The reason: Walleyes that are released after being caught are subject to delayed mortality, an estimate of which must be factored into the angler's portion of Mille Lacs' harvestable walleye surplus.

Critics of the DNR's 2024 Mille Lacs walleye harvest restriction contend:

— The agency is wrong when it says a relatively high number of walleyes were caught by anglers this winter — given that temperate weather shortened the Mille Lacs cold-weather angling season by about a month.

— The DNR's methods of estimating Mille Lacs walleyes are for various reasons incorrect and result in an undercounting of the fish's numbers.

Let's take a look.

The DNR used the same creel measurement methods this winter on Mille Lacs it used in past winters (and summers) to estimate that 3,277 walleyes were caught during the recent cold months.

That's more than triple the 2023 Mille Lacs harvest of 1,070 walleyes, and higher also than the 2022 winter take of 1,968. But it's a far cry from the 8,756 harvested in 2020 and the 37,481 harvested in 2012 — estimates made using the same methods, when no one complained.

More important is the harvest rate, a computation that considers the number of fish caught relative to effort.

By that calculation, the recent winter's Mille Lacs walleye harvest rate was the highest since 2012. Last summer's harvest rate also was the highest in more than 10 years.

The likely reason: not an overabundance of walleyes, as some online angler-experts tout — "What I can tell you as someone who spends a ton of time actually fishing on Mille Lacs, there's a bazillion walleyes in there!'' — but a shortage of forage fish, primarily juvenile yellow perch but also tullibees. Last summer's estimate of hatch-of-the-year yellow perch, for example, was the second lowest in the past 10 years.

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