Upper Red Lake Area Association

Big Bog State Park Project
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Interesting Facts Around Upper Red Lake

What's New - The Right Of The People To Be Secure In Their Ice Shacks...
State Appeals Court Puts Crimp In Ice-Fishing Enforcement
Historical Ice Out Dates
Blast From The Past

The Right Of The People To Be Secure In Their Ice Shacks....
Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) (2/22)
The warm winter brought the ice fishing season to an end a little early this year, and anglers spent the week dragging the last of their ice shacks off of lakes around the state. The shacks may disappear for another year, but a controversy surrounding them will not. 

State Appeals Court Puts Crimps In Ice Fishing Enforcement
Star Tribune Published 05-Jan-2002
Staff and wire reports 

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) conservation officers will have to get permission or obtain search warrants before entering ice-fishing houses to check for fishing violations, following two recent state Appeals Court decisions.

The restriction will greatly hamper enforcement of the state's fishing laws, DNR officials said, because most winter fishing occurs in either permanent or portable ice-fishing houses.

Until now, conservation officers could enter those houses unannounced.

"We're concerned about the potential impact on the resource," said Chuck Schwartz of the DNR's enforcement division. Unscrupulous anglers could use illegal methods and keep more fish than state regulations allow, he said.

"It's going to be a significant issue for us," said Bill Bernhjelm, director of the DNR's enforcement division. "We've lost a big tool for enforcement. But we're going to live with it."

The DNR has notified its nearly 150 conservation officers that they must comply with the court ruling.

Officials also have suggested some new tactics that might help officers do their jobs -- making sure ice anglers comply with state fishing laws -- without the freedom of walking into fishing shacks unannounced. 

Most anglers checked by officers inside fishing shacks are legal. But conservation officers regularly make arrests or issue citations for possession of marijuana, consumption of alcohol by minors, over-limits of fish, anglers with more than their allotted two lines in the water, and stolen goods. The issue arose because of two separate cases in Rice County. The first involved a man who was arrested for possession of crack cocaine by a conservation officer who entered the ice shack without first getting permission.

In January 2000, conservation officer Thomas Hemker entered a fishing shanty on Cannon Lake and surprised two men smoking crack. They tried to throw the drugs down a hole in the ice, but Hemker reached in and grabbed the evidence before it sank.

A district judge dismissed the case. He ruled, and the Appeals Court agreed on Oct. 2, that occupants of an ice-fishing shanty have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" and are subject to the same search-and-seizure protections as though they were at home. 

Conservation officers say the court decision will have a major impact on their ability to stop winter poaching, especially on the state's busier lakes. It's one thing to watch people fishing in a boat, or sitting on a bucket outside on the ice. But there's no way to see through walls.

"What if they just say 'no' when I ask if I can come in? What am I supposed to do then?" asked Dale Ebel, a conservation officer stationed in Duluth.

The courts ignored the state's argument that ice fishing can't be properly regulated without the ability to observe participants inside their shacks.

Bernhjelm said the court's ruling will be applied even to portable canvas fishing tents this winter.

The DNR might seek some sort of law change during the next legislative session that might help restore the leeway lost in the court decision. But because it's a constitutional issue, there may be little that legislators can do.

The Rice County crack-cocaine case will not be appealed to the state Supreme Court, officials say. DNR officials had hoped that another case of an officer entering a fishing shack -- this one based on a fishing-law violation -- might still allow officers to enforce fishing laws through unannounced entries into ice-fishing houses.

However, the Appeals Court said in a Dec. 26 ruling that even in those cases, officers still needed permission to enter ice-fishing houses.

"That made it clear we were stuck," Schwartz said.

Conservation officers say it would be nearly impossible to use regular, court-issued criminal search warrants, especially when officers aren't sure what they might find in a shack. But the DNR is considering using so-called administrative warrants similar to those used by building inspectors.

That type of warrant might give officers leeway to search many fishing shacks on one lake on one weekend based on state regulatory authority rather than probable cause.

Minnesota's Historical Lake Ice-Out Dates

The definition of lake ice-out varies from lake to lake, and individual to individual. For some, ice-out occurs only when the lake is completely free of ice. For others, ice-out is defined as the moment when navigation is possible from point A to point B. And yet for others, ice-out is when 90 percent of the lake is ice free. Due to the variable definitions of this rather subjective observation, the State Climatology Office attempts to contact the same individuals each year to maintain a consistent record. The table below summarizes historical lake ice-out averages and extremes for Minnesota lakes with 10 or more years of record.

In addition to differences in ice-out observation techniques, the variable period of record and variable length of record makes lake to lake comparisons of averages and extremes problematic. Differences in lake size, lake depth, and lake geometry also generate a large amount of variability among lakes in close proximity. In spite of these inherent problems, the tables below demonstrate a recognizable pattern in average lake ice-out across Minnesota, and also call attention to years of very early or very late lake ice-out.

Northwest

North Central

Northeast

A Blast From The Past

Red Lake Walleye Fishing Ruined
By Dan Gunderson
April 15, 1998

The tough regulations and enforcement on fishing at Mille Lacs, as Ojibways exercise their treaty rights, are being closely watched by the Red Lake band of Chippewa. Red Lake was once a walleye fishery as good or better than Mille Lacs. But over-harvest by native commercial fishers nearly destroyed the population; only a remnant of the world-famous Red Lake walleye remains. The result has been economic ruin and sometimes rancorous debate about who is to blame for the management debacle.

FOR 80 YEARS COMMERCIAL FISHERS have spent sunny spring days mending nets and getting boats ready for the walleye harvest. But this year, like last, there will be no commercial fishing because the Red Lake walleye has been nearly wiped out.

Pat Brown: We got two hatching batteries, about 200 jars, and you can raise about two quarts of walleye eggs in each one.

The problems at Red Lake started decades ago. The federal government opened commercial fishing in 1918 to provide food for Minnesotans during World War I. The harvest was increased during World War II, and the regulations put in place then have not changed in 55 years. Federal regulations set a maximum walleye harvest and ostensibly controlled the commercial fishing, but for decades there was little or no oversight. It was just ten years ago that the Red Lake tribe started a fish biology department. The tribe manages 85 percent of the lake; the state of Minnesota oversees the remaining 15 percent that's outside reservation boundaries. Minnesota DNR regional fisheries manager Bob Strand says Red Lake is in critical condition.

Strand: I guess what it comes down to is we can quit harvesting walleye by choice and improve the potential for recovery, or we can quit fishing walleye by no action, because they're gone.

Any member of the Red Lake band was free to do subsistence netting - catching fish to feed their family. Many used the freedom as it was intended, but some subsistence netters took thousands of pounds of walleye to sell on the black market. Tribal and state officials are circumspect about placing blame, but commercial fisherman and Red Lake tribal member Bill May says greed led to a declaration of war on walleye.

May: That's pretty much what it is you know, declaring war on the fish nation year after year. Everybody can see it's having an effect. We can't sit around and make like we don't.

May: I know 200 years ago there wasn't no great big giant canoes out there with 20-30 nets and guys pulling nets out there. I know that wasn't there.

Angling bag limits have also been cut. On the state-managed part of Upper Red Lake, anglers can take only two walleye.

That could be the death knell for the tiny, weather-worn community of Waskish where once there were 13 successful resorts.

Hudec's Resort was the first on Upper Red Lake, opening in 1938. Now it's the last still operating. Its rustic look is slowly fading to rundown.

Ed Hudec shows the wear from decades of hard work. He's lived all of his 80 years on the shore of Upper Red Lake - for the past 60 years he's run the resort his dad built. He seems to slip into the past as he gazes out the window at the frozen lake and recalls 10,000 anglers on the lake for opening day, pulling in a walleye with every cast.

Back then he thought his future was secure. Now he says his retirement investment is just about gone.

Hudec: ...and just about everything I ever made I put back in here, and now I can't get nothing back out of it. I probably be working here 'til the day they put me in a coffin.

Just down the road at Sunset Lodge, the news about new fishing restrictions etches the worry lines a bit deeper on the faces of Gary and Jane Bymark. Eleven years ago the Bymarks quit their jobs in the Twin Cities and put everything they had into this restaurant, bar, and campground. It was a dream business at first, but the dream, like the walleye, is gone and the Bymarks are bitter.

Gary Bymark: It's not our fault. We've got a problem, grant you, but it's not our fault the way the lake is, and why should we have to pay for it because of something the reservation did?

Jane Bymark: They talk about respect for the lake and the land and stuff, but they had zero respect for this lake and the fish in it. What are they going to do tomorrow?

Bymark: Like when you're sitting at the bar here, and any one of them Indians come in and say we got walleye for a dollar a walleye, cleaned and everything; they're gonna buy 'em. Two or three guys would come in here and walk out with a hundred walleyes.

Stopping the walleye harvest is the first step in rebuilding the population. A proposal to stock the lake with walleye from other lakes is opposed by the tribe. They say Red Lake is one of the few lakes where walleye genetics have been unaltered for hundreds of years. They want it to stay that way.

Recovery of the walleye population is not a sure thing, and biologists for the tribe say, even if all goes well, it will be at least a decade before walleyes can be harvested again.

What happens then is uncertain. Resorts on Upper Red Lake say without financial help from the state, Waskish will be a ghost town.

The Red Lake Tribe is asking for federal assistance to make up for the $1 million to $4 million-a-year commercial fishing pumped into the tribal and regional economy.

The Red Lake Tribe will likely resume commercial fishing, but there's some talk about opening the reservation water to sport fishing instead. It's estimated tourists in pursuit of the walleye would spend five times the money generated by commercial fishing. Tribal chairman Bobby Whitefeather says it's a discussion the tribe needs to have.

Whitefeather: There are some traditionalists who are real entrenched about exploiting our resource for the almighty dollar. Now that's not to say it's impossible.