Dave Weitzel, of the Minnesota DNR, takes a look at the Quality Sunfish Initiative and explains its benefits on bluegill size in Minnesota’s waters.

Minnesota’s Quality Sunfish Initiative

The Quality Sunfish Initiative was created to help improve the size structure of bluegills in selected lakes across the state.

It uses proven daily limits of five or ten sunfish to protect and improve sunfish quality.

Roughly 200 lakes across the state of Minnesota have these protective limits, and these lakes were chosen because they have both biological potential to produce large sunfish and strong public support.

If our fish are getting harvested when they’re only five or six years old it’s going to be really hard to grow a 10-inch bluegill. By reducing the limits and practicing selective harvest those seven and eight inch sunfish, will have a chance to grow into a true trophy bluegill exceeding a pound.

The goal of the Quality Sunfish Initiative isn’t to take away someones ability to harvest fish or even harvest large quantities of fish.

The goal is to make sure that harvest is done in a smart manner, so that we can have lakes were you can have high harvest rates, and a few lakes that a really managed for size quality of sunfish.