St. Paul, Minn. ? As director of the Minnetonka Classic Bass Tournament, Larry Krohn loves handing the big checks to the people who reel in the biggest fish. Last month’s prize pool was over $30,000, including the $9,400 snagged by the top-catching twosome.

Krohn’s mood sours at the thought of another check he’ll have to cut before his next event: a new $400 fee to the Department of Natural Resources for a tournament permit. He’s already paying a smaller fee to the Lake Minnetonka Conservation District, the city’s bill for park use and the insurance policy required by the local sheriff’s department.

“After 15 years of running this, my level of frustration is mounting every year,” Krohn said. “Every year it gets worse and worse in terms of the things you have to do. It’s going to be enough of a hassle for some tournament directors that they aren’t going to do it.”

Next week, Minnesota’s DNR begins imposing the highest fees in the nation on fishing tournament organizers. They’ll range from $120 to $1,000 depending on the number of participants and whether fish are taken offsite to be weighed – costs almost certain to be passed along to anglers via higher entrance fees. The permits had been free.

Agency officials say they merely want to recover the cost of issuing event permits, pegged at $108,000 annually. But the move upsets competitive anglers, some of whom see the fees as an assault on their pastime and worry they will be the final straw for small tournaments struggling to stay afloat.

It’s a debate that’s come to neighboring Wisconsin, too. Officials there are refining a proposed tournament fee schedule after one sank last year amid concerns it was excessive. Andrew Fayram, a fisheries policy analyst at Wisconsin DNR, expects the next plan to split regulatory costs between competitive anglers and contest organizers.

Beneath the fee fight is a deeper dispute over water use.

The spread of tournaments – traced by some to competitive fishing’s increasing TV presence – has stoked questions about the sport’s possible strain on fisheries; organizers say they follow catch-and-release practices and that tournaments don’t increase fish mortality. There’s also tension over lake access and waterway traffic because the events can draw dozens of boats.

Vern Wagner, who has been active in Minnesota tournament fishing for two decades, wonders if the fees are a covert attempt to discourage contests.

“If this was 30 guys in canoes there wouldn’t be a problem. It’s the fact that a bass boat costs $35,000 so accordingly somehow we’re economically profiting,” Wagner said. “It’s a perception that it’s a bunch of rich guys going out on the lake and somehow exploiting the resource.”

Terry Peltier, a member of a DNR citizen panel that recommended the fees, denies trying to curb tournaments.

But if fewer tournaments is the result, Duluth angler Dave Zentner is all for it. He views fishing as a recreational escape and is bothered by corporate sponsorships attached to many tournaments.

“I still want to puke when I look at an outdoor channel and see guys grabbing a fish out of a tank and running it across a stage like they’ve just won the Boston Marathon,” Zentner said. “It just turns me off.”

The Minnesota DNR issues roughly 600 tournament permits per year. Broadly speaking, the agency requires permits when there are 30 or more entrants for open-water contests and above 150 when the water is iced over.

Al Stevens, a fisheries program consultant for the agency, said permits help the department manage where tournaments are held and make sure popular lakes don’t get overused. The cost of processing permit applications and compiling after-event reports grew more than six-fold in the last decade. The citizen panel recommended a fee to replace dollars currently drawn from a fund fed by regular fishing license fees.

Under the new system, it will cost tournament organizers $120 for an ice-fishing permit; $400 for open-water events with more than 100 people and an onsite fish weigh-in; $500 for midsized contests where fish are taken offsite; and $1,000 for tournaments with 100 or more entrants and an offsite weighing.

Stevens said Minnesota’s rates are unrivaled. For instance, Vermont charges a flat $50 fee and Washington, New Mexico and South Carolina are in the $25 range. Many other states charge no fees.

Mickey Goetting, Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation conservation director, said the fees will be especially cumbersome to groups that put on multiple-tournament leagues. The federation would have rather seen the DNR establish a “tournament stamp” that anglers could buy at a nominal fee with their license that would get them into any event.

Stevens has concerns of his own.

He’s betting some organizers will limit the size of their fields to avoid having to get a permit and others will just try to fly under the radar.

“I’m afraid of the backlash,” he said. “That’s just bad for fish management. When we lose sight of how many tournaments there are and where they’re at it could lead to more conflicts at lakes. That’s not what we want.”