4 Wisconsin anglers cited for 40 extra walleyes

[undeterred]

RED LAKE, Minn. - Four Wisconsin anglers face a total of $3,600 in fines for allegedly keeping 40 walleyes over the limit while fishing on Minnesota's Upper Red Lake. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources conservation officer Brice Vollbrecht says that on Dec. 23, he questioned the anglers and grew suspicious about the number of walleyes they had.

The possession limit for Upper Red Lake walleyes is four. Anglers are required to throw back walleyes between 17 and 26 inches. One trophy more than 26 inches is allowed.

Vollbrecht tells the St. Paul Pioneer Press he found 44 filleted and wrapped walleyes in the anglers' rented cabin, in addition to 12 walleyes in their fish houses. Some fish were outside the legal length limit.

Vollbrecht says the anglers admitted they knew the law, but took more fish because they drove such a long distance from Wisconsin to northwestern Minnesota.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mn-illegalwalleyefis,0,4572862.story

40 over the limit is just plain greedy.

[Buzz Clik]

1. Forty over sounds bad; ten times over the limit is hideous.

[LiberalAndProud]

2. $3,600 in fines ... do they get to keep the walleye?

I wonder if they'll get to eat their $90 fish.

[undeterred]

14. A fisherman I know said they probably will not be allowed to keep the fish.

I hope they can distribute it through a food pantry.

[MineralMan]

16. Nope. They are confiscated. The idiots are lucky the DNR

didn't confiscate their boat, too. They can.

[undeterred]

17. I think this was ice fishing, so no boat.

[MineralMan]

19. True. I had forgotten about all that ice and snow outside of

my front door. Uff da!

[undeterred]

21. Some people are starting to ice fish

here in southern wisconsin, but the lakes aren't completely frozen over yet... so its a little chancey to take anything that weighs too much out there.

[MineralMan]

22. Yah. After the little warm spell at Christmas, the TV news

had a nice image of a nice, new Toyota Tundra with its entire hood under the water on one of our Metro Area lakes. Dumbass!

[undeterred]

24. Happens every year.

3 ATVs went into Lake Kegonsa on the same day this weekend.

[MineralMan]

26. I can almost hear the calls to their insurance companies.

As they say here in Minnesnowta: Uff da!

[fasttense]

3. I once got caught with 3 over the limit in trout.

They were still alive, and I had to put them back.

But 40 over? That's 10 a person over. I guess greed is alive and well.

[undeterred]

4. The lake was restocked recently...

Upper Red Lake walleye fishing was closed in the late 1990s, but the DNR reopened the walleye season in 2006 after a successful stocking program.

http://www.twincities.com/ci_14087300

[Bigmack]

5. I'll bet they were Repubs. nt

[earth mom]

6. Those assholes give all fishermen a bad name.

:thumbsdown:

[BeFree]

7. yeah, sure

the little guys get caught going over the limit and get busted. That's good.

But when the big guys go over the limit and spread pollution over the earth killing millions of fish, they get $200 bucks and a free get out of jail card.

[era veteran]

10. They have ruined our lakes and streams

Even Lake Cumberland and Green River Lake which are fed by a never industrialized area of creeks and rivers are so full of mercury you don't want to eat the fish. King Koal decides what they want to do in Kentucky not the people. Fuck coal and especially fuck " Friends of Coal" a astroturf group of coal supporters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNAuDEUcHvU

[Jamastiene]

8. Were they S. v. vitreus or S. v. glaucus?

In other words were the fish the yellow or blue walleye? The blue one is a critically endangered species.

[Pharlo]

11. Is there any way to tell once they've been filleted? n/t

[jmowreader]

12. DNA, probably

If they didn't run DNA, I wonder how they knew they were walleyes.

[Jamastiene]

13. Maybe, but only if the heads are still on them on in their possession.

The blue walleye have larger eyes.

[LiberalFighter]

9. I hope they are prohibited from fishing in Minnesota for a number of years.

It would be nice if they applied the same prohibition in Wisconsin to the fishermen.

[MineralMan]

18. Out of state anglers are commonly the culprits in over-limit

fishing. While they bring some tourist dollars into the state, they don't give a damn about anything but filling their coolers.

They figure that they came a long way to fish, so they should be allowed to keep more fish than the limit. Typical tourist crap.

I don't fish the Northern MN lakes. I fish in the lakes and rivers around the metro area. We get very few of the out-of-state anglers, who seem to think fishing is better the further North you go. They're wrong, but we don't tell them that.

Our local, smaller lakes, near Minneapolis and Saint Paul, are excellent fisheries, and they are fished primarily by locals who care very much about maintaining the fisheries. Most of us have favorite lakes, and know each other after fishing them often.

For the most part, they're a bunch of great guys, with some notable exceptions.

There's some Minnesota fishing stuff on my blog:

www.osomin.com/fishing.htm

[LiberalAndProud]

20. Is it an annual limit?

If you live in MN and catch four walleye, take 'em home and fry 'em up and eat 'em, how would the DNR know that you had already digested your limit?

[MineralMan]

23. It's a possession limit. Once you gobble 'em up, you can

catch more. A lot of anglers ignore the possession limit and treat the limit as a daily limit. They're wrong, but you just about never get caught, unless you do something like have an over-limit on the lake. Then, the DNR often wants to look in your freezer at home. And the law says they can do that without any warrant if you're caught with an over-limit. It happens.

[undeterred]

25. That makes it fair to the local people.

Fish nearby and you can eat walleye every day if you want.

[MineralMan]

15. Scumbag Cretins!

The law doesn't apply to them, I guess. We all wish we could catch more walleyes and keep them, but that would ruin the fishery pretty darned quickly. For myself, I release all walleyes I catch, even though I enjoy eating walleye. In the metro lakes where I fish, they're already scarce enough that most anglers practice catch and release.

I've called the DNR's TIP line several times to report poaching and over limit anglers. Most of the anglers I know do the same. Unless we help enforce the limit laws, there aren't enough Conservation Officers to do the job.