All good points here. I think the bottom line is, rules mean nothing without enforcement, & the way things are now, we have no legs to stand on. Outlaw commercial fishing in the Great Lakes ,across the board ,on a federal level & let the tribes & commercial guys come at us. Think outside the box, what we’re doing isn’t working so why keep doing it? Seems like all the money were donating would be better spent buying our own politician! They’re cheaper than they used to be!!
Whiskey is for drinkin', Water is for fightin' over! - Mark Twain
Michigan was well on its way to eliminating the commercial fishery on the Great Lakes when the Leblanc brothers opted to challenge the State by setting gillnets in Brimley Bay. Had the State ignored then MUCC director and grand potentate, tom washington and abrogated the treaty rights via a one time payment what you propose would be doable.
Remember, the Feds make no direct revenue from the Great Lakes Sport Fishery...none. While all the states are heavily dependent on the revenue streams both for their coastal economies as well as Fish and Game Management agency operating monies.
When Howard Tanner and Wayne Tody sent the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Federal agency in charge of management and oversight of commercial fisheries, both coastal marine and int he Great Lakes, they did not ask permission to plant coho. The notification was a proof of concept transmission only stating that it was the State of Michigan's intent to convert the largely useless alewife biomass that dominated the Great Lakes fish stocks into a viable SPORT fishery product. They recieved no official response, which I would take as an abrogation of oversight rights and responsibility by the NMS and Federal government. When that effort succeeded, the Feds were left scrambling to gain some level of oversight and control of the Great Lakes since it represents 22% of all fresh surface water on the planet. Two initiatives were "hatched" and slowly expanded: the Sea Lamprey Control Program and the International Joint Commission agreement that lead to the formation of Great Lakes Fishery Commission a joint International, and Federal/State agency that oversees Great Lakes management. The GLFC established lake specific management committees that were populated by State-level biologists to provide annual oversight and management concensus decisions with NO Federal representation or oversight. Well, that WAS until the Federal Courts actions that interpreted the Treaty of LaPointe (Treaty of 1842) granting commercial fishing rights to tribal signatories via the Crabb decision and the Fox decision interpreting the wording of the Treaty of 1836 to grant hunting AND fishing rights on Great Lakes waters.
From the initial Consent Decree in 1985 and forward a tribal representativis assigned to all lake management committees for Lakes Huron, Superior, and Michigan, essentially serving as serving as Federal proxies...
One thing I really found both irritating and VERY unprofessional was the near across the board attitude that Michigan had erred. I still get the Stinky Salmon comment from USFWS and USGS biologists. IF lake trout should remain as the keystone predator supported by nearly sixty years of Federal Dollars
In the seventies and eighties, if you were sitting in a Great Lakes management meeting with members of the USFWS, sometime, somewhere, somehow the "Sea Lamprey Card" would be played...just to remind everyone in the room the Federal resources were supporting sea lamprey control and thus propping-up the fishery. Over the last decade Federal managers would always point-out that it was a duel effect phenomenon that was impairing lake trout percent wild origin fish proportion in the the five statisctical grid districts that encompass the northern Lake Michigan segment- Sea Lamprey wounding mortality AND tribal commercial fishery exploitation. Every other year TFM treatments of the Manistique watershed over this interval has removed the sea lamprey wounding impacts, yet the lake trout wild origin trend remains nominal. How odd. That is why I had to chuckle when the Odawa tribal biologist whined about all the lake trout in tribal nets damaging their fisher's profitability since whitefish were their target species and higher profit catch item. "Guys are just leaving the fishery because they can't catch enough whitefish to make it worthwhile."
