C.B. Bylander: Most go through many stages of acceptance with new fishing regulations

Editor’s note: We’re excited to add a new columnist to our corps of writers this week. Through his newspaper journalism work and tenure with the Minnesota DNR, C.B. Bylander has been a familiar name to Outdoor News readers for decades. Bylander likely will pen a more thorough column about his background later this winter, but for today, he wants to immediately jump into a topical issue on the Minnesota fishing scene. For the full skinny, read on…

It is likely that when the 2027 Minnesota fishing regulation booklet is published, a one-character change will appear on Page 29 or so.

Specifically, where “six” has appeared for 71 years as the statewide limit for walleye, the number “four” will appear instead.

Will this be an historic change?

In a way, yes.

During the past 40 years or so, the DNR has created hundreds of special and experimental fishing regulations for specific lakes and rivers. These regulations, which aim to retain fishing quality, take up a whopping 19 pages in the current fishing regulations book.

Yet the DNR does not change statewide fishing regulations at a similar pace. The fact that the statewide walleye regulation has remained the same since 1956 is testament to an intentionally slow grinding of government gears.

But no more. The DNR has shifted out of neutral. Their foot is on the gas. That means we’re along for the ride, like it or not.

RELATED STORY:

Minnesota DNR proposes walleye limit reduction from six to four

Clearly, it is possible that between now and March 5, the deadline for public comment on the DNR’s four-walleye limit proposal, legions of loud “keep it at six” advocates (See letters to the editor) will flood the DNR’s inbox with objections, and the DNR will ease off the pedal or steer in a slightly different direction.

But don’t bet the farm on that.

The DNR already has done the polling, and the results are in: the six-fish limit deserves to be tweaked.

From 2021-2023, DNR staff asked 4,000 anglers if they would support a walleye bag limit reduction. Sixty-seven percent said yes.

In 2023, the DNR conducted a statewide random survey of anglers. Only 23% opposed lowering the walleye limit. In 2025, the DNR queried anglers again. Sixty-one percent favored a four-fish limit. Only 31% of respondents favored the existing six-fish limit.

A common complaint is that the DNR doesn’t listen to the people it serves. That happens. This doesn’t seem to be the case this time. Their hearing aids are on. They’ve got their binoculars out, too.

Indeed, DNR leadership seems to be looking past today and into a fuzzy tomorrow, and in doing so, has cast aside long-held concerns that reducing the walleye limit by two is just a slippery slope toward implementing more meaningless regulations.

The DNR historically has opposed reducing the statewide walleye limit by two because it knows this will have negligible effect on walleye conservation. That’s because very few anglers ever catch and keep six walleyes in a single day. So, until recently, the agency always has opposed symbolic but ineffective regulations, even if stakeholders, lawmakers are others bang the drum for otherwise.

During the past decade, the pounding became the loudest when former Republican state senator Carrie Ruud of Breezy Point tried to push a four-fish walleye limit through the legislature. She was mightily rebuffed in three consecutive sessions, but the echoes of her battles live on. Her passion is part of what got us here today.

If the bag limit reduction does become a reality, do know the decision is far from the cutting-edge. All abutting states have statewide walleye limits less than six, and Canadian provinces have long had conservative walleye regulations. So, to a certain extent, Minnesota is a Johnny-Come-Lately.

As an angler, I’m fine with the regulation change. Many of the waters I fish, including Leech Lake on opening day, already have a four-fish limit. When I fish smaller lakes, I’m usually fishing for crappie or bass.

So, the proposed walleye limit isn’t a burr in my side because it won’t change my world.

Yet the world is changing, and that, according to the DNR, is what’s driving its proposed pruning of keepers.

They say there was a time when billions and billions of zebra mussels and spiny water fleas weren’t messing with the bottom of the food chain and threatening a lake’s or river’s ability to support the same number of fish it always has.

They say there was a time when Minnesota’s geographic location in the north favored walleye over species that can tolerate warmer water, but that’s changing. Fisheries folks, they say, are seeing largemouth bass in northern lakes where they hadn’t spotted them before. Long-term climate models, they contend, will translate into tougher times for walleye as the state’s waters warm.

On top of these factors, there was once a time when high-tech fishing equipment meant sitting on a bench seat beside a Lowrance Fish-Lo-Ka-Tor, the first transistorized sonar unit that could mark an individual fish. The “green box” went on sale in 1959.

Today, high-tech sonar units, digital mapping, and trolling motors that double as an anchor have revolutionized fishing in ways our forefathers couldn’t have imagined. Ever-evolving fishing technology is a wild card, and who knows if this card will produce winning or losing hands for anglers and fish populations 10, 20 and 40 years from now? Not I.

What I do know is that anglers tend to accept new fishing regulations. Not always, but frequently this process occurs in stages – opposition, skepticism, begrudging acceptance, acceptance and sometimes even advocacy.

I mention this because recently I fished with a friend who has been an ardent opponent of the five-panfish regulation that went into effect in 2021 on nearly 100 lakes. My buddy was very vocal about this government taking, penning letters to this publication in protest and recruiting like-minded reinforcements wherever he could.

Yet five years later, as he lifted a gorgeous crappie from the hole between his legs, he said, “You know, if you can catch five crappies like this I can live with a five-fish limit.”

Yes, perspectives change over time.

Regulations change over time. And given enough time, regulatory waters that had bristled with whitecaps often turn as a flat as a mirror.