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10-10-2016, 08:03 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: By the river
Posts: 61
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Walleye Limit on Lac La Biche and other area lakes
Interesting read. I have had really good luck catching lots of walleye and nice healthy ones to boot on LLB. I'd like to see them let you keep one... unfortunately some people would abuse the privilege. I've seen a boat with 4 people, on a different lake, take their limit to camp after fishing the morning only to see them do the same that evening.
http://www.laclabichepost.com/articl...eason-20161007
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10-10-2016, 08:51 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 1,463
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Yip I agree allow one walleye per day lets say over 60 or 63 cm. That was the prime breeders 42 to 59 get to spawn. It works well with the pike having it one over 75. Let's the prime breeders spawn.
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Safety D !!!
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10-11-2016, 06:45 AM
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Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 562
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Safety D
Yip I agree allow one walleye per day lets say over 60 or 63 cm. That was the prime breeders 42 to 59 get to spawn. It works well with the pike having it one over 75. Let's the prime breeders spawn.
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I strongly disagree with you here. Let all the big fish go and reproduce and keep some of the little immature ones under 43cm that do not spawn yet. A 10 lb Walleye still lays millions of eggs and shouldn't be harvested. The small ones are better table fare anyways. Judging by the numbers of hammer handles in our waters I would suggest same thing may be appropriate for pike as well. Once they reach a certain length let them go and grow to trophy status and harvest more of the small ones that have greater impact on the available food supply in a given waterbody just due to their abundance.
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10-11-2016, 09:26 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2013
Posts: 15
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I was talking to some people at one of the LLB launches who were monitoring the lake a few weeks ago and asked them why we can't keep any fish yet. They said they are waiting for more proof that the big stocked walleye are reproducing and replacing themselves. Until then it's unlikely that LLB will open up.
They also mentioned last year because of heat and low water a lot of the big females weren't reproducing at all but were in some kind of survival mode.
I'm okay to let them be for now if it means good future fishing. In fact it's good fishing right now, except that folks wanna eat
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10-11-2016, 10:23 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Airdrie
Posts: 2,510
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PerchBuster
I strongly disagree with you here. Let all the big fish go and reproduce and keep some of the little immature ones under 43cm that do not spawn yet. A 10 lb Walleye still lays millions of eggs and shouldn't be harvested. The small ones are better table fare anyways. Judging by the numbers of hammer handles in our waters I would suggest same thing may be appropriate for pike as well. Once they reach a certain length let them go and grow to trophy status and harvest more of the small ones that have greater impact on the available food supply in a given waterbody just due to their abundance.
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This all day long...
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10-11-2016, 10:24 AM
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Join Date: May 2011
Posts: 1,939
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Quote:
Originally Posted by North66
I was talking to some people at one of the LLB launches who were monitoring the lake a few weeks ago and asked them why we can't keep any fish yet. They said they are waiting for more proof that the big stocked walleye are reproducing and replacing themselves. Until then it's unlikely that LLB will open up.
They also mentioned last year because of heat and low water a lot of the big females weren't reproducing at all but were in some kind of survival mode.
I'm okay to let them be for now if it means good future fishing. In fact it's good fishing right now, except that folks wanna eat
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That is very interesting. I also was speaking with a bio in the area this summer and he said that they have known that natural spawning is and has been taking place and therefore have recommended it be opened for a couple of years now but it is always quashed by some higher ups, no doubt sitting in an ivory tower some place.
I mean the levels that they use to determine collapsed, vulnerable, stable and trophy came from a mathematical model, that they came up with, that has never been validated as far as I can find in the literature.
It has just been a big guess that they refuse to re-look at given the new data. Look at Thurston basically on the Alberta NWT boarder with limited fishing pressure but according to FWIN it has a collapsed walleye population. ( that's why you can still catch pike in there I guess)
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10-12-2016, 10:48 AM
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 1,463
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It doesn't matter about the size of the fish its how many healthy eggs it has. That's like comparing a 150 pound women and an a 300 pound having a kid. The best and healthiest survival rate is the normal sized women. It has worked well and the prime breeding size for pike is under 75 cm. So you have all Walleye under 60 cm released. The prime breeders go back. Make it a bit challenging to get one over 60 and we all win. Sounds like a good idea to me
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Safety D !!!
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10-12-2016, 11:59 AM
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: West Edmonton
Posts: 5,174
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Safety D
It doesn't matter about the size of the fish its how many healthy eggs it has. That's like comparing a 150 pound women and an a 300 pound having a kid. The best and healthiest survival rate is the normal sized women. It has worked well and the prime breeding size for pike is under 75 cm. So you have all Walleye under 60 cm released. The prime breeders go back. Make it a bit challenging to get one over 60 and we all win. Sounds like a good idea to me
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Except size alone is not indicative of the state of the fish.
To use your own example 150 lb 80 year old women are far less fertile then 300 lb 30 year old women...
When you kill all the prime genetics(the larger faster growing fish) it is difficult to get them back. That is how stunted perch and walleye lakes happen.
To have a truly healthy lake you need a mixture of age classes, lots of food supply and good genetics. In such lakes fish can easily grow twice as fast as they do in inferior lakes.
The best system on an already healthy lake is a slot size. Big enough that some of the undersize fish still reproduce and allowing the fish with the prime genetics to survive and continue to reproduce.
That said a slot size cannot simply be implemented in every situation and be expected to work properly. Some lakes that are overgrown with stunted populations first need to be thinned out. Similarly lakes with too many big fish need to be slowly thinned out while allowing younger stocks to get better holds in the lake.
In short too many small fish can be bad for a lake and so can too many big fish. There is always a magical balancing point and it is different for every lake(something AEP fails to take into consideration with their studies, some lakes just won't ever have the feed etc to meet the population numbers they think they should have).
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10-12-2016, 02:05 PM
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Gone Hunting
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Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: 503
Posts: 979
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Aint going to happen!!!! The local subsistence fishermen have too much of a voice in what happens on the lake. They take what they want(not need), sell their catch and/or barter it for whatever they choose to ingest, and go back for more the following days to maintain their habits. Nothing like seeing a pickup truck box filled up to the wheel wells with large walleye whether it be winter or summer and on their way to a ready market.
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Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity!!
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10-13-2016, 03:50 AM
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Edmonton
Posts: 6,470
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What I don't understand is they have stocked over a 100 million in LLB over the last 10 or so years and yet they still have it c&r to fishermen/women . They are still studying it ??? Almost sounds like they are job creating for a few bioligists and F&W people.
Is it a kick back sort of thing for someone that makes a business out of catching and selling Walleye to retail businesses ?
That lake must be over populated with Walleye. I just don't get it.
With the size of that lake and so many stocked Walleye, they should be able to open it up to some sort of catch retention. Even Calling lake and Utikama are open to some and they have so much fishing preasure. Calling in the summer and Utikama in the winter.
Maybe open it to fishermen for 3 months out of the year only, with a slot size or something like that. Take some of the preasure off other lakes in the area.
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Kim
Gonna get me a 16" perch.
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10-13-2016, 10:18 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2013
Posts: 15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kim473
What I don't understand is they have stocked over a 100 million in LLB over the last 10 or so years and yet they still have it c&r to fishermen/women . They are still studying it ??? Almost sounds like they are job creating for a few bioligists and F&W people.
Is it a kick back sort of thing for someone that makes a business out of catching and selling Walleye to retail businesses ?
That lake must be over populated with Walleye. I just don't get it.
With the size of that lake and so many stocked Walleye, they should be able to open it up to some sort of catch retention. Even Calling lake and Utikama are open to some and they have so much fishing preasure. Calling in the summer and Utikama in the winter.
Maybe open it to fishermen for 3 months out of the year only, with a slot size or something like that. Take some of the preasure off other lakes in the area.
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I was trying to find out how long it takes for those baby walleye to become breeders to answer thsi question and I came across this webpage with some reports:
http://aep.alberta.ca/fish-wildlife/...n/default.aspx
If they stocked Lac La Biche from 2006 to 2011 and fish breed at 6 years old, assuming those were good stocking years and the fish "took" to the lake, the earliest possible generation from these stocked fish started in 2012, and then it wouldn't be until 2018 until those fish reproduce, and so on and so on. So logically speaking my guess is that they are waiting to see if all of the stocked fish have reproduced since the 2011 stockers won't be spawning until next year.
But that's just me believing that it will open again
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10-14-2016, 09:33 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: pigeon lake
Posts: 1,578
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take crawling valley res the biologist at the time said that a walleye regeneration time was 7 years and that they needed 3 generations before opening it up for retention . it has now been over 21 years and still not open to retention. these lakes were stocked for catch and release fishing and nothing else not meant as table fair ever. LLB was stocked exclusively for substantiation
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10-14-2016, 03:09 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 562
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Interesting to note that every Walleye over 6-1/2 lbs is a Female. Walleye mature and become spawners starting at age 5 or 6 and at that age a Walleye is only 1 to 1.3 lbs approx and only 36 to 39 cm. Therefore we can assume prime spawning ages are between 5 and 12 years old, ranging from 1 lb to 3 lbs and from 36cm to 53 cm. this tells me our tag system and slot limits being used currently are not the best because we are indeed retaining Walleye of prime age to spawn and reproduce as you know it is mostly 43 cm to 50 cm being kept. This would also tell me that being able to retain smaller fish under 43cm makes a lot of sense because they have only just become mature enough to spawn in the 36cm to 43cm range but are not necessarily at optimal spawning quality yet. They are however best table fare. Walleye over 50 cm (3 lbs) are already over 10 years old and on the downslope of prime spawners in the waterbody. Males mature at approx age 3, only grow to approx 51cm and only live 15 to 20 years. Females mature at 5 to 6 and can live twice as long. In fact a 13 lb Walleye is approx 32 years old. Another interesting fact to note is the larger the Walleye the better the spawners they are. Although egg production per pound decreases slightly as they age, egg size health and viability increase significantly with age. It is not known if female Walleye ever do reach a size and age where they become over- mature and unable to spawn meaning that it would be a mistake to assume we should keep Walleye over say 50 or 60 cm thinking they do not contribute to the spawn as a reason for retention. Opposite is quite true, a 10 lb Walleye contributes immensely to the spawn and recruitment of healthy year classses. Large Walleye become so partially because of age but mostly they have the genetics to grow large. Keeping them in the system means by way of catch and release they pass on their genetics to their offspring which then have a chance to become large trophy class fish in the years to come assuming they grow to a size beyond any slot size limit.
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10-15-2016, 08:10 AM
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Edmonton
Posts: 2,107
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PerchBuster
I strongly disagree with you here. Let all the big fish go and reproduce and keep some of the little immature ones under 43cm that do not spawn yet. A 10 lb Walleye still lays millions of eggs and shouldn't be harvested. The small ones are better table fare anyways. Judging by the numbers of hammer handles in our waters I would suggest same thing may be appropriate for pike as well. Once they reach a certain length let them go and grow to trophy status and harvest more of the small ones that have greater impact on the available food supply in a given waterbody just due to their abundance.
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Wrong answer there are 100's of 2-3lbers for every 10lber granted the 10lber lays millions of eggs compared to only hundreds of thousands for the 2-3lbers but there are way more of them hence the 2-3lbers are more productive based on shear population numbers. Gotta play the odds here.
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10-15-2016, 08:57 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Grande Prairie AB
Posts: 294
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So one thing we can all agree on, is that with the current size retention in this province we are harvesting the prime spawners. I've been saying for over a decade that we need a slot system of some sort in this province. It's time for SRD to get their head out of their ***** and admit that the current system is not working. Too many game fish and not enough bait results in stunted growth. Just a matter of time till the walleye start to eat their own.
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10-15-2016, 09:03 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Calgary
Posts: 1,721
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fish99
take crawling valley res the biologist at the time said that a walleye regeneration time was 7 years and that they needed 3 generations before opening it up for retention . it has now been over 21 years and still not open to retention. these lakes were stocked for catch and release fishing and nothing else not meant as table fair ever. LLB was stocked exclusively for substantiation
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X2 ! McGregor and Crawling should have been opened long ago ! Now the fish are stunted in both lakes. They outright lied about opening these lakes in the future and will continue to do so with all the lakes they stock with walleye.
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10-16-2016, 01:39 PM
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Join Date: May 2007
Location: St. Albert, AB
Posts: 1,178
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Quote:
Originally Posted by North66
I was talking to some people at one of the LLB launches who were monitoring the lake a few weeks ago and asked them why we can't keep any fish yet. They said they are waiting for more proof that the big stocked walleye are reproducing and replacing themselves. Until then it's unlikely that LLB will open up.
They also mentioned last year because of heat and low water a lot of the big females weren't reproducing at all but were in some kind of survival mode.
I'm okay to let them be for now if it means good future fishing. In fact it's good fishing right now, except that folks wanna eat
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Interesting walleye spawn at around 42F which is usually late april early May long before the heat and low water impacted
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10-16-2016, 05:10 PM
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Banned
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Join Date: Apr 2016
Posts: 201
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Habfan
X2 ! McGregor and Crawling should have been opened long ago ! Now the fish are stunted in both lakes. They outright lied about opening these lakes in the future and will continue to do so with all the lakes they stock with walleye.
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And now it's to late to open these lakes for even a year with all the fishing pressure they receive, we will crash the populations... Pick your poison... Eat a few dozen walleye over the next couple years or continue to be able to catch fish,
More tags at more lakes I say.
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10-18-2016, 08:32 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 562
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Just a thought and thinking out loud if I may, Rolling blackout periods could be an acceptable option for most lakes. Just because they would be opened to retention doesn't mean it would necessarily have to be every single year, all the time, forever! (Unlike the current closures!) Let's say in a 10 year span all those lakes could be open for only 5 years total or something but on a rotational basis if necessary to sustain healthy populations. This way a Select and different group of lakes could be open every year offering fisherman retention possibilities while the rest of the lakes take their turn as catch and release only fisheries to give them a rest and some time to recover again for a couple years before opening again. Spreads the fishing pressure out too. Maybe some restocking occurs in the downtime. Some lakes could be open more, others less, maybe only 2 or 3 years out of 10 depending on the situation, others might be Walleye factories and could be open every year. I don't think as fisherman we want collapsed fisheries. We want healthy, dynamic, world class fisheries and the ability to retain a modest limit once in a while for a fresh fish fry if you like that sort of thing without having to drive to Saskatchewan or fly to Victoria to get it. What we have right now are permanent closures for lakes labelled collapsed for Walleye, catch and release only or on the tag system, pay to take, and you can catch 100 fish a day with 1 or 2 people or kids on the boat! Baitfish and forage become scarce in overpopulated waters. Pike suffer. Perch suffer. Burbut, everything competing for a smaller pie of available forage. Problems have begun and here we go boys! Some retention is healthy for most all fisheries, with a good smart plan they can make it better and so can we as fisherman.
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10-19-2016, 11:35 AM
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Join Date: May 2011
Posts: 1,939
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PerchBuster
Just a thought and thinking out loud if I may, Rolling blackout periods could be an acceptable option for most lakes. Just because they would be opened to retention doesn't mean it would necessarily have to be every single year, all the time, forever! (Unlike the current closures!) Let's say in a 10 year span all those lakes could be open for only 5 years total or something but on a rotational basis if necessary to sustain healthy populations. This way a Select and different group of lakes could be open every year offering fisherman retention possibilities while the rest of the lakes take their turn as catch and release only fisheries to give them a rest and some time to recover again for a couple years before opening again. Spreads the fishing pressure out too. Maybe some restocking occurs in the downtime. Some lakes could be open more, others less, maybe only 2 or 3 years out of 10 depending on the situation, others might be Walleye factories and could be open every year. I don't think as fisherman we want collapsed fisheries. We want healthy, dynamic, world class fisheries and the ability to retain a modest limit once in a while for a fresh fish fry if you like that sort of thing without having to drive to Saskatchewan or fly to Victoria to get it. What we have right now are permanent closures for lakes labelled collapsed for Walleye, catch and release only or on the tag system, pay to take, and you can catch 100 fish a day with 1 or 2 people or kids on the boat! Baitfish and forage become scarce in overpopulated waters. Pike suffer. Perch suffer. Burbut, everything competing for a smaller pie of available forage. Problems have begun and here we go boys! Some retention is healthy for most all fisheries, with a good smart plan they can make it better and so can we as fisherman.
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This might work but there is always push back from local towns, hotels, stores, gas stations etc.
I think there would likely be less push back if they just closed certain area's on lakes creating refuges where fish can go and not be harassed. We have a couple of examples were this may have worked already. ie Pigeon, Calling, and Pinehurst come to mind.
I believe with closed areas, restrictive seasons, slots, and proper enforcement it could work.
But this would require enforcement and that costs money. The cheapest management tool is complete closure's so I am not feeling to hopeful that things will change any time soon.
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10-19-2016, 11:46 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 138
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Double post
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10-19-2016, 11:48 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 138
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cube
This might work but there is always push back from local towns, hotels, stores, gas stations etc.
I think there would likely be less push back if they just closed certain area's on lakes creating refuges where fish can go and not be harassed. We have a couple of examples were this may have worked already. ie Pigeon, Calling, and Pinehurst come to mind.
I believe with closed areas, restrictive seasons, slots, and proper enforcement it could work.
But this would require enforcement and that costs money. The cheapest management tool is complete closure's so I am not feeling to hopeful that things will change any time soon.
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Not to put your idea down Cube but here is some food for thought. The biologists don't think closures on an area of a lake does anything. I talked to the biologists at Calling after they removed it and they said they would never recommend it. It was just an idea from a politician (Mike Cardinal) and they had no say when it was implemented. They proved it doesn't work (at that lake at least)
I think the problem is they have a some lakes open to keeping while others (for example LLB) are not. Since there are only a few open to keeping they get hammered. They wait until the open lakes collapse and then the open the closed lakes (which usually could have been open to keeping for a few years by this time). It's like a vicious cycle.
It would be best if with proper limits and slot sizes, every lake would be open. This would spread the pressure of fishermen and better allow the lake to sustain. The only thing is getting all lakes to this state. You would have to close every lake to keeping until all were healthy. Maybe you could have a tag system on a few highly populated lakes. So close for maybe 7 years, maybe 10? It would suck but in the long run it would be beneficial to everyone for a long time to come. The problem is everyone thinks of the NOW NOW NOW. If it's not instant, nobody wants it.
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