North Dakota Fishing - North Dakota Hunting

name: Allen
city: Grand Forks
Date: Wednesday April 23, 2003
Time: 04:59:26 PM

Dead Horse whipping time.

My wife just handed me our April-May issue of North Dakota Outdoors magazine. If you are unfamiliar with it, it is published by NDGF and covers a wide variety of topics and everybody with an interest in hunting or fishing in North Dakota should be a regular reader. Cover price is $2.00 and considerably less if you get a long-term subscription (you should be able to subscribe on line at http://www.state.nd.us/gnf/ndoutdoors/ndoutdoorsmag.html.)

Anyways, one of the feature articles this month is a well thought out and written piece called "Walleye Size Limits, A Look at the Options and Why They Aren't Currently Needed on North Dakota's Two Largest Fisheries by Randy Hiltner and Jeff Hendrickson". All I can say is excellent article gentlemen, well written and well supported by scientific data (and no, I do not work for NDGF, nor have I met the authors).

As I said before: catch and keep what you want up to the legal limit, C&R if you prefer, just don't let any fish go to waste. And now I add, don't let the death of a fish you would have released depress you so much. Life is too short.

name: Cheryl
city: Morden MB
: cheryled@mb.sympatico.ca
Date: 04/23/2003
Time: 10:34:49 AM

Would like to know if the ice is off at Devils Lake. Have

some freinds that are thinking of going there this weekend

would appreciate any report.

Thanks

name: Allen
city: Grand Forks
Area: Comment
Date: Wednesday April 23, 2003
Time: 09:58:22 AM

Galen, Sounds like a business opportunity for someone if you can't buy bait in town down there.

name: galen
city: wahpeton
Area: Wahpeton
: g_blazer28@hotmail.com
Date: Tuesday April 22, 2003
Time: 12:31:05 PM

the last 2 weekends have been good a few slot limit walleys but mostly carp,suckers shiners and goldeyes off the dock at kidder park with worms since you cant import live bait and there are no bait shops in wahpeton that i know of .

name: galen
city: wahpeton
: g_blazer28@hotmail.com
Date: Tuesday April 22, 2003
Time: 12:26:58 PM

new fishing regs this year say that you cannot import bait to north dakota i live in wahpeton and we have no baitshops except in breckenridge which is in minn. what can i do

name: Brad Kvanbek
city: Medina
Area: Comment
: bkvanbek@mchsi.com
Date: Monday April 21, 2003
Time: 10:27:44 PM

My father and I are coming to the East Grand Forks area to fish Channel cats. We want to camp on the river, not bringing a boat, somewhere where fishing is good. Any suggestions?

name: Allen
city: Grand Forks
Date: Monday April 21, 2003
Time: 11:18:20 AM

Brad,

I'm with you on the "JUST BECAUSE THEY SAY WE CAN DOESN'T MEAN WE HAVE TO" philosophy. My wife and I catch plenty of walleye and on most days we release many more than we keep. I personally like to say: Catch and keep what you want up to the legal limit just so long as you don't let any kept fish go to waste.

One thing I am personally afraid of is the degree of micro management we sportsmen would really be willing to put up with from an agency that is only funded well enough for macro management. This would only encourage blanket regulations that should not apply to every body of water. The Red River is a pretty good example of micro management and it is a result of cooperative work with MN-DNR where we have let MN take the lead role. Will the spring conservation season have an effect on the walleye population in the Red River? Perhaps, but the renovation of the low-head dams is going to have a MUCH larger effect on reproductive success.

I hear a lot of people saying that they throw back everything over 18 inches. I personally have had several days in the last couple of years where fish under 18 inches were more difficult to catch than a pile of 20-24 inch fish (Sakakawea, not DL). What I would really hate to see is me having a great day of fishing and then not being able to take anything home for a meal. I truly don't believe anyone who knows me would say that I need to catch and keep a stringer of 5-8 lb fish to have a great day fishing, but I do know if I went fishing and only caught three 4-6 lb fish and I wasn't allowed to keep any of them for a meal would be considered something other than successful. Me? I have no problems eating a walleye greater than 18 inches, tastes just like a 14 inch walleye with a thicker filet.

My whole philosophy is: Let the professionals make the decisions based upon sound scientific evidence.

Have the professionals been wrong before? Sure, but I think they will tend to get it right more than the average Joe. Having biologists make these decisions for us is every bit the same "common sense" as taking your car to an auto shop for repairs, your kids to hospitals, and your dogs to veterinarians.

name: Brad Durick
city: Grand Forks
Date: Sunday April 20, 2003
Time: 11:32:53 PM

I have thought about this a little more and I think we could argue about this for the whole fishing season if we want to.

The experts say we can keep the big fish and won't hurt the resource. JUST BECAUSE THEY SAY WE CAN DOESN'T MEAN WE HAVE TO. I am not going to change my mind on this issue but just in case I am right, please throw back the big fish unless you are going to keep a once in a lifetime trophy.

name: Brad Durick
city: Grand Forks
Date: Sunday April 20, 2003
Time: 11:13:42 PM

First in the responses. Allen, my day is coming for the big walleye. When the day comes I am not sure that I will mount the fish anyway. I can think of alot of fish and animals that I would rather have on my wall than a walleye. Everyone seems to have one and I think they have gotten overated.

You may be right in that the really big fish eggs are less than perfect but now what about the 3-6 pounders that are the real breeding stock. They are in the same situation. Even in those fish I can't remember the last time I kept a walleye that was over 18 inches.

My feelings are even a slot protecting the spawning fish could only help the populations. Even if the slot was only enforced from April 1 to May 15. Experts say that we can catch and keep what we want and not hurt Devils Lake but wouldn't it be cool if most big fish went back and you could catch a 3-10 pounder on every trip.

name: Allen
city: Grand Forks
Date: Sunday April 20, 2003
Time: 05:01:55 PM

Fishchaser, Now you're making feel bad. I never meant to hurt your feelings on FBO, nor do I remember anyone wanting to see "unlimited fishing regulations".

My position put forth on FBO, is still unchanged. We (the common sporstmen) can not let a few believers in unfounded, unsubstantiated "common sense" management philosophies dictate management of our wildlife any more than we can allow the guides and outfitters to dictate hunting seasons. Just because we live in a democracy, does not mean a democratically chosen path is always the best just because we choose to place political pressure on the biologists. If I sit idle, then I am every bit to blame for unnecessary regulatory restraints as you would be. It was "common sense" fishery management that brought the carp over from Europe, and in my book, I don't ever want to see "common sense" fisheries management again.

We agree, keeping our resources are better than ever being able to say "I told you so". But, since all we have done over the last 200 years is make the restrictions tighter, why should we think continuation of our historically chosen path of tightening size/quantity restrictions will by itself turn around the effects associated with loss/degradtaion of habitat?

Me thinks that the only people out there who can say "I told you so" are the ones who have been telling us to better the habitat over the last 30 years. Increased restrictions are a short-term fix to a long-term problem that can and do provide relief to a fish population when it is severely stressed and is no longer reproducing very well . Please refer to many of Minnesota's lakes of when this does work. Red Lake is currently rebounding after several years of unregulated commercial fishing, Mille Lacs and similar to unbelievable sport harvests and habitat degradation (too many boats and cabins hurt the ecosystem when your septic systems drain into the lake). Conversely, Devils Lake is a great example of where a "bettering" of the habitat has done more than anything imagined in the most restrictive of Minnesota's lakes. Too bad humans can't take credit, or learn from this example where Mother Nature has taken over to a point where artificial stocking is no longer required (and DL is arguably the most pressured of our big bodies of water).

I've got a really bad idea, why don't we fire everyone at NDGF and just put all management decisions up for referendums? If we don't want people dedicated to studying what makes a quality fishery, taking this knowledge and using it to make fisheries management decisions, then perhaps we should get rid of them and lower our license fees.

I'm all for C&R, but it's not the answer to everything. Fishing is supposed to be fun, don't let people who you don't even know ruin your day just because they may have killed a fish you wouldn't.

name: Allen
city: Grand Forks
Date: Sunday April 20, 2003
Time: 04:59:23 PM

Brad, sorry you haven't caught an 8 lb walleye yet, hang in there though because they do exist. Think of it this way, if every other fish you caught was an 8 lb walleye then your "once-in-a-lifetime" walleye scale would just have to slide up to 9 lbs, then 11 lbs etc. I think the biggest I have ever caught was between 10 and 11. Never even got it or any of the 8 pounders mounted (been a couple years since I got an 8 though, maybe 'cause I don't live on Sak any more). I'm looking for a 13+ before I cough up the cost of mounting a fish. And yes, biologists have shown that eggs from the bigger walleyes are less viable than those from the mid-size fish. Must be the equivalent of menopause for fish???. I believe this is why NDGF dump all their older and bigger trout into the Turtle River each year (someone can correct me if I'm wrong though).

name: fishchaser
city: Mayville
Date: Sunday April 20, 2003
Time: 11:24:41 AM

Brad: To guys like you and I, some of this stuff is common sense. I don't care what the "experts" think. You simply cannot take an unlimited number of big spawning females out of a system year after year without it having some impact on the fishery. I also agree with you on the point that keeping the big ones for the frying pan during the pre-spawn when they are most vulnerable, reduces the numbers of big fish in the system to be caught by someone who would consider the fish a trophy. I am not saying that you can't catch a trophy fish for the wall during the spawn. I don't care when you catch it, a trophy is a trophy. I hate seeing all the "meat fishermen" catching the big ones in the spring when they are vulnerable and taking them home to the frying pan, when those same fish would be considered trophies for someone else. The more big fish that end up in the frying pan, the fewer trophies there are in the lake. And it just so happens that the big fish are easier to catch in the spring, and that is when most of the "meat fishermen" are out in full force. Like I said, this whole thing sounds pretty much like common sense to you and I.

I am not sure if you visit the Fishing Buddy website (I know its a dirty word here - Sorry), but go there and check out the fishing talk forum. Look for a section called Spring Fishing Regulations. I said the exact same thing there. Look at the tone of where the conversation went. Look at how I was condemned. Look at how others were constantly putting words into my mouth to make it sound like I had some evil agenda in mind. All I tried to do is raise the conservation issue, and look at what it got me. Everyone seems to want unlimited fishing without regualations, but who would be the ones to complain first if all the fish were gone due to lack of conservation?? Yup, you guessed it. It is truely sad, but unfortunately true.

name: Brad Durick
city: Grand Forks
Date: Saturday April 19, 2003
Time: 07:28:24 PM

Fishchaser, thank you for reading my article. It is now about two years old but I still feel that it is as relevant as the day I wrote it. I do have some new things to add however.

First of all I think people are respecting the resource less now than even a couple of years ago. More big fish being taken and more people being critical of us who feel it is important to release the big fish. I have spoken to biologists who say keeping the big fish is ok. Now think about this. I to date have never caught a walleye over eight pounds. For every big walleye that is taken out of the lake is one less for someone else to catch. Also, It is my belief that fish born to a big healthy fish will have better genes that that of a smaller fish. Biology may prove that differently but that is what I believe.

As a last thought let me say I spoke to a man last week at Devils Lake that just couldn't understand why I would waste my time driving from Grand Forks to Devils Lake, catch 25 Pike and go home with no fish. He basically told me that if you're not going to try to keep a limit don't bother. I thought it was just fun to get out of the house for a day. Go figure

name: fishchaser
city: Mayville
Date: Saturday April 19, 2003
Time: 01:29:54 PM

I just read the Fishing Etiquette article for the first time. I was very impressed. I would ask that the author of this article submit it to a few of the local outdoor magazines as well. I think an article such as this needs as much publication as possible. It is great to see someone else who feels the same way on this subject as I do. I posted some similar comments on the FB website, and there were several people who were in a huge hurry to jump all over me and my position. I was called uneducated, uninformed, and basically ran off the site by some of the local "experts" who claim that catching all the big fish you can before the spawn will never hurt the population. It seems that in this day and age, if you are concerned about the conservation of any resurce, you are considered a radical and open to bashing, especially on the FB website. I hope all these "experts" are still around in a few years when they are proven wrong. Better still, I would like to see some common sense conservation laws passed now while the resource is still here. That would be much better than being able to say "I told you so" later when the fishing in ND is almost non-existant.

name: Grandson
city: EGF
Date: Thursday April 17, 2003
Time: 01:29:14 AM

I was wondering if anyone has caught any fish on Darling this spring so far. I am hoping to be there this weekend and catching some fish. If anyone has info. let me know please.

Thanks

name: Gary
city: Fargo
Area: Fargo
Date: Wednesday April 16, 2003
Time: 10:56:29 PM

Christine Dam south of Fargo is producing some nice fish. The last three nights released 3 walleyes over 30" and several other nice fish over 25". When the weekend comes the best fishing will be there from about 6pm-11pm. Good luck!

name: Fishin Freek
city: valley city
Date: Wednesday April 16, 2003
Time: 09:45:02 PM

I agree with dogman, stay away from the spirit water inn. Minnewauken has little to offer in the way of fine dining and bars. Any place in DL is in my opinion a good bet. Trying to stay at one specific spot is useless due to the high demand of lodging when the fish are biting.

name: Brad Durick
city: Grand Forks
Date: Wednesday April 16, 2003
Time: 10:24:53 AM

I just wanted to make a note about the fantasic customer service of Vexilar. I have now had two repairs done (V2 upgrade and transducer cord patched.) where I had to send the unit to them. Both repairs have been done and sent back to me within one week and I have not yet paid more than the shipping to get the unit to them. I thought people would like to know that there is a company out there with great customer service.

name: Btr
city: st.paul
Date: 04/14/2003
Time: 08:26:35 PM

there was good fishing during the weekend.

name: Gatekeeper
city: Gfk
Date: 04/14/2003
Time: 12:29:16 PM

Fished channel A Sunday afternoon. Four of us caught about a dozen pike(weren't quite in the right spot). We caught them with spoons, smelt and a bobber, and jigs and minnows. Beautiful day......very crowded. Can't wait for the rest of the ice to get off!!

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