Walleye anglers on Minnesota’s Upper Red Lake will be allowed to keep five fish this summer, two more than were allowed during the opening weeks of the open-water fishing season a year ago, state fisheries managers announced Monday.
The new possession limit, effective May 10, allows anglers to keep five walleyes, but only one over 17 inches long. Marc Bacigalupi, Northwest Region fisheries manager for the Department of Natural Resources, said the regulation reflects what biologists believe is an abundance of young walleyes in the lake measuring from 15 to 17 inches long.
State-licensed anglers harvested a record 175,000 pounds of walleyes from Upper Red this past winter, Bacigalupi said. Still, the naturally reproducing fishery has a sustainable population of mature, female spawning stock longer than 17 inches, he said.
The assessments are made by DNR in collaboration with Red Lake Nation, which sets fishing regulations for the tribal portions of the lake.
“We still have a lot of room for harvest,‘’ Bacigalupi said.
This season’s possession limit for walleye taken from Upper Red Lake is the biggest since the fishery reopened in 2006 after crashing in the 1990s. The 2025 limit matches the regulation set in 2023.
“Upper Red Lake female spawning walleye have been managed at a level that has resulted in a number of strong year classes recently,” DNR area fisheries supervisor Edie Evarts said in a news release.
To continue producing the most successful year classes, the lake needs enough female spawning walleye to produce lots of baby walleyes, Evarts explained. But if there are too many babies, or fry, the young fish don’t survive well because they are competing for a limited amount of food, Evarts said.
