walleye harvest and an aggressive stocking effort.

Through those efforts and continued cooperation between members of the Technical Committee, walleye numbers quickly rebounded, and fishing in both state and tribal waters resumed in May 2006.

[leech~~]

So, get ready for even lower limits on Netti......  Hook and Line fishing. 

[FowlSki]

Ridding the lake of invasive species?!  They referring to whitey or AIS?  Either way good luck!  Hopefully if they find the magic fix with stopping or eliminating AIS that countless others have tried to figure out, they’ll share their secret.  The spending on AIS is ridiculous and largely a waste.

[kelly-p]

18 hours ago, leech~~ said:

So, get ready for even lower limits on Netti......  Hook and Line fishing. 

Safe allowable harvest is the same for state waters and Band waters at 7.5 pounds per acre.

For the 2019 harvest season 299,377 pounds of walleyes were harvested from the 48,000 acres of the State waters of URL. 6.24 pounds per acre.

For the 2019 harvest season 443,148 pounds of walleyes were harvested from the 240,800 acres of the Bands waters of URL and LRL. 1.84 pounds per acre.

The slot on State waters was reduced for this winter season because we harvested 160,830 pounds of walleyes this summer from the State waters. From 2006 through 2015 we averaged 54,500 pounds of walleyes harvested from State waters during the summer season. We came in almost 3 times the average harvest.

So tell me again how Red Lake Band members are hurting the fishing. 

[leech~~]

1 hour ago, kelly-p said:

Safe allowable harvest is the same for state waters and Band waters at 7.5 pounds per acre.

For the 2019 harvest season 299,377 pounds of walleyes were harvested from the 48,000 acres of the State waters of URL. 6.24 pounds per acre.

For the 2019 harvest season 443,148 pounds of walleyes were harvested from the 240,800 acres of the Bands waters of URL and LRL. 1.84 pounds per acre.

The slot on State waters was reduced for this winter season because we harvested 160,830 pounds of walleyes this summer from the State waters. From 2006 through 2015 we averaged 54,500 pounds of walleyes harvested from State waters during the summer season. We came in almost 3 times the average harvest.

So tell me again how Red Lake Band members are hurting the fishing. 

 

Simple.

[leech~~]

44 minutes ago, leech~~ said:

 

One's a sustainable cycle, the other not so much! 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2019 by leech~~

[kelly-p]

So a Mommy fish caught and eaten by an angler isn't really dead? You do understand that the Red Lake Band also has slot limits and open and closed seasons don't you?

[Kettle]

Being able to witness gill netting sampling first hand via the DNR very few if any fish caught in the net are able to swim again and nets catch all sizes. 

With that being said I'm not comparing this to the Red Lake band as I am ignorant on the topic and have zero idea how they harvest their fish. 

I've also made previous posts on how lakes have acquired zebra mussels without ever being fished. Is the likelihood of invasion into Red Lake more likely from a sport angler? Of course, but without the exact knowledge of who it was and when we are just pointing fingers at others.

Are there slob sport anglers? Yes there are but spending the majority of my adult life working on reservations across the state I can say that there are good and bad people in every ethnic group and one bad one overshadows ten good ones. I do hope for everyone who frequents the lake whether band members or sport anglers that it continues to be a great fishery. A PR pike from 2 years ago C&R on Red

[leech~~]

2 hours ago, kelly-p said:

So a Mommy fish caught and eaten by an angler isn't really dead? You do understand that the Red Lake Band also has slot limits and open and closed seasons don't you?

 

1) Yes, mommy Slot fish are dead. But not many 17" are mommies yet. 

2) Nets compile with slots limits?  That's the first I ever heard of that. Cool!   

[bowhuntingboy1]

I might be wrong, but isnt the population of the band a fraction of our sportfishing population? It's like 20 people's take 40 fish total, 1 person takes 10 alone, who's worse? 

Edited December 6, 2019 by bowhuntingboy1

[FowlSki]

12 hours ago, Kettle said:

Being able to witness gill netting sampling first hand via the DNR very few if any fish caught in the net are able to swim again and nets catch all sizes. 

With that being said I'm not comparing this to the Red Lake band as I am ignorant on the topic and have zero idea how they harvest their fish. 

I've also made previous posts on how lakes have acquired zebra mussels without ever being fished. Is the likelihood of invasion into Red Lake more likely from a sport angler? Of course, but without the exact knowledge of who it was and when we are just pointing fingers at others.

Are there slob sport anglers? Yes there are but spending the majority of my adult life working on reservations across the state I can say that there are good and bad people in every ethnic group and one bad one overshadows ten good ones. I do hope for everyone who frequents the lake whether band members or sport anglers that it continues to be a great fishery. A PR pike from 2 years ago C&R on Red

 

That pike probably released about as good as those fish you witnessed the dnr gill net after doing a vertical on a fish that big.

[leech~~]

2 hours ago, bowhuntingboy1 said:

I might be wrong, but isnt the population of the band a fraction of our sportfishing population? It's like 20 people's take 40 fish total, 1 person takes 10 alone, who's worse? 

 

The RL Band has 5,873 members.  Their Walleye quota for 2019 is 820,000 lbs or 139 lbs per member.

So far they caught around 443,148 or only 75lbs per member.  Their catch limit is 75 fish a day. Anyone you know have kids or them that eat 75+lbs of Walleye a year?  But, it is their right to sustain life!

Here's the real reason they all need to eat so many fish.

 

Walleye 11lb – Morning Catch

$175.89 – $186.89

It’s what Red Lake Fishery is famous for. Walleye is craved as one of the best-tasting fish available. They are prized for their rich, tender, flaky character. This is healthy eating too! Walleye is low in saturated fat with significant amounts of magnesium, potassium and Vitamin B12.

Our Morning Catch Walleye is Wild-caught, hand-filleted and shipped to you the same day. You can’t get fresher, healthier fish anywhere.

 

 

Edited December 6, 2019 by leech~~

[kelly-p]

11 hours ago, leech~~ said:

But not many 17" are mommies yet. 

Walleyes in the Red Lakes begin spawning at 17 inches.  It would be pretty senseless to try managing the Red Lakes for larger fish. The present forage base does not provide the right food for the larger walleyes. As a result of that the larger walleyes die off at about 8 years of age. Right now the 2011 year class which was a big year class is dropping off.  This might change in the future as right now the forage base is in the best shape it has been since the recovery started but the bigger walleyes need a pretty rich food such as whitefish or tullibee and we are not seeing much of an increase for those fish.

 

11 hours ago, leech~~ said:

Nets compile with slots limits? 

Mesh size changes the size fish targeted. Also in the Red Lakes the larger walleyes are shallower and smaller walleyes deeper so the net placement will change the size fish caught. Look at the fishing reports right now with everybody complaining about too many fish too big for the slot. They forget that with the ice conditions everybody is fishing shallow. Nobody is fishing out in the basin where the smaller walleyes are. The supplemental netting only starts when the hook and line fishermen are not catching enough to keep the fisheries supplied and is 50% or less of total harvest. Hook and line fishermen have slot limits. The fisheries does not want the bigger walleyes. The supplemental netting started in 2009. If it was that bad as some believe shouldn't we be seeing results by now in harvest numbers dropping? Instead we are seeing rapid increases in harvest numbers and the lake is in the best shape it has been in since the 1960's.

 

2 hours ago, bowhuntingboy1 said:

I might be wrong, but isnt the population of the band a fraction of our sportfishing population? It's like 20 people's take 40 fish total, 1 person takes 10 alone, who's worse? 

State waters 6.24 pounds of walleyes harvested per acre. Bands waters 1.84 pounds of walleyes harvested per acre.

With that I'm out of here. I've got better things to do then this.

[Kettle]

1 hour ago, FowlSki said:

 

That pike probably released about as good as those fish you witnessed the dnr gill net after doing a vertical on a fish that big.

I respect your concern fowlski, it was released without issues and zero revival was needed on the release. 

[bowhuntingboy1]

34 minutes ago, kelly-p said:

Walleyes in the Red Lakes begin spawning at 17 inches.  It would be pretty senseless to try managing the Red Lakes for larger fish. The present forage base does not provide the right food for the larger walleyes. As a result of that the larger walleyes die off at about 8 years of age. Right now the 2011 year class which was a big year class is dropping off.  This might change in the future as right now the forage base is in the best shape it has been since the recovery started but the bigger walleyes need a pretty rich food such as whitefish or tullibee and we are not seeing much of an increase for those fish.

 

Mesh size changes the size fish targeted. Also in the Red Lakes the larger walleyes are shallower and smaller walleyes deeper so the net placement will change the size fish caught. Look at the fishing reports right now with everybody complaining about too many fish too big for the slot. They forget that with the ice conditions everybody is fishing shallow. Nobody is fishing out in the basin where the smaller walleyes are. The supplemental netting only starts when the hook and line fishermen are not catching enough to keep the fisheries supplied and is 50% or less of total harvest. Hook and line fishermen have slot limits. The fisheries does not want the bigger walleyes. The supplemental netting started in 2009. If it was that bad as some believe shouldn't we be seeing results by now in harvest numbers dropping? Instead we are seeing rapid increases in harvest numbers and the lake is in the best shape it has been in since the 1960's.

 

State waters 6.24 pounds of walleyes harvested per acre. Bands waters 1.84 pounds of walleyes harvested per acre.

With that I'm out of here. I've got better things to do then this.

That's a pretty misleading statistic though, as leech pointed out. 

[leech~~]

1 hour ago, bowhuntingboy1 said:

That's a pretty misleading statistic though, as leech pointed out. 

 

They keep using fish lbs per acre, instead of lbs per person! 

Why is the lbs per acre higher on the 48,000 acres of the State waters. Because there are 1.4 million licensed MN anglers that can fish it.  Compared to the 240,800 acres of the Bands waters that only 5,873 people can fish.

We know that the 1.4 million people are fishing because they bought a license to fish.

There is no way all 5,873 band members actually fish because a portion of that population are babies, kids to small to fish and old folks not fishing anymore.

 

If "Pounds per person" for all would be used. The numbers per person is astronomically disproportionate!  That's why they will never use them as a comparison. Never!

Edited December 6, 2019 by leech~~

[leech~~]

If anyone wants to read up on some of the reasons the walleye crash of the late 1980 on Red lake happened.

Read a book called "They Used to call us Game Wardens" Volume 2 by Bill Callies.

He was a MN DNR Game Warden stationed in Waskish, MN during the 1970's. 

He talks about many busts of Band member's running Walleye fillets up to Fish buyers in Baudette, MN late at night on back roads, back then.  

 

Now the Band is showing great interest and concerned for the Walleye fishery in Red Lake because they want to keep their Fish Factory supplied!  That's why in the near future they will be pushing the DNR for smaller slots and lower limits on the State waters. It's ready started. 

[creepworm]

48 minutes ago, leech~~ said:

 

They keep using fish lbs per acre, instead of lbs per person! 

 

 

I hate getting into these conversations due to the fact they are emotionally charged and biological facts are generally thrown aside, but I will say one thing.

 

Lbs per acre is the only possible way to figure out a safe harvest. It is the way carrying capacity of a lake is figured, and it is the only measurement that can keep from over or under harvest on any body of water. 

 

Sure, 1.4 million people bought fishing licenses. Cool. Awesome. Outstanding. That number has absolutely nothing to due with management on Red lake. Both because not all people that have purchased a license will fish Red, but also managing a lake based on a lbs of fish per person that fishes a lake basis rather than lbs of fish per acre of lake basis will lead to fishery failure. Without exception.

[creepworm]

1 minute ago, leech~~ said:

Now the Band is showing great interest and concerned for the Walleye fishery in Red Lake because they want to keep their Fish Factory supplied!  

 

Uh huh. And deer hunters want more habitat just so they have more deer to kill. Caring about the walleye in Red lake is a good thing, not bad.

[leech~~]

13 minutes ago, creepworm said:

 

I hate getting into these conversations due to the fact they are emotionally charged and biological facts are generally thrown aside, but I will say one thing.

 

Lbs per acre is the only possible way to figure out a safe harvest. It is the way carrying capacity of a lake is figured, and it is the only measurement that can keep from over or under harvest on any body of water. 

 

Sure, 1.4 million people bought fishing licenses. Cool. Awesome. Outstanding. That number has absolutely nothing to due with management on Red lake. Both because not all people that have purchased a license will fish Red, but also managing a lake based on a lbs of fish per person that fishes a lake basis rather than lbs of fish per acre of lake basis will lead to fishery failure. Without exception.

 

I totally understand the reasoning and method used for fish management.

The simple example I used for the discussion is the need of fish per person, as all peoples as equals. 

The amount of fish needed or taken by the small amount of Band members is astronomically disproportionate to all peoples.

But they had a need back a 100+ years ago.

Edited December 6, 2019 by leech~~

[FowlSki]

4 hours ago, Kettle said:

I respect your concern fowlski, it was released without issues and zero revival was needed on the release. 

 

Big fish that are vertical held will always swim off fine.  If they die they do after they swim off due to the internal damage done while being vertically held.

 

Awesome Fish!  Gotta love the big red lake gators.  I wish there were still as many as there used to be.

[Kettle]

4 minutes ago, FowlSki said:

 

Big fish that are vertical held will always swim off fine.  If they die they do after they swim off due to the internal damage done while being vertically held.

 

Awesome Fish!  Gotta love the big red lake gators.  I wish there were still as many as there used to be.

Fowlski

You are definitely correct and this was something I had no idea on until I did some research and actually contacted a friend with a degree in fisheries today. Won't be doing that anymore, learning moment.

[kelly-p]

2 hours ago, leech~~ said:

Read a book called "They Used to call us Game Wardens" Volume 2 by Bill Callies.

He was a MN DNR Game Warden stationed in Waskish, MN during the 1970's. 

Bill Callies was a good person. I remember him giving me a few stern talks as I was growing up and I deserved every one of them.

Here is another interesting read about the collapse.

 

 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.

[bowhuntingboy1]

I think what he was referring to is that you should care before things go bad, not after. 

[bowhuntingboy1]

3 hours ago, leech~~ said:

 

I totally understand the reasoning and method used for fish management.

The simple example I used for the discussion is the need of fish per person, as all peoples as equals. 

The amount of fish needed or taken by the small amount of Band members is astronomically disproportionate to all peoples.

But they had a need back a 100+ years ago.

If we could all just follow the same rules, this wouldn't be a discussion. The law shouldn't discriminate.

[leech~~]

Lot's of really good reading and points in the above.  Hope they have learned some lessons from the past and the Greed doesn't come back again!  It's always Man's Greed that makes them fail!

 

"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."

 

"In 1989, the tribe's commercial netters
 registered a record 948,000 pounds of walleye."

 

And this years quota was just about back to that of 820,000.  So did they learn anything?

Edited December 6, 2019 by leech~~

[Wanderer]

10 hours ago, leech~~ said:

Walleye 11lb – Morning Catch

$175.89 – $186.89

It’s what Red Lake Fishery is famous for. Walleye is craved as one of the best-tasting fish available. They are prized for their rich, tender, flaky character. This is healthy eating too! Walleye is low in saturated fat with significant amounts of magnesium, potassium and Vitamin B12.

Our Morning Catch Walleye is Wild-caught, hand-filleted and shipped to you the same day. You can’t get fresher, healthier fish anywhere.

 

 

You sure this is from Red Lake in MN?  There’s a Red Lake in Canada that’s a commercial fishery.  Often confused with MN.

[kelly-p]

5 hours ago, leech~~ said:

"In 1989, the tribe's commercial netters
 registered a record 948,000 pounds of walleye."

The ones netting guessed that the bootlegged pounds were more then what was going through the fisheries.  There were some very big customers for the bootlegged walleyes they were not just sold in bars and parking lots but entire truck loads to one destination.  Many of them then resold the fish again. White people were also bootlegging out of the State waters some of them were even putting gill nets in the rivers during the spawning run. There was plenty of blame to go around.

[leech~~]

2 hours ago, Wanderer said:

You sure this is from Red Lake in MN?  There’s a Red Lake in Canada that’s a commercial fishery.  Often confused with MN.

 

 

Red Lake Nation Fishery
19050 Highway 1 East
Redby, MN 56670

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjAq-2m1qLmAhUBeawKHY5qDksQFjAAegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fredlakewalleye.com%2F&usg=AOvVaw1nHj6YkRKvxzCJ0_4YRnXE

Edited December 7, 2019 by leech~~

[Wanderer]

Fact checker says OK.   You may or may not believe this but I was partially poking the bear too. 

 

Cheaper per pound than going up to fish and limits every time.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Wanderer