Eleven commercial fishing operations are left in Michigan. In the 1960s there were more than 700. The two species they are legally allowed to net, whitefish and yellow perch, have collapsed since zebra and quagga mussels gutted the plankton base of the Great Lakes.
That is the argument behind House Bills 5801 and 5802 - a 45-page package introduced on April 16 by Reps. Dave Prestin (R-Cedar River) and Jason Morgan (D-Ann Arbor) that would require the DNR to open walleye, lake trout and yellow perch to commercial harvest across Michigan's commercial waters. It has sat in the House Committee on Natural Resources and Tourism since, and summer hearings have made it the state's most contested fisheries issue.
Prestin traces the current restrictions to a different era, when sea lamprey had wrecked Great Lakes stocks and rehabilitation was the priority.
"These regulations were designed to reduce commercial fishing during a time of needed rehabilitation," he told a hearing in May. "But now they place a disproportionate regulatory burden on the few family-owned commercial fishing businesses that are left."
For Lakon Williams, operations manager at Bay Port Fish Company, it is an existential question rather than a policy preference.
"We're all historic businesses who have been here since the early 1800s," Williams told WCMU. "And we're all good, upstanding people who don't want to hurt the lake, just want to create a living that can be passed on like it used to be. We just want to be managed fairly."
The DNR's response has been unusually direct for an agency discussing pending legislation. Officials say the bills were drafted without their input, and Fisheries Chief Randy Claramunt told lawmakers the package would defeat its own purpose.
"The impacts of these bills include the inability to manage for sustainable fishery, which in my opinion goes against the intention of the bills to help the commercial fisheries," Claramunt said, citing litigation exposure, treaty conflicts and enforcement problems.
He also disputes the funding mechanism. The bills raise commercial licence fees by 5% to cover the new workload. "This would cost Fish Division over $1,000,000 and the estimated revenue is less than 1/4 of a million," Claramunt said.
Anglers keep coming back to a ratio. Recreational fishing is worth roughly $4 billion a year in Michigan by the DNR's accounting. The commercial sector is worth about $5 million.
Bryan Burroughs, director of Michigan Trout Unlimited, said the bill "ignores a lot of very foundational principles about privatization of public resources" and would put the state "in lapse of our agreement with our tribal nations."
"The potential harm it could cause to not only the fish populations of our Great Lakes, but also the industry supporting sport fishing could impact Michigan for decades," Benson said. "The restocking efforts, planting, rehabilitation etc. have all been paid for by funds from our sportsmen and women, the DNR, and private efforts."
The gear itself is the sticking point for Mark Sak, a Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame inductee and former national walleye tournament competitor. The legislation would allow gill nets and trawling.
"Netting can take as many fish in three days than recreational anglers can catch in a month," Sak said. "Gill nets kill many other species of fish like pike and musky. The fish swims into the net, and gets its gills stuck in the net and dies. There is no catch-and-release when using gill nets."
On the bill's branding, he was blunt: "It is insane to see lawmakers calling this the 'modernization' of commercial netting in Michigan when it actually takes it back to the dark ages."
A more measured objection came from Alpena News columnist Jim Johnson, who sat in on a meeting between Rep. Cam Cavitt, commercial industry representatives and recreational anglers at a Harrisville tackle shop. Johnson accepts that northern Lake Huron's commercial fleet is in real trouble - but notes the walleye the bills would unlock are concentrated in Saginaw Bay, where whitefish stocks and the commercial fishery are both holding up better than elsewhere. The benefit, in other words, would largely miss the operators making the strongest case for it.
Johnson raised one more point that has barely surfaced in testimony: commercial licence fees have never covered the cost of administering the commercial program, so recreational licence dollars have been underwriting it for years.
