Chippewa bands proposed season-long catch-and-release for Mille Lacs

Last February, resort owner John Odle suggested at a public meeting of local business owners that Lake Mille Lacs walleye season be catch-and-release only from the very start.

"I put my head on the chopping block," said Odle, who owns Rocky Reef Resort in Onamia. But his suggestion got little support from the 50 or so members of the Mille Lacs Input Group. "I got shut down," he said.

But Odle's suggestion doesn't appear so outrageous now. The Department of Natural Resources closed the famed lake to all walleye fishing earlier this month after anglers exceeded the walleye harvest quota.

"We wouldn't be in a shutdown right now, we'd be catch-and-release fishing," Odle said. "There was only a 36 percent chance we would have gone over our quota if we had started with catch-and-release."

And his customers — walleye anglers — still would be coming to his resort, he said. Instead, "I'm empty. People canceled their reservations for August and September."

What Odle and other business owners didn't know was that a month before their meeting, the eight Chippewa bands that comanage the lake's fishery also suggested to the DNR that the state go with catch-and-release-only walleye fishing in 2015, and the bands would conduct only a ceremonial walleye harvest.

The bands' suggestion came in January to the 1837 Treaty Fisheries Technical Committee, which includes tribal and state biologists, according to documents obtained by Minnesota Public Radio. The committee met a few days later and decided not to go with the recommendation, and instead agreed to the walleye harvest level of 40,000 pounds, of which the state got 28,600 pounds.

The technical committee meetings are closed to the public, a sore point for some such as Odle, who want more transparency.

"It wasn't a political decision at all," said Don Pereira, DNR fisheries chief. "We discussed it as biologists. We thought there was a little room for some harvest that wouldn't jeopardize the fish population."

Sue Erickson, spokeswoman for the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission, which represents the eight Chippewa bands that can net fish at Mille Lacs, said she wasn't sure which band biologists suggested the catch-and-release and ceremonial fishing ideas.

"The committee was set up from the court litigation, and the subject of their discussions aren't available to the public," she said. "But it was a mutual decision to go forward with the 40,000-pound quota."

The DNR opened the walleye season on Mille Lacs in May with a 19- to 21-inch harvest slot, with one fish over 28 inches, and imposed a season-long night fishing ban. Officials said there was a 21 percent chance the harvest quota would be exceeded.

But the quota was exceeded and the DNR closed walleye fishing Aug. 3.

While Gov. Mark Dayton and legislators discuss options — legislators will meet again at the Capitol on Thursday — a major question is what will the walleye regulations be when the new fishing season begins Dec. 1?

According to the documents obtained by MPR, the technical committee set conditions for the 2016 fishing season based on the results of the DNR's annual fall walleye gill net survey.

"We won't have the results until early October," Pereira said. "We have a special meeting with the bands then to discuss all of this and determine what we can have for the coming year."

Doug Smith • doug.smith@startribune.com