After a decade, Band’s ‘food store’ is stocked once more

Years of poorly regulated commercial fishing left Red Lake nearly devoid of fish by 1997.  Now the fish population is coming back

 

By Chuck Haga
Star Tribune

 

RED LAKE, MINN. - Herb Mountain stood smiling in the boat's stern as it came off a placid Red Lake in late October. The 20-footer rode lower than it had when it went out because it carried the weight of three or four more men -- in fish.

It was like before, his grin said; good, like before.

Few examples illustrate the problems and potential of the unique "closed" status of the Red Lake Indian Reservation better than the big lake itself. Actually two large bodies of water connected by a narrow channel, they often are described as the band's "food store," a cherished hedge against dependency, tribal and individual. The band's claim to the resource has been rigorously protected -- and disastrously exploited.

The shallow basins of Upper and Lower Red Lake form a natural walleye fishery. Like Mille Lacs, they are well aerated top to bottom by wind and wave action, and for decades the tribal fishery ranked with logging as an economic mainstay for the Red Lake Ojibwe.

But in 1997, after years of poorly regulated commercial fishing, the fish were nearly gone.

Each year, the band's Department of Natural Resources counted fish in weekly survey nets. In 1987, the four test nets yielded 1,277 walleyes.

In 1997, the count was 12, and the band and state agreed to a 10-year fishing moratorium.

When the test nets were brought in again in 2005, the fish count was 1,230.

"The lake is back," said Pat Brown, a biologist hired to lead the restoration effort.

The debate now is whether to resume commercial fishing. "The tribal government sent a survey to all members, and we've had public meetings to talk about it," Brown said. The results were mixed, "but fishing the lake out again, we're not going to let that happen."

The lakes are closed to nonmembers except for the northeastern corner of the upper lake, where a strip of land was severed -- stolen, Red Lake maintains to this day -- when the reservation borders were set in 1889. Non-Indian resorts in and around Waskish are preparing for a resumption of walleye angling next spring, with special state limits.

'Our babies'

For 10 years in the 1980s and '90s, Mountain, 50, was a commercial fisherman. He rose at 4:30 a.m. to check his eight gill nets and haul his catch to the tribal fishery.

When he got his weight slip, his paycheck, he raced home to hang his nets to dry. Then he started over, returning to the big lake to reset the nets.

"Regardless of weather, you needed to get out there," he said. "It was a lot of work, but it was a lifestyle you picked up. When the lake closed, it was hard to give up that lifestyle."

He worked as a conservation officer after he put his nets away, then as a fisheries technician helping with restoration.

"As a game warden, I saw a lot of abuse of the lake," he said. "But it wasn't just Red Lakers' responsibility. People and restaurants from all over Minnesota bought those walleyes.

"And after taking part in this, bringing the lake back, I never want to see a gill net again," he said. "Those are our babies out there. We raised them."

The quandary Red Lake faces is this: The reservation is poor, with high unemployment. Sport fishing could spark an economic boom, with cabins and resorts and other business catering to visitors, much like what happened at Mille Lacs. But the member survey brought a clear message: They don't want nonmembers on Red Lake.

"A former tribal chairman once proposed allowing sport fishing on the western side," said Al Pemberton, a Red Lake Tribal Council member and head of the band's DNR.

"I told my mother about it," he said. "She got very quiet. She talked to me about what the lake meant to her. 'That was left for us,' she said. 'The old chiefs kept that for us. It's our food store. We're never going to starve as long as we have that lake.' "

Meaningless quotas

In the old days, fishing camps lined the shores of the two oblong lakes, each about 25 miles across and together covering more than 275,000 acres. All but about 48,000 acres of Upper Red Lake is within the reservation.

In the early morning fog, fires burned in the camps as fishing crews cooked breakfast, tended equipment and prepared to go onto the lake.

White anglers have long criticized the Indian practice of netting, but whites have set nets, too. In 1917, during World War I, the state opened a fishery on the reservation to help ease a general food shortage. State netting ended 10 years later, and the band took over.

Commercial fishing provided Red Lake with a bridge from old ways to new, converting a traditional resource from food to currency. Pemberton and Tribal Chairman Floyd (Buck) Jourdain admit that the band didn't manage the fishery well, contributing to its collapse.

Organized as a cooperative, it had a static annual quota of fish that could be taken. But the band didn't control the numbers of nets; some entrepreneurs reportedly dropped 100 or more in the lake, recruiting relatives and friends to help. As the fish limit approached each year, the band asked federal regulators for a quota extension, and it was always granted.

If commercial fishing returns, it will be closely regulated on the basis of good science, Brown said, with guidance from a technical committee formed by the band, the state DNR, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the University of Minnesota.

The lake was restocked in 1999, 2001 and 2003, and the walleye fingerlings were treated with a chemical that researchers can read to tell the age of a fish and whether it was stocked or naturally produced.

"Five years ago, most of the fish they pulled in tests had been stocked," Brown said. "The last two years, it was 85 percent natural reproduction."

The day's catch -- 224 walleyes weighing 390 pounds, plus some lunker northern pike, slab crappies and whitefish -- was to test the effect of renewed commercial netting. Three nets, each 300 feet long, 6 feet deep with a 3 1/2-inch stretch mesh, were set where the lake level drops from 2 feet to about 20 feet.

The fish were cleaned, with Mountain and other old hands happily and efficiently working through the bounty. Brown took test samples, but most of the fillets went to a tribal nursing home and elderly nutrition program.

Ron Beaulieu, a former fishery board member, stopped to watch. He took fish as a commercial operator, he said, but with just five nets.

"I warned them," he said of the bigger operators. "I warned about taking so many fish."