March 15, Site 7
| Measurement | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Water temp | 4.2°C | should be 2.1°C |
| Whitefish | 2 | undersized |
| Smallmouth bass | 14 | |
| Yellow perch | 23 |
The bass are healthy. Good size, well-fed. They like this temperature. They're thriving in water that's killing the whitefish.
My grandfather fished this site for forty years. Consistent whitefish. He taught me to read the water here, to see where they'd be.
They're not coming back.
March 18, Site 12
| Measurement | Value |
|---|---|
| Water temp | 4.8°C |
| Whitefish | 0 |
| Smallmouth bass | 19 |
| Yellow perch | 31 |
Zero whitefish. First time in three years of monitoring this site.
I'm supposed to present these findings at next month's fisheries meeting. The elders will talk about maintaining tradition. The younger fishers will talk about adaptation. Nobody will agree.
And I'll sit there with my spreadsheets knowing that the science is clear but the answer isn't.
Except maybe it is.
March 22, Site 3
| Measurement | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Water temp | 3.9°C | |
| Whitefish | 4 | 1 legal size |
| Smallmouth bass | 11 | |
| Yellow perch | 18 |
Four whitefish. I measure the legal one three times. 32.4 cm. Barely makes it.
I think about keeping it. I have a permit. It's legal. But I look at it in the net and I can't.
My grandfather would have kept it. Would have thanked it, prepared it properly, shared it with family. That's the relationship.
But he was pulling hundreds. The relationship worked when both sides were abundant.
I release it. Watch it disappear.
March 28, Site 7 (return)
| Measurement | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Water temp | 4.5°C | |
| Whitefish | 3 | undersized |
| Smallmouth bass | 16 | |
| Yellow perch | 26 |
Three more whitefish. Still too small. Bass numbers climbing.
Tomorrow I'll check Site 9. Pull up more data. Watch the models adjust downward.
The models tell us what's dying. What to do about it—that's a different question.
But I'm starting to think I know.
March 30, ceremonial harvest observation
Went out with the ceremonial harvest today. Wanted to see it from that perspective.
Six boats. Twenty people. Tobacco offerings at dawn. Everything done according to tradition, even though everyone knows the catch will be small.
They pulled eleven whitefish total. Everyone got a piece. A taste. A reminder.
I watched them clean the fish, prepare them, distribute them. Every step careful. Every step ceremonial. Maintaining something that the data says is already gone.
One of the elders saw me watching. "You think we're foolish," he said.
"No. I think you're maintaining relationship."
"And you? What are you maintaining?"
The data, I told him. The monitoring. The documentation of what's being lost.
But driving home, I kept thinking: maybe that's not enough. Maybe maintaining relationship and measuring decline are different things.
Maybe it means acknowledging what the lake is becoming. What can actually feed people now.
April 2, Site 14
| Measurement | Value |
|---|---|
| Water temp | 5.3°C |
| Whitefish | 0 |
| Smallmouth bass | 22 |
| Yellow perch | 35 |
| Walleye | 5 |
Zero whitefish. The bass are everywhere now.
My grandfather taught me to read the water. To see what's actually there.
The lake in transformation. Old species struggling. New species thriving. Waters that used to freeze staying open all winter.
Our treaty rights are to these waters. To harvest what lives here. What lives here now is bass. Perch. Species that are adapting, thriving, moving into warming waters.
The treaties from the 1800s guaranteed rights to specific territories, specific resources. Our ancestors fought for those rights. Their descendants went to court to defend them.
But the treaties guaranteed rights to harvest what was here. What's here now has changed.
April 5, final site
| Measurement | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Water temp | 5.8°C | |
| Whitefish | 2 | undersized |
| Smallmouth bass | 31 | |
| Yellow perch | 44 |
Thirty-one bass. Forty-four perch. Two whitefish that won't survive to spawn.
I close my field notebook. The season's data is complete.
Next month's meeting, I'm going to recommend we develop bass and perch harvest protocols. The whitefish monitoring continues. The restoration efforts continue. But we also recognize that our treaty rights are to these waters, and these waters now hold different fish.
The ceremonial harvest can continue. Should continue. That's about maintaining cultural relationship, about remembering, about who we are.
But feeding the community—that requires adapting to what the lake is becoming.
The elders will disagree. They'll say I'm abandoning tradition, abandoning the whitefish, abandoning the relationship our ancestors maintained.
But my grandfather taught me to read the water. To see what's actually there.
Thirty-one bass. Forty-four perch. A lake that can still feed us.
I open the notebook again. Start drafting the protocol. The lake keeps teaching.