For the second summer in a row, fishing for walleye on Minnesota’s legendary Mille Lacs Lake will be outlawed.

In a reversal under pressure from American Indian bands, state officials Tuesday night surprised resort owners and guides around the central Minnesota lake with the announcement: Intentionally fishing for walleye will cease Tuesday, Sept. 6.

Whether the development was the end of a shrewd play by the state and Gov. Mark Dayton, or a surrender, remained unclear late Tuesday.

Earlier this month, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced that the state had blasted through its annual kill limit of walleye that was negotiated over the winter with eight Chippewa Indian bands with court-approved treaty rights to the fish.

Yet the DNR and Dayton said walleye fishing would remain open, an apparent violation of treaty protocols; a nearly identical scenario played out last year, but the state closed fishing in early August when the kill limit was reached.

This year’s decision to keep walleye fishing open drew immediate rebuke from a number of the Indian bands with whom the state is required — under treaty law and federal court orders — to share the lake’s storied walleye population.

Resentment toward tribal activities — especially the band’s indiscriminate netting of walleye’s during spring spawning season — has picked at scabs in the relations between Indians and non-Indians, especially in recent years as the lake’s once-bountiful walleye stocks have declined for reasons not entirely understood.

The bands voluntarily curtailed netting activities this spring, while the state mandated that all walleye caught by non-tribal anglers be immediately released.

Nonetheless, a percentage of fish hooked and then released die anyway, and the DNR’s estimate of such “hooking mortality” cuts into the state’s kill limit.

Latest creel survey data indicated 45,276 pounds of walleye killed so far this year as of Aug. 15, well over the state’s 28,600-pound allocation.

Fishing on Mille Lacs has actually been excellent this summer — and that’s part of the problem.

The hot bite (more fish being hooked per angler) led to increased fishing pressure (more anglers catching fish), which combined with hot temperatures (fish being more stressed in warm water) to increase the estimated hooking mortality.

Similar factors prompted the lake’s closure last year, but earlier this month DNR biologists said that they believed the increased hooking mortality was actually not harming the lake’s walleye population.

A certain percentage of fish die naturally every year, and a crucial walleye demographic — a bumper crop of fish hatched in 2013 — were not facing heavy casualties, biologists said.

On Tuesday, Dayton said he was backing down to tribal demands — but also noted that the tactic had essentially bought local businesses a full walleye season through Labor Day, after which fishing activity traditionally tails off.

“Closing the walleye fishing season on Mille Lacs earlier this month would have devastated area businesses and communities,” Dayton said in a statement Tuesday night, adding later: “I thank the Chippewa bands for their commitment to restoring the health of Mille Lacs and its walleyes. After assessing their concerns and the decreased economic impact on local businesses after Labor Day, I have directed the DNR to close Mille Lacs’ catch-and-release walleye season (Sept. 6).”

Tina Chapman, of Chapman’s Mille Lacs Resort & Guide Service, said she and other members of a local DNR advisory committee should have been informed before the agency’s announcement.

“You can’t drop a bomb on us like that and expect us to react,” Chapman said.

Chapman and others on the committee have long known closure was a possibility. In the spring, the DNR initially announced a ban on live bait in an attempt to reduce hooking mortality of walleye. However, the agency reversed itself after local businesses objected.

Even with catch-and-release, allowing live bait led to a “fairly high probability” that the lake would close by August, the DNR warned businesses at the time.

This report includes information from the Forum News Service.