Anyone picking wild rice? We've picked about 800 lbs. so far. Want to get another 400-500 lbs to have processed. Don't pick as fast as we used to but not bad for a couple of guys in their 70s.

That’s awesome!

Just had some with goose breast and carrots last night. Have never picked it, usually buy 20 pounds in Ontario and split it with a buddy.

Based on what we pay, you should have a good year!

That's really cool. It grows here, but the stands or patches or whatever you call them aren't very big or dense

There were ricers on the flowage where I was fishing last Wednesday. Seems earlier this year. The rice is denser, taller and healthier looking this year then the las couple.
Some of the smaller beds seemed to have dropped their seed already. The ricers were in the bigger beds.

Bryce

I had one real Ricer on the flowage by me on Saturday during early goose and teal- the other 6 were imposters.

What do you do with 1200 pounds of wild rice? Sell it? If so will you ship some?

Wow...that's Amazing

Several years ago the Amish were harvesting a big bed not far from where I was bass fishing. They waved and I paddled over to talk briefly with them. They were saying it was a better than average year for them. When I looked down at the bottom of the canoe, it seemed the whole thing was moving! Lot of worms when harvesting wild rice. I decide right then I was not going to be applying for any harvest permits. Lot goes into processing wild rice.

Bryce

There can be a lot of worms, but a couple of nights in the 40s seems to have knocked them out. Rice processes out at 25% for poor rice to around 50% for good heavy rice. Good hand picked rice sells for $11 to $14 a lb. Farm raised paddy rice for about half that amount. You can also sell green rice if you can find a buyer and I'm guessing they would pay $2 to $3 a lb. In the hayday of wild ricing, buyers of green rice would be parked along the highway near rice beds and always paid in cash so he was usually carrying sometimes openly.

You're having a good season, mskrtman. I was out last weekend just for a day and did ok. The rice was good that we harvested but the overall rice stand was weak. The lake was very spotty, which seems to be case with many rice lakes this year. Dean and Mallard were a bust this year....just too much fluctuating water on many lakes to produce a great crop. Have you been finding success north, north-central part of the state?

North central. We actually riced Dean years ago. It was packed with rice and we couldn't get near the landing, there must have been 100 or more ricers. We drug our canoe and gear half a mile or so and were wore out by the time we got to the lake but still managed to pick around 350 pounds. Most of the beds are subpar but still have pickable rice.

The worms come from milkweed plants as a secondary infection.to the wild rice seed = second grade broken seed in processing
High water and cold spring there was no heading out in southern Manitoba this year
luckily not every seed grows every year so there is always a seed source for the next years