Heard on WTIP that the experimental 17-20” protected walleye slot on these 3 lakes has been lifted due to lack of evidence that it made any difference after 10 years of data.

I don’t have a really strong opinion on this one but I suppose I’m OK
with it. I have been in a situation where I was catching nothing but 14-16” fish on the Canadian side but couldn’t keep a couple for the pan because I was staying on the US side. Seemed pretty silly, so the elimination of that scenario seems positive to me.

So the new reg— which is no longer considered “experimental” but is now just a “special regulation” is 3 fish with only 1 over 20 inches.

I fish seagull annually and with our timing/spot we find very few eyes on seagull under 17".

We dont keep walleye over 20" which means my group previously must keep/eat 17-20" which is fine, but id rather eat smaller. in my opinion the best walleye to keep for eating is 14"-17". Im not educated enough into the walleye eco system to know which size is best to keep for the population health.

To me, this is a good change, so i can keep/eat smaller walleye (if we can find them).

Keep the limit at 3 for these waters - please.

I think the 3 possession is prefect for these water ways ,I believe the upper part of gull to the seagull river is posted closed fishing until May 30 ? which helps protect those spawners. DNR/Forestry use to post the same in an innertube at the alpine river into seagull , but with no motors past 3-mile , i guess they dont want to paddle that twice ;) as far as slot or no slot , with 1 over 20" kind of a horse apart , i personally like a 16"-17" minimum , the fish that reach that size will be able to feast on larger forage thus get bigger faster IMO , My local lake Waconia has had a 16" minimum for 3+ decades and we catch a fair amount of eyes between #4-#8 , not bad for a metro lake ;)

shock: "I think the 3 possession is prefect for these water ways ,I believe the upper part of gull to the seagull river is posted closed fishing until May 30 ? which helps protect those spawners. DNR/Forestry use to post the same in an innertube at the alpine river into seagull , but with no motors past 3-mile , i guess they dont want to paddle that twice ;) as far as slot or no slot , with 1 over 20" kind of a horse apart , i personally like a 16"-17" minimum , the fish that reach that size will be able to feast on larger forage thus get bigger faster IMO , My local lake Waconia has had a 16" minimum for 3+ decades and we catch a fair amount of eyes between #4-#8 , not bad for a metro lake ;)"

Yes the State record came out of the Sea Gull river a few decades ago. At one time it was not posted. You could keep 6 walleyes and the 17 pound record was full of eggs. I had a friend who fished it before it got popular and also when it became a madhouse. You could walk from one boat to the next without hardly getting wet. People were catching at times and keeping 6 walleyes over 10 pounds. My friends quit going there. There was a span of years Sag was full of huge walleyes.
Sag is not a natural walleye at one time. They were stocked and took hold big time.

Walleye record 1979

LeRoy Chiovitte's 17-pound, 8-ounce walleye caught on May 13, 1979, is a storied lunker caught on a history-making opening weekend of fishing.

When Chiovitte, of Hermantown, Minn., died in 2019 at age 82, he left no specific plans for the walleye, a mount of which had sat encased in glass for 40 years in the home he shared with his wife, Joanne.

Now, in a deal blessed by her and favored by a majority of Duluth News Tribune readers who responded to stories written last summer by that newspaper's outdoors writer, John Myers, the fish will be permanently showcased at the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center, operated by the Gunflint Trail Historical Society.

A ceremony inducting Chiovitte's walleye into the museum will be held from 4-6 p.m. May 29 at the museum (more at gunflinthistory.org).

The museum is located only a mile or so from where the fish was caught, in the Sea Gull River between Sea Gull Lake and Lake Saganaga.

"Back then, I was fishing all the time, up early and staying late,'' Chiovitte told me the last time I talked to him, in 1995.

On the Friday before the 1979 opener, Chiovitte and a friend, Lorin Palmer of Cloquet, and Palmer's teenage son, Todd, drove to the end of the Gunflint Trail.

At midnight — the minute fishing became legal — they launched their aluminum boat, prepared to be on the river most of the night.

Each was rigged with a spottail shiner on a plain hook, weighted with split shots. The anglers' boat was anchored in a river eddy, just out of the current, in 10 to 12 feet of water.

"We'd cast into the faster water and let the current swirl our baits around,'' Chiovitte said.

The first fish in the boat, caught by Chiovitte, was a walleye weighing 12½ pounds, a hefty spawned-out female. The trio caught another five walleyes weighing between 3 and 8 pounds before, at 10 a.m., they decamped to a nearby cabin to sleep.

The waters the three fished are no longer open to anglers on a season's initial days. Department of Natural Resources (DNR) fisheries managers believe the river's spawning walleyes need protection until they disperse into Sea Gull Lake and Lake Saganaga.

In 1979, however, the Sea Gull River was popular among opening-weekend anglers. Additionally, catch-and-release walleye angling was only in its infancy at the time, if that. So keeping big fish, as Chiovitte and his friends did, was commonplace.

Back on the water at 5 p.m. on opening day, the three again fished spottails on plain hooks.

"We fished until about midnight Saturday, catching a few more fish,'' Chiovitte said. "Then we went to our cabin to sleep a few hours before getting back on the water about 4 a.m.''

Chiovitte caught his record walleye at 8 a.m. Sunday, May 13, 1979.



"A boat had been anchored near us, and when it left, I cast my line to the spot it had been anchored,'' Chiovitte said. "That's when I caught it.''

The fish wasn't a great fighter. But complications arose when the big walleye wound itself around the boat's anchor rope.


Finally, Lorin Palmer pulled up the anchor . . . slowly.

"That's how we got the fish close enough to get it in a landing net,'' Chiovitte said.

The Minnesota walleye record at the time was 16 pounds, 11 ounces, caught in Basswood Lake by an Iowan, Merle Pulliam, in 1955.

"I will never forget the feeling I had as I watched the scale (at a nearby resort),'' Chiovitte said. 'It just kept going up and up. When it hit 17 pounds and kept going, I got weak in the knees.''



Though some anglers doubt Chiovitte's record will ever be topped, others — I among them — disagree.

True, only big female walleyes filled with spawn are likely to claim the crown, and most places where they hang out in spring are now off-limits during the season's first days.

But on July 4, 1989, then-University of Minnesota President Bob Bruininks boated a 17-pound, 6-ounce walleye that wasn't weighed for more than two hours after it was caught — an indication that, all things being equal, Bruinicks' brute might have out-bruted Chiovitte's.

Additionally, in 2012, a Bemidji area fishing guide, Don Mickel, said he caught a walleye in Minnesota waters of the Rainy River that tipped 17.9 pounds on his hand scale. The fish, Mickel said, had a 24.25-inch girth and was 35.1 inches long (Chiovitte's walleye was 35.75 inches long, with a 21.25-inch girth.)

But because Mickel's walleye was caught in waters designated catch-and-release only by the DNR, it didn't count as a record.

Yet whether the current record stands for one more day — or for forever — Chiovitte was as good, and gracious, a walleye record-holder as Minnesota could hope for.

walleye history-first stocked

Always good to share the history. Sag isn’t the monster factory that it once was, but it’s still a solid fishery once you figure out a thing or ten. The folks who have it dialed still pull big fish from the lake every year. Not me, at least not yet— 26” is our biggest walleye.

It’s hard to imagine Sag isn’t a natural walleye lake but I know it’s true. I wonder about Northern Light.

thegildedgopher: "It’s hard to imagine Sag isn’t a natural walleye lake but I know it’s true. I wonder about Northern Light."

Northern Light, being even higher in the watershed than Saganaga, almost certainly never had walleyes until they were introduced. It was a naturally lake trout/pike lake. Whitefish, white suckers, and burbot too.

No walleyes or bass.