ROOSEVELT, Minn. _ The caterpillar tracks on Tim Hill's transport rig creaked loudly as he departed shore with another load of Lake of the Woods ice anglers.
It was 23 degrees below zero on a sunny, windless Friday afternoon and business was booming. Arnesen's Rocky Point Resort, self-proclaimed as one of the world's largest ice fishing operators, was welcoming yet another weekend crush of 350 visitors.
Hill, better known as "Wingnut," grabbed the steering wheel with both hands to turn the vehicle's beefy front skis. "Let's go fishing!" he said.
When the Arnesen family plowed its first ice roads for walleye and sauger anglers more than 40 years ago, the Department of Natural Resources was tracking winter fishing pressure on Minnesota's portion of Lake of the Woods at fewer than 650,000 hours for the season.
By 2001, winter fishing on the northernmost lake in the contiguous United States soared to 1.2 million hours. Since then, the pressure has exploded to more than 2 million hours, forcing the DNR into a reckoning of the lake's generous winter bag limit.
South Shore anglers have only two more months to enjoy a long-lived regulation allowing a mixed bag of eight walleyes and saugers. Next season's take-home allocation will be cut for sustainability reasons to six fish, with no more than four being walleye. That's an effective cut per bag of two saugers _ the walleye's doppelganger species.
Paul Arnesen, one of many family members who work at the resort 21 miles east of Warroad, said the change shouldn't hurt business.
"People want good fishing and to catch enough fish for a meal," he said. "Overall the lake is in very good health."
