Houghton Lk walleye slot Limit ?

[outsider]

I just finished watching Babe Winklemans Good Fishing .
He was fishing Wisconsons Mille Lacs Lake, they were catching walleye one after the other ( I know editing ), but it made me think of houghton. Mille lacs has a slot limit 3 fish up to 17 and 1 up to 23.
Would houghton and maybe a few other inland lakes (upper & lower leelanau) benifit from a slot limit like this . Can you think of any other inlandlakes that you would like to see this on?

[Tom (mich)]

One thing to keep in mind is that the slot on Mille Lacs is more attributable to the Native American's netting quota's than anything related to fish conservation. While it's true that it's created a world-class catch and release fishery (where virtually no fish can be kept now), the original impetus was to ensure that the Indians got their's first.

There are tournaments held on Mille Lacs now where teams literally catch dozens of fish daily, but weigh zero's because all the fish taken were out of the slot.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Mille Lacs slot is necessarily a bad thing, but understand first why they did it.

[gregm]

I'm not sure about the walleyes on Mille Lacs, but in general, slot limits are put in place where you have an abundance of small fish and want to cull a portion of that population but still protect the optimal spawners. That is especially true when you see the 12-15" slot limit popular for bass. A lake that has that limit is one that historically has had an abundance of small (8-10") bass but not many on the larger side. I'm not sure of the mechanics on how this would work with walleyes. Does Hougton have a walleye population that would benefit from this type of managment or does the 15" limit protect the population that is in place ? (which would be my guess). To increase the population of Houghton, I would look to see of the spawning habitat is adequate and if the juvenile walleye population has enough cover/protection. With the degredation of the wild rice in the middle grounds (co-inciding with the milfoil takeover), I would guess that may be a place to start. Hopefully this new vegetation management system will help to get the natural weeds re-established. My base-less guess will be the walleye population will improve with the re-establishment of the vegetation that the walleye's in that lake are used to.