My personal opinion developed over the last couple of years of personal experience, coupled with the history that I have read from DNR, MMA, and MDAA has me highly suspicious of either of the two first organizations mentioned when it comes to their motivations regarding ALL muskie fishermen. Both have shown a proclivity towards exclusion and/or discrimination of Darkhouse angling.

Hmm… not sure what to say about that without dropping some f-bombs.

FYI they are probably trolling us and looking for a response. I agree with you both and can only wonder how someone who claims to want to help boost the resource can have such a strong negative opinion of the two groups that are actually doing the groundwork.

"vano397" said:
I've wasted more time typing and not sending responses since I saw that. I really just want to see where they take it.

A wise choice in my opinion. I also am interested in seeing what other crap they come out with and if Tonello has the stones to reply.

Firefighter
Firefighter
apparently these groups think darkhouse spearers are a bunch of uneducated loafs, that get nothing more beyond a chest thump and hoot from their bloodthirsty pursuits…:rolleyes:

Oh yeah, and we're no good at identifying size either.

Yup, just a bunch of dolts we are that can't be trusted to provide reliable data. Maybe if we sold trips to people and made good money off the fishery, then we'd be considered a little more intelligent.

I'm having a hard time not responding to his assumption of "these groups". Glad I banned myself from that forum.

Not sure why he feels the need to insult himself and other spearers when there was no mention of any of this…
Where is the shot at the guides from? Is that because charter captains have to complete their surveys each month?

I think they think we are all guides maybe, or at least all loaded, because we have $80k boats, and wipe our arses with c-notes.
Firefighter certainly likes to stir the pot, he has 2 decent points that he makes continuously that are fairly easily rebuked everywhere but LSC. But as he and Botek, and all of them frankly always do, when they hear info that contradicts what they want to hear they discard it as irrelevant, and fail to remember it for future use. It's not a creel survey fergawdsakes… It's a participation, and angler success study! I have discussed with them multiple times that a look and release, and a follow is the same thing. It gives no one any useable info, but if they can't count that as success or doing their part to conserve the resource they don't want to be a part of it. Not to mention, if the survey were to give an idea of population density, asking fisherman and spear chuckers how many they saw would not be anywhere close to scientifically significant data! [smilie=bangtard.gif] [smilie=bangtard.gif] [smilie=bangtard.gif]
Also, I'm pretty sure that Botek wears a foil helmet most of the time, and thinks our conspiring with the DNR is on par with Roosevelt knowing about Pearl Harbor and doing nothing in order to have a reason to enter WW2, or that we never went to the moon…

Yeah really sorry guys for not being able to restrain myself. I knew I should have stayed out, but couldn't take it when I felt like Tonello 🙄 might be buying into any of their line of BS

And I do wish the survey would take # of fish seen. I think anecdotal info is valuable in its own way, not as hard data to base management decisions on of course, but just to collect the info doesn't hurt and doesn't mean DNR would be forced to do anything in particular with it.

The Muskie Angler Survey was originally set up in 2014 as part of a study to evaluate angler impacts on Muskie populations across the state. That study was partially funded through MMA and the Hugh C. Becker Foundation. Unfortunately, the study design required many hours of staff effort, specialized sampling efforts, and coordination with many sportsman’s groups across the state. The angler survey today is what remains of the original study in order to gather as much Muskie angler information as possible. Muskie anglers/spearers are difficult to capture in any traditional creel survey. The current Muskie angler survey does not capture look and release or observed fish because of the subjectivity and inconsistencies between anglers reporting these. Seeing fish is certainly important. We will consider including something pertaining to observations.

Fisheries Division intends to review the current set of survey questions. For 2016 we planned to run till the end of the calendar year with the current survey. Starting in January 2017, the new survey should be posted for another round of responses. We will certainly get the link to the 2017 survey posted here for all of you to participate.

Fisheries Division greatly appreciates the cooperation by the angling community for these types of surveys. Like many studies in science, we will continue to learn more from this survey and our angling public on what information is important to make management decisions. Thank you for your consideration and cooperation with the angler survey.

Interesting reply from Cory about the MDAA concerns of the look and release not being part of the survey… I'm curious what this data will add, if anything. My thoughts are they think it will give an increased sense of strength in the musky population and keep regulations relaxed. However I think it could be turned into an observation of the increased vulnerability of the resource during spearing seasons. Either way I don't trust them to not come up with how they can manipulate the data to fit their agenda. With as much as they pick and choose science over social, and vice versa, depending on how it fits, and throw in "personal observation" if neither gets their point across, I wouldn't put it past them to try to sway survey results.

Absolutely. And you'll find the spearing community to be far more willing to share data I believe also.

Riiight, and that's why there has been ZERO reports from them so far, and we got such a high return on the voluntary tag reporting… oh never mind, we didn't. [smilie=grimreaper.gif]

"vano397" said:
I'm sure a few of you have followed this thread… But, this is one of those things that really makes me question MDAA motives. When there are instances like this, I am not sure how you can deny that what they do has a detrimental effect on fish populations, and frankly the DNR ability to manage them in the most productive manner.

This is a quote from Mark Tonello:

Considering the numbers of 35-40" fish available for a few years it's a smoking gun!