it's often incorrect. Take for instance all the numbers about populations, sub-populations, bio-mass, etc. All guesswork.

Here's a direct quote fron an article concerning the population of walleyes in Mille Lacs. The Minnesota DNR has devised a complex computer model called the VPA (Virtual Population Analysis) -
"But even the biologists who devised the VPA have little confidence in its ability to generate an accurate population estimate. The problem is, every piece of information fed into the VPA has a wide margin of error, most of which cannot be accurately measured. So the combined error is unknown, and so is the usefulness of the VPA. The DNR continues to "tune" its model in an attempt to improve its accuracy, but the underlying problem of insufficient or unreliable data cannot be solved anytime soon."

Since this was written in 2002, it pretty much calls all those cute figures we've been seeing in this string into question.

I also spoke with Jeff Roth a year or two ago and he agreed with me as to my theory on the timing of the smallmouth population explosion and the beginning of spearing. He also directed me to a DNR agent in Minesota to discuss issues with spearing on Mille Lacs.

Blue Ranger keeps talking about weak walleye recruitment in the early '80s that started the smallmouth population increase. My question is this, the TFF was around for over 5 decades before spearing started. In all those years, there had to be several even consecutive years of bad walleye recruitment. Heck, they were even stocking smallmouth bass, but no, nothing changed. Maybe some bad years of walleye fishing, but the walleye always remained the top predator in the TFF. I was speaking with Paul R. last week. From 1953to 1988, he remembers catching 1 smallmouth bass. It was so rare, he remembers exactly where he caught it. After 1988, they stopped going to the TFF for several years, and when they came just about 4 or 5 years ago, they were stunned. Smallies all over the place.

I know Blue Ranger says 1989 was when the enormous increase in the population of smallmouth bass was noticed, but you'd think Paul might have nailed at least 1 in 1988. I mean the population increase was enormous. Blue Ranger says so.

If there was some smallie spawning going on before spearing, it was nothing compared to what happed after spearing started.

I would love to hear from Don Pemble as to when he started catching smallies, but I totally understand if he feels best to not pick sides.