Pigeon Lake Walleye Draws on a steady decrease….

[Rockymtnx]

After taking a look at the draw history on the Walleye Special License Draws, it appeared that the number of licenses for my home town lake(Pigeon) seemed to be drastically decreasing.
After pulling up the stats here is what I came up with.

Pigeon Lake Walleye Draw History


Class A Class B Class C Total
2010 0 50 3518 3668
2009 0 631 4404 5035
2008 1035 1411 4683 7129
2007 4747 3804 0 8551
2006 1600 3450 0 3450 (Trial year)

After seeing the number of tags being cut back 20 – 30% ever year I have to wonder if our walleye managers really have a plan here or what they are doing here? Has the population decreased that much every year, that the harvest has to be decreased that much? Obviously the population isn’t sustaining itself…..

Any comments?

[The Elkster]

I would expect some trial and error over the first 5-10 years. Its not easy to nail down the factors that go into sustainability at each lake and factors may change from year to year and from lake to lake. There is no "easy" button.

[Rockymtnx]

I would expect some trial and error over the first 5-10 years. Its not easy to nail down the factors that go into sustainability at each lake and factors may change from year to year and from lake to lake. There is no "easy" button.
Defiantly not. But as we can see our managers have obviously changed their tune on what they feel the lake can withstand for a harvest since first introducing the draw system 5 years ago.

I just want to make it clear that I am not upset that the number of tags have been cut back dramatically, but rather just point out that there has been a big change.