# how many walleyes will they kill now!!!!! missing nets



## crewhunting (Mar 29, 2007)

This just boils my blood. IF i happen to do this i would get gettting fined up the @$$. I cant belive other band can come and and take fish. How many big fish are just going to rot in these nets.

Chippewa band members have recovered eight missing gillnets on Lake Mille Lacs and are searching for seven others.

The gillnets were lost early last week after a wind shift pushed ice into the lake's western shore at Garrison. Officials with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission said Monday the eight recovered nets contained 29 walleyes weighing 67 pounds, which were recovered and filleted because they still were edible.

Commission officials revised the number of lost nets from 12 to 15, saying 12 were lost early Wednesday south of Garrison and three were lost north of Garrison the previous day. Chippewa game wardens are looking for the remaining seven nets.

The recovered nets belonged to a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, based in northeast Wisconsin. In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an 1837 treaty gave eight Chippewa bands - six in Wisconsin and two in Minnesota - off-reservation hunting and fishing rights in east-central Minnesota. Those treaty rights included the controversial right to spear and net walleyes on Lake Mille Lacs, Minnesota's most popular walleye lake.

Some anglers have criticized the bands for losing the nets, saying band officials should have known that shifting winds posed a danger to the nets in Garrison Bay. Last Tuesday evening, band members set 233 nets in the bay but had to pull them quickly the next morning when ice was pushed into the bay.

Resources officials said tribal nets occasionally are lost on the lake but usually are recovered quickly. They said they are concerned that nets lost for long periods could become "ghost nets,'' which continually catch and kill fish until being recovered. 
Commission spokesman Charlie Rasmussen said the recovered nets "were balled up and only had a couple of fish in them." Tribal authorities are subtracting 400 pounds from the bands' allocated quota of 122,500 pounds of walleyes and would recalculate the total if all the nets were recovered.

Tribal authorities are investigating the lost nets, and no citations have been issued, Rasmussen said.

As of Monday, DNR officials said Lake Mille Lacs was mostly ice-free.

Chris Niskanen can be reached at 651-228-5524


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## nodakoutdoors.com (Feb 27, 2002)

See this thread on the issue.

http://www.nodakoutdoors.com/forums/vie ... hp?t=53197


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