Tag Archives: A Life of Subsistence Fishing

A Life of Subsistence Fishing on Grand Traverse Bay for Ed and Cindy John

commercial fishing, native american couple, june 2016They’re married, they’re Native American, and they make a living fishing on Grand Traverse Bay. Ed and Cindy John share thoughts about subsistence fishing during a windy day setting nets. “When you look at the lake you see a calm beautiful surface, but when you talk about the fishery, when you go underneath, it’s like a metropolis down there,” says Cindy John, her piercing eyes darting from depth sounder to GPS coordinates to husband Ed, precariously braced against a gunwale. Today, West Grand Traverse Bay is anything but a calm surface. Two days into a ferocious summer blow, the blue-green miles of water between the peninsulas are a jagged fabric of whitecaps that skitter crates of netting across the Linda Sue’s tilting aft deck. Sideways to the wind, the heavy trawler wallows in the wave troughs, its growling diesel outdrive pushing steadily toward the edge of a deep-water bank, where the Johns hope to intercept schools of whitefish and lake trout in their summer pattern. Great story, Read the rest here 18:01