AHHHHHHHH! It Is Always Great To Come Home!

Vacations are great, recharge and regroup.  Enjoy family, enjoy the 85 degree weather when it is in the 40’s back home.

But Dorothy said it best:

There’s no place like home!

No truer words have been spoken when home is the God’s Country that is the Northern Tier of North Dakota, Devils Lake and the Lake Region.

We apologize for the extended absence of posts, but, we made the decision to really reset and recharge and to step away for a few days while enjoying a family vacation to Orlando.  It was glorious.

My kids were in hog heaven what with all the cousins, aunts and uncles, and Grandma Nana in the sunny and warm environment of Florida.  So many memories and such good family time.

But…….

We’re back, and time to get to work.  Putting our nose to the grindstone now for the Open Water Season with no break until September, hopefully.

Things will be heating up on the Big Devil very shortly.  The big water is relatively ice free and the northern feeder lakes will be warming once we see the sun.  With that warm-up, the post-Spawn pike and walleyes will become really active and the shallow water crank pitching portion of our open water season will be upon us.

Tremendous Feedback

We asked for feedback on the Spring Fishing being open on Devils Lake and in all of North Dakota in general and we had some good responses.  We also reached out to the Game and Fish and asked for their commentary.  They were very gracious in this and Todd Caspers, Northeast Fisheries District, District Fisheries Biologist responded with an explanation that we would like to share:

The good fishing that we get in the springtime on high runoff years can certainly be very good and people do harvest some big fish.  However, this springtime fishing does not seem to be harming the walleye population.  I will give a few examples why.  From 2009 to 2013, most years produced good runoff and the fishing was good.  At the time, anglers expressed concerns about the walleye population.  However, during that time period, 2 out of 4 of the largest walleye hatches that we have ever documented at Devils Lake were produced, and every year except 2013 produced at least a good hatch of walleye.  In fact, 2009 was the year when we saw the largest walleye hatch ever on the lake.  There were no walleye stocked that year either, so all of the young walleye were naturally produced.  In fact, recently there are perhaps too many walleye in the lake.  The reason I say this is that the growth of walleye has decreased since 2008.  This indicates that the number of walleye in the lake is a bit like having too many cows in a pasture, so their growth rates decrease.  We also estimate that the total mortality rate (which includes mortality due to fishing as well as natural causes) of the walleye in Devils Lake is about 40%.  This is actually on the lower end of what is considered to be the normal range, which is 40%-55%.  However, conditions can always change, which is why we will continue to monitor the walleye population and make any regulation changes that are needed to safeguard the walleye population in Devils Lake.  In regards to the higher numbers of smaller walleye in the lake than in the past, there has been a trend over time of more small fish in the lake, but this is due to the good reproduction that we have seen as water levels have increased.

We recently wrote an article in the North Dakota Outdoors magazine that covers these topics in more detail.  The link to the article is:  https://gf.nd.gov/magazine/2017/feb/big-water-walleyes

There were also a couple of other articles that address walleye in Devils Lake in the May 2015 North Dakota Outdoors magazine https://gf.nd.gov/sites/default/files/2016-05/2015-5.pdf

And the February 2015 North Dakota Outdoors magazine  https://gf.nd.gov/sites/default/files/2016-05/2015-2.pdf

In regards to your question about the current walleye population in Devils Lake, this is what our test netting results from last summer showed…….

The walleye population in Devils Lake continues to do well.  Reproduction in recent years has generally been good and there are many fish that are less than 18 inches long.  The numbers of walleye that are 15 to 20 inches long is above the long-term average.  The abundance of walleye from 10 to 15 inches long is a bit above average as well.  The number of walleye over 20 inches long is lower than that of the smaller fish, but these larger fish are right around their long-term average, so there are larger walleyes present.  The numbers of larger walleye would likely be better, but weak hatches produced from 2003-2005 are likely contributing to their lower abundances somewhat.

We also did some research that we will delve into even deeper tomorrow and possibly Friday, but our data comes from The Devils Lake Chamber fishing tournament.  A number of people cited fishing tournament weights as a measurable piece of data.

Since the Chamber tourney is held approximately the same time every year and the field contains some of the best fishermen that fish Devils Lake, we decided that this is a very consistent and tangible measuring device.

2016 was an anomaly.  Only 1 day was used due to weather, so if we throw that our and use 2011-2015 (5 years), the average winning weight over that 5 year span was 42.03 pounds.

Winning Weights were:

2011- 33.01

2012- 40.00

2013- 48.52

2014- 45.00

2015- 47.99

(For a couple of the totals we had to round due to insufficient data available, we will have a full data bank hopefully by tomorrow)

Going with those totals the +/- for each year above and below the 5 year average is:

2011= -9.02

2012= -2.03

2013= +6.49

2014= +2.97

2015= +5.96

At first glance this shows that fishing is getting better, not worse.

But if we dig deeper, and take the total weights of the top 5 finishers…

(to be continued)

Good Luck Out There!

Hold On To Your Rod…

And…

CATCH MORE FISH!!