Fifty members of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa chartered a bus to Madison on May 29. Three hours of testimony in the Western District of Wisconsin. Both governments presented their case. Federal Judge William Conley — chief judge — did not rule.

He recommended the two governments work together.

The temporary restraining order from May 1 remains in place. Non-member walleye and musky harvest continues on all 19 reservation lakes the tribe closed in April. The tribe’s reservation-wide ban on forward-facing sonar — technology that lets anglers see live images of individual fish up to 100 feet ahead — remains unenforceable. The conservation measures are frozen. The harvest is not.

Signal 073 documented the restraining order. This is what happened next: nothing. The hearing occurred. Evidence was presented. The judge asked why the parties hadn’t tried to collaborate first.

Here is what the collaboration looks like from one side.

In the weeks before filing the lawsuit, Wisconsin announced it was cutting walleye stocking by 45 percent, musky stocking by 70 percent, and closing the Osceola fish hatchery. The Brule hatchery nearly followed — lawmakers approved $4 million in emergency funding only in May, after the lawsuit was already filed. The underlying cause: a $16 million shortfall because fishing license fees haven’t been raised since 2005. Twenty-one years of flat revenue against rising costs. The state defunded its own conservation infrastructure and then sued the tribe for trying to conserve.

Here is what the collaboration looks like from the other side.

Over thirty years, Lac du Flambeau fisheries managers have stocked more than 415 million walleyes on reservation lakes with tribal funds. Their hatcheries have raised more than two million muskie fry. In 2022, the tribe closed Flambeau Lake to non-member walleye and musky harvest. By 2025, walleye populations rose from 0.2 fish per acre to 3.1 — a fifteen-fold increase in three years. No state funding. No legislative action. The tribe closed one lake and the biology recovered.

The tribe brought this data to court. Judge Conley said the tribe “lacked enough evidence to justify the restrictions.”

At the same hearing, Wisconsin DNR specialist Joseph Hennessy testified that a general decline in walleye populations is taking place across the state. The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission agreed. The state’s own biologist confirmed the decline the tribe is trying to address. The judge said the tribe didn’t prove it.

This is the same Judge Conley who ruled against the Lac du Flambeau tribal government in August 2025, siding with non-tribal homeowners in a decade-long road easement dispute over tribal land. President John Johnson Sr. said then that he was “concerned about the precedent this decision may set for Tribal governments across the country.”

After the fishing hearing, Johnson said: “Hopefully in the future everything’s going to work out, and we’re going to get that protection that we need.”

Tribal elder Bagwajikwe Madosh said: “They’re not listening to how to take care of our world.”

The tribe closed 19 of its 260 lakes. Less than eight percent. Johnson told the court: “If we were to shut down 19, there’s 241 more lakes.” The tribe wasn’t closing the water. The tribe was triage-tagging the patients.

Vice President George Thompson named the asymmetry directly: “We are doing what the State can no longer do.” He cited the 45 percent walleye cut, the 70 percent musky cut, the closed hatchery, the eliminated fisheries positions. The tribe picked up what the state put down. The court told the tribe to put it back.

“Work together” is a reasonable sentence. It is also the sentence the state earned least. The government that defunded its hatcheries, stagnated its license fees for two decades, eliminated fisheries positions, and filed a lawsuit thirteen days after a conservation emergency declaration — that government is being recommended as a collaborator to the tribe that funded the hatchery, proved the method, and chartered a bus to make its case.

The recommendation isn’t neutral. It has a direction. It points from the people who have the data toward the government that defunded the data collection. It asks the conservators to partner with the entity whose budget created the crisis. And while the recommendation works its way through the calendar, the restraining order holds the door open and the fish keep leaving.

The 1980s echo hasn’t faded. Mobs at boat landings screaming “Save a Walleye, Spear an Indian.” Science proved tribal harvest was three percent of the total take. Forty years later, the tribe isn’t harvesting — the tribe is the one saying stop. And the state that confirmed in 1991 that the tribe was never the threat is in federal court arguing the tribe can’t protect what it proved it can protect, on its own land, with its own money, using a method that produced a fifteen-fold recovery on the one lake it was allowed to try.

The bus drove back to Lac du Flambeau. The restraining order stayed in Madison. The walleye don’t know the difference.

// NEON BLOOD

Sources: ICT News, PBS Wisconsin, Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Law Journal, WJFW, Outdoor Life, Superior Telegram, PBS Wisconsin (road dispute)