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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Fond du Lac finds slow going on Vermilion

Band members experience limited success netting and spearing walleye this year

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 4/26/17

LAKE VERMILION— Fond du Lac band members had tallied a total of 288.6 pounds of walleye during five nights of netting and spearing here, and that may be their season tally depending on the weather. …

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Fond du Lac finds slow going on Vermilion

Band members experience limited success netting and spearing walleye this year

Posted

LAKE VERMILION— Fond du Lac band members had tallied a total of 288.6 pounds of walleye during five nights of netting and spearing here, and that may be their season tally depending on the weather. “I would be shocked if we returned,” said Brian Borkholder, head fisheries biologist for the Fond du Lac band earlier this week.

It was the second year in a row that members of the Fond du Lac band exercised rights they obtained under the 1854 Treaty, which allows Indian tribes to take up to half of the safe harvest from lakes in the region.

The bands have never come close to that level of harvest, and this year’s take on Lake Vermilion, if the number reported this week is the final tally, would barely register against the safe walleye harvest level of 65,000 pounds a year set by the Department of Natural Resources. DNR officials have been in discussion with Fond du Lac about their long-term plans, which currently include an annual harvest on Vermilion of 2,500 pounds. “Their intent is to alternate each year between the east and west basins,” said DNR regional fisheries manager Joe Mix.

Last year, the Fond du Lac band members speared and netted on the west end of Lake Vermilion, taking 1,757 pounds during several nights of fishing.

The band’s 2015 decision to begin an annual walleye harvest on Vermilion has not been without controversy. Bois Forte tribal officials initially prevailed upon the Fond du Lac to cancel their plans to harvest walleye in 2015, which coincided with the Governor’s Fishing Opener, that was held on Vermilion that year. But the Fond du Lac proceeded with the harvest last year and this year’s harvest took place on the lake’s east end.

Spearing activity late last week caught the attention of some Lake Vermilion residents. Jim Charles, a retired game warden who lives near McKinley Park, said he was alarmed when he saw a bright light suddenly appear outside his bedroom. When he went to investigate, he found two men in a boat working the shallows in front of his house with bright lights. He reported the activity to the DNR, which is when he first learned of the ongoing harvest.

The Fond du Lac harvest is intensively managed, notes Borkholder, with both law enforcement and a team of biologists on hand whenever netting or spearing is planned. All of the band members need to use a single designated access point and every fish brought in is weighed and measured.

In addition to the 288 pounds of walleye, Borkholder said Fond du Lac members had also taken 186 pounds of tulibee as of earlier this week.