A look back, "The big one that got away".

[kelly-p]

Now when we are about to start harvesting walleyes in less then 2 months it might be a good time to look back at how we got to this point. It was a long journey that hopefully we will never repeat. At one time URL was left to die and nobody would listen or care. Brad Dokken wrote this article and it came out on the front page of the Grand Forks Herald on a weekend. People took notice and started to care about URL. Things started to happen and here we are. I believe that this article was the turning point when things started to get better. A tip of the hat to Brad Dokken and the Grand Forks Herald.

Published:Saturday, February 6, 1999

The big one that got away

Red Lake walleyes vanished and took livelihoods of

resort owners with them

By Brad Dokken

Herald Staff Writer

The walleye population on Red Lake has collapsed,

affecting the lives of the Ojibwe Indians who once

commercially fished the lake and of the resort

owners who once attracted boatloads of anglers.

Biologists have a plan to help the lake recover, a

plan that includes a moratorium on walleye harvest

for the next several years. Meantime, these are dark

days for the people who live on Minnesota's largest

inland lake. Here are some of their stories.

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 hell

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. He can be

reached by phone at (701) 780-1148 or (800) 477-6572

extension 148; or by e-mail at [email protected]

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©1999 Northscape / Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald - All Rights Reserved

[12lb8oz]

come May 13 (or whatever opener is). It is great to see the lake coming back. I have only been up once this year, in one afternoon we caught 15 of the nicest walleyes I have ever caught. Healthy, fat, beautiful walleyes, all of them between 1 1/2 and 3 lbs. Hopefully they continue to multiply.

[Satchmo]

Your right Kelly, that is a story that is definately worth looking back at. I'd also like to point out, that because of you and others like you, the Red Lake story has been kept in the public eye for everyone to learn from. The now famous "crappie bite" has served a much more important role than to just serve up a multitude of fish dinners. Yes, it has brought out the opportunist, the fish hawgs, and some generally not nice people, but it has also molded lifelong friendships and brought about an awareness and a spirit of co-operation to the masses of folks who care about this lake. It has revitalized an economy that was crushed by irresponsible lake management, and brought about a huge desire in all to never see it happen again. It has brought sportsmen, state agencies, and tribal government together for a common goal, and hopefully put together a system of checks and balances to insure that history does not repeat itself. All this from those schools of crappies.My hope is that after the initial chaos of opening the walleye season , and as time passes on URL, this great fishery will stabilize and be free from the feast or famine type of fish populations. Here's to the day when it is a healthy and balanced fishery again. Everyone involved in the recovery of Red Lake should be commended for their efforts. While the Waskish area will not always be in the news, I am comforted in the fact, that as the years pass and Red Lake is not the "Hot Topic" anymore, I know that YOU and many others will be there to guard the health and well-being of this great lake. There is noone more happy than I to see your lake, your economy, and your way of life brought back from the edge of extinction. Here's to the future!! Greg

[Surface Tension]

Kelly, thanks for the look back.

SATCHMO, great post.

[chaffmj]

Satchmo very nicely put. I'll second that.

Kelley thanks for the article, very interesting to read. I have been coming up for 6 winters to fish crappies and it has been great and even though I have never rented from you (I tried a couple of times) I would like to say thanks and the same to everybody else that has stuck it out. To the future!

[Katoman]

It would be interesting to try and figure out how much $$$$ has been pumped into the local economy in the last six or seven years....any guesses?

[shaky legs2]

Kelly,

Kelly, Thanks to you, your dad, Shorty, Buddy plus everyone else who has kept the legacy alive. I remember getting minnows from your dad in the basement of the house when the crappies were starting to get some notice around the state. I hope that this is just the beginning of something grand but we can never forget how fragile a fishery is. I have fished Leech for over 35 years and they are experiencing the same thing for different reasons. Hopefully that fishery will be back on it's feet in a few years.

[BarryG]

That was a really good read! I never knew what really happened to URL. But hopefully with the walleye coming back the resorts will pick up again, especially the ones that stuck it out!

[kelly-p]

YO SATCHMO! I thought of you the other night. Remember the first time we met when were we coming in one of the last days of the year and the road was all rutted up? Seeing as I was leading I decided to run alongside the road where it was smoother and then jump the snowbank close to shore to get back on the road and off the lake. I went great until we got close to shore and I picked a place to jump the 4 foot bank. I came across that bank and landed right in one of the roughest parts of the road. 1 1/2 foot frozen ruts and I landed sideways to them. Broke all 4 springs on the truck and while I was still sitting shaking the instant cobweds off and wondering if I even had tires left on the truck here came SATCHMO over the bank. He didn't land any better then I had. That was one poor plan.

[Satchmo]

How could I possibly forget that one Kelly. The funny thing is, I would still follow you blindly into the night. Mostly because, between the flying snow and blinding speed, I'm just happier than heck if I can still see your tail-lights.

[Random guy]

Quote:

---

I'm just happier than heck if I can still see your tail-lights.

---

Its half good! I think he's down to one tailight again.

[moose099]

Thanks for the "Look Back" Kelly, couldn't help but think I was reading the next chapter to "On The Trail"

Very well put SATCHMO, you have the gift.

Kelly, thanks for hanging in there, after reading "On The Trail" though, it doesn't suprise me. The sticktoitness is in your genes and also in the Hillman and Hudec families. The history of Waskish and the people who live and lived there have been on a rollercoaster ride from day one. What a character building ride!! Thanks again Kelly, I am fortunate to know You and Proud to call You my friend. You and Yours are Welcome at my campfire anytime.