Mille Lacs walleye fishing has a “fairly high probability” of mid-summer closure now that live bait will be allowed, a state researcher flatly told resort owners this week.

Those resort owners, as well as fishing guides and others, nonetheless pushed state officials Wednesday to lift a previously announced ban on live bait. The live-bait ban might be worse for business than a truncated season, they said in essence, according to audio recordings obtained by the Pioneer Press.

They succeeded, and on Thursday the Department of Natural Resources reversed itself — a “flip-flop” in the words of Commissioner Tom Landwehr — and announced live bait would be allowed beginning with the May 14 walleye opener.

There might be consequences.

“Allowing live bait would be two to three times more risky for reaching closure by Aug. 1, and that’s even under low (fishing) effort scenarios,” Melissa Treml, the DNR’s fisheries research manager, told the Mille Lacs Fisheries Advisory Committee, a local group of resort operators, tourism leaders, local elected officials and other stakeholders.

Treml’s comments came during a meeting Wednesday between the committee and DNR officials, conducted via telephone conference call. The risk of closing walleye fishing — as was done last summer — wasn’t made clear in public statements Thursday from the DNR or the committee, but they are starkly laid out in an audio recording of Wednesday’s conference call obtained by the Pioneer Press.

“That’s the take-home message: It’s that without some kind of artificial-only bait restriction, we’re looking at a fairly high probability that we’re going to have to close the fishery by Aug. 1,” Treml said at the outset of the nearly 45-minute meeting.

Treml gave no precise odds. DNR officials have steadfastly resisted efforts to pin down their statistical models, which forecast probabilities based on notoriously unpredictable variables ranging from the weather to whether or not a bumper crop of yellow perch — walleye prey — will materialize. It was unclear during Wednesday’s meeting whether the DNR believes the odds of closure are greater than 50-50.

A closure would be needed if anglers kill more than 28,600 walleyes, the state’s allotment established under a court-approved process in which it shares the lake’s fish with Chippewa Indian signatories to an 1837 treaty.

Studies have shown that fish are more likely to die when anglers use live bait because the fish swallow the bait and get “gut-hooked,” even if anglers try to release them. The live-bait ban was intended to reduce such “hooking mortality” and avoid a repeat of last summer.

Many resort owners initially accepted the live-bait ban, which was announced March 21. But the public backlash — via phone calls, emails and face-to-face discussions at the recent Northwest Sportshow in Minneapolis — was so strong that it forced them to reconsider, even knowing the potential consequences.

In essence, they said the ban would have crushed business, and a shortened season with customers is better than a whole season with none.

“I’m willing to accept a potentially earlier closure just because we’ve had so much negative feedback,” Dean Hanson, who operates Agate Bay Resort in Isle and co-chairs the advisory committee, said during Wednesday’s meeting. “I have not heard one positive comment.”

Hanson and other committee members said the requirement that all walleyes be released was met with general acceptance, but the live-bait ban touched a nerve, especially since the large charter boats, or “launches,” owned by some resorts were slated to be exempt from the ban.

“The biggest objections I’ve heard related more to inexperienced fishermen,” Hanson said. “Families can’t take their kids fishing anymore because their kids bobber fish. Lake owners can’t sit on the dock in the evening with a leech and a bobber out. A lot of fishermen don’t know how to fish artificials, and apparently they’re not willing to learn. This is the average fisherman. I’m not talking about guides or experienced fishermen. They’re a lot more adaptive than the average fishermen. We’re alienating a very large group of fishermen who may never come back.”

Others backed up Hanson.

Guide Tony Roach said he was “floored by the negative feedback he heard at his booth at the Sportshow: “The vast majority were really upset that launches would be allowed to use live bait and no one else would. … I want to see as quick a road to recovery as possible, and I don’t want to see a shutdown, but it was pretty deafening down at the show.”

Steve Kulifaj, owner of the Red Door Resort, spoke of youth making “fishing memories” on the lake this season — or not: “Being from Canada where we saw a lot of live-bait bans, I’m amazed by the fallout …We’ve really gotta consider the viability 10 to 20 years out. … With no live bait, I think that forces a lot of families to take their business elsewhere.”

Eddy Lyback, owner of Lyback’s Ice Fishing and Lyback’s Marine, said he understood the risks: “Yes, there’s a higher chance of shutting it down. … But hey, if it comes to that, it comes to that. But we’re still fishing with live bait.”

While Landwehr told committee members the final decision was not theirs, but the DNR’s, support from the committee was overwhelming. At least 13 local Mille Lacs representatives on the conference call said they supported lifting the ban, and none spoke against it.

The meeting was being recorded by the DNR in the interest of transparency, Landwehr told committee members early in the call. “We don’t want to be accused of operating behind closed doors,” he said.