On the House side, the provision calls for capping the number of lakes with special pike regulations at 60 — an arbitrary number that seems to be pulled out of thin air — while the Senate version calls for a maximum of 90 lakes with special regulations.
I’ve never been a fan of legislative meddling in hunting and fishing regulations that are based on sound biology.
So, I find it particularly disturbing that provisions working their way through the Minnesota Legislature seek to reduce the number of lakes with special northern pike regulations.
Anyone who’s ever experienced the thrill of watching a giant northern pike slash a lure beside the boat or cruise up to a decoy in a spearing hole should feel the same way.
On the House side, the provision calls for capping the number of lakes with special pike regulations at 60 — an arbitrary number that seems to be pulled out of thin air — while the Senate version calls for a maximum of 90 lakes with special regulations.
The Department of Natural Resources currently manages 114 lakes with special northern pike regulations, length-based restrictions designed to increase the number of “quality-size” northern pike and reduce the number of hammer handles.
Similar attempts at legislative meddling surfaced during last year’s legislative session, as well, and I reported on the issue in March 2010. In a nutshell, darkhouse spearing enthusiasts oppose the restrictions because it’s difficult to determine the length of a pike in the water.
“From our point of view, it’s just overregulation for the sake of overregulation with no scientific basis for doing so,” Tim Spreck, president of the Minnesota Darkhouse and Angling Association, told me last March. “The issue we have with slots is there are a very small number of lakes that can produce trophy-size pike.”
He’s right of course, and considering that Minnesota has 3,351 lakes with northern pike, implementing special regulations on 114 lakes is a very small number.
It means darkhouse spearing enthusiasts have more than 3,200 lakes with no restrictions.
Efforts to improve Minnesota’s pike fishing opportunities began in the early 1990s, when the DNR started meeting with anglers to discuss options for reversing a decline that had been documented as far back as World War II.
By the ’80s, Minnesota was becoming known as the state of “potato chips and quarter pounders”; pike were the most obvious example.
About 10 years ago, the DNR conducted a statewide review of bag limits and other regulations to gauge the interest in improving the average size of Minnesota’s pike. According to Dirk Peterson, DNR fisheries chief, the agency proposed a 24- to 36-inch protected slot on most lakes and a 30- to 40-inch slot on a handful of lakes with the best potential for trophy fish.
Public sentiment favored implementing the regulations on a lake-by-lake basis rather than statewide, Peterson said, and in 2006, the DNR released a long-range pike and muskie plan that called for a self-imposed cap of 125 lakes with length-based restrictions.
“We got a very strong positive response,” Peterson said.
The fisheries chief said all of the 114 lakes that now have special pike regulations went through the same rigorous public review process. He said the DNR has dropped the regulations on a dozen lakes where they weren’t working, but results from population assessments and peer-reviewed reports — the standard for documenting good science — have shown length-based restrictions are providing opportunities for anglers to catch more large pike on the other lakes.
“Our bottom line is that these regulations are working,” Peterson said.
Yet a handful of lawmakers have chosen to ignore the science and accuse the DNR of trying to kill the sport of spearing, something Peterson says definitely is not the case.
If they get their way, more than 20 years of efforts to improve northern pike populations will fall by the wayside, at least on the 54 lakes — or 24, under the Senate bill — where the DNR would be forced to drop the regulations.
Peterson says he doesn’t know how the DNR would decide which lakes to drop.
“Our response is there isn’t a fair or reasonable way,” Peterson said. “There was very much a public process, and to eliminate a lake or to remove a regulation from a lake arbitrarily is not respecting the public process we went through and the public’s desire to see improved northern pike fishing.”
I’m not anti-spearing, but it doesn’t seem fair to me that a handful of lawmakers are willing to cater to the wishes of a few at the expense of the majority.
The proposals have cleared committees in both the House and Senate, but lawmakers aren’t expected to take up the bills again until after Easter. If this is something you care about, contact your legislators and ask them to vote against the proposal.
And if you live on a lake where the regulations will have to be arbitrarily removed to comply with the law — should it pass — you’ll know who to thank the next time you catch a hammer handle pike.
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