For the past five years, I’ve been making the trek up north to Cheboygan, MI to document one of the shortest fishing seasons in North America. The season, which starts at 8:00 am on the first Saturday of February ends after the sixth sturgeon is speared on frozen Black Lake. Some years, the season lasts over an hour. This year, it lasted just 17 minutes.

The season is the culmination of a decades-long partnership between government, non-profits, academics, and fishers to continue the tradition of sturgeon spearing while preserving the once-endangered species. This year, I was commissioned by The New York Times to document the season and the economic impact it has on this small Northern Michigan community. Click here for the article and scroll down for images from this year as well as an essay I wrote about the 2022 season and more photos from my previous trips.

The digital display on the truck read -6 degrees as we wound our way down South Black River Road. The snow covered parking lot at Onaway State Park crackled as the four wheel drive crunched the icy gravel beneath us. We found one of the few remaining spots near the boat launch and looked out across the lake from the comfort of our heated Tacoma.

The sun had just started to peek above the snow capped evergreens along the frozen shores of Black Lake in Northern Michigan. The hum of ATV’s and snowmobiles echoed through the trees, their roars slightly dulled by the soft white carpet blanketing everything in sight. As snowmobiles and ATV’s criss-crossed the surface, ferrying supplies, people, and a few beers to one of the hundreds of ice shanties dotting the lake, I bundled up, slung my camera over my shoulder, and set out for a cluster of ice shanties a few hundred yards from the shore.

When I blinked, the cold air would briefly freeze my eyelashes - a fitting gesture since the sturgeon season can end in the blink of an eye. Best not to close them for too long. Photographing one of the shortest fishing seasons in North America is an especially unique mix of stark cold, eerie calm, and sudden, unpredictable chaos. Of course, most of that chaos is internal - my own mix of emotions about whether I’ll get “the shot.” The lake itself is mostly calm, serene even, aside from the aforementioned snowmobiles and the ever-present threat of frostbite. The fishers are inside their shanties, the sky is a soft orange fading to a pale, icy blue, and the rising sun hovers just above the treeline along the eastern shore.

I awkwardly reach my gloved hand inside my pocket and fumble for my phone. In just a few minutes, fishers will receive a mass text message announcing the official start of the 2022 Sturgeon Fishing Season. Just 36 minutes after that, another text message — and an army of volunteers and Michigan Department of Natural Resources staff — will announce sturgeon season is over for the year.

In just over half an hour, the total amount of sturgeon allowed to be caught in Michigan had been reached.

That amount? Six. Yes, you read that right, six sturgeon. Not six per fisher. Not six per day. Six total, for the entire year.

By 1994, the sturgeon population was less than one percent of its historical average, leading the state of Michigan to designate them a threatened species. Working with tribal, university, and nonprofit partners, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources began working to rehabilitate the sturgeon population. Strict limits were placed on the number of sturgeon allowed to be harvested. Hatcheries were established to boost the sturgeon population in the few healthy habitats that remained in the state.

Fast-forward to today, the efforts are paying off. It will take time to restore sturgeon to sustainably healthy levels. Female sturgeon don’t reach maturity until they are twenty years old, so efforts to replenish the population have only recently begun bearing fruit. Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, researchers and conservationists, much like the sturgeon fishers themselves, are optimistic. A multi-state partnership between several state and federal agencies are making a big dent, restocking area lakes with 25,000 sturgeon per year. In the spring, volunteers stand guard along the banks of their spawning grounds to protect against poachers. A giant iron sturgeon sculpture greets residents as they enter nearby Indian River, MI. Outside Onaway, MI a sign welcomes visitors to the Sturgeon Capitol of Michigan.

Back on the ice, I’m keeping an eye on the DNR staff. When a fisher successfully spears a sturgeon they have to notify DNR immediately. So when you see a couple of snowmobiles with drivers wearing orange vests, there’s a good chance they’re en route to a recent catch.

After greeting a few fishers I met while they set up their shanties the previous day, I saw some commotion about a hundred yards away. A man had emerged from his shanty and was waving his arms in excitement. I immediately started jogging towards him - as fast as I was able to while wearing heavy boots and lugging all of my camera gear. My intuition was correct. Five minutes into the season and Scott Ash had just caught one. A few minutes later, a DNR official verified it and gave him instructions for registering the catch. The same DNR official also passed along to me that two other sturgeon had also been caught a little further north. Just ten minutes in and half the number of sturgeon allowed to be harvested was already reached.

Scott loaded his catch and set out for the official DNR station up the road from the lake to register his 48 pounder. With precious little time remaining in the season, I made my way towards another small cluster of fishers. As I made the trek, I saw a DNR official on a snowmobile zoom towards a shanty about one hundred yards away. Is it another catch? I start running towards the shanty but before I get there, the DNR official scoots off to another nearby shack. I look around and see the same scene repeating itself on another section of the lake. When I approach the shanty and greet the fishers standing outside, they confirm my suspicions. The season was just called. The sixth fish, a 56 inch 35 lb male sturgeon was caught at 8:36 am. And just like that, the 2022 Sturgeon Season came to a close for another year.

Across the lake, hundreds of fishers began making plans to return to Black Lake in 2023, as certain as ever that it will be their year to snag one of these magnificent beasts. Some will try a new spot, others will play the odds, sticking to their annual traditions. All of them with the same belief that this will finally be the year the elusive creatures will succumb to their spears and deliver them to Black Lake glory.