Spearing bass, and some lessons

My people are known as Mississauga Ojibway Indians/First Nations. Our entire culture revolves/revolved around the water. We were highly mobile, compared to our neighbors- the Iroquois. Whether relying on wild rice, ducks, geese, frogs, beaver or fish, the majority of our food came from lakes, rivers and marshes. As with many other eastern woodlands/Great Lakes tribes, we employed a lot of methods for catching fish, including weirs, basket traps, bowfishing, netting and spearing. Though some tribes in the Americas did use hooks and lines, I have not seen any evidence of the Ojibway nations doing so. 

Spearfishing for the most part is highly illegal in present-day Ontario, except for one exception; if you are a First Nation with hunting and fishing rights within the province, or within a certain part of Ontario. My community -the Mississaugas of Rice Lake, also known as Hiawatha First Nation- had no hunting rights for the past century or so. I'm not going to make this into a political discussion, so suffice it to say, back in December that was finally resolved and my community was granted hunting and fishing rights back into our traditional territory. This might explain one of the many reasons that I have not had the chance to post as frequently as I did a year ago. Been hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering as much as I can!

So tonight, my cousin came over and explained that we were idiots for not focusing on spearfishing this past spring. We missed the pickerel run, mostly due to my school schedule, but also to the severe weather we've had in Ontario this spring.. literally 4 ft high waves on Rice Lake during a large portion of the pickerel spawning run (which makes for really crappy spearfishing. We had talked a lot about it over the past month, and finally decided tonight to just go out and try the new spears we made back in March. Josh (the cousin) couldn't find his, so we ended up with just mine. 

My spear is made from a young white pine sapling that is approximately 8ft long, two steel prongs, and lashed together with codline (I believe this is often called Bankline south of the 49th). The prongs were made by me with a miniature forge of firebricks and a gas-torch. I used standard steel rods that were 3/16ths of an inch thick. I bought the rods from Home Depot. The ends were bent at a 90-degree angle while under heat, and then the rods were annealed. Once annealed, I cut very small barbs into the rods, and tape the tips to a fairly fine point. These I plan to make larger later when I get the new forge built next Friday. After that is all done, its' time to harden and then temper the prongs. This is where it gets interesting, as the tips of the prongs must be hard enough to hold a sharp tip, yet soft enough that when you strike a rock (not IF you strike a rock, but WHEN you strike a rock) you don't snap the tips of your prongs. Basically what I like to do is keep the entire prong fairly soft in temper, except for the very tip (which I keep about the same hardness as a knife). So first I bring them up to temperature where the steel is no longer magnetic. Once that is done, I quenched them in old motor oil. Then I scrape the steel clean with wire brushes, so that I can watch the tempering procedure. Using a gas-torch, I dance the flame back and forth, aiming for a light blue tone on the majority of the prong. However, I only aim for a light brassy tone on the last 1/2 inch of prong, towards the tip. 

Once the prongs are tempered, I drill a small hole into the spearshaft (at the thick end) about 3-4 inches in from the end. This hole is about 3/16" in diameter, and fits the bent ends of the prongs snugly. I add a slight channel from the hole to the end of the spearshaft, to help hold the prongs snugly. Once this is done, I shape the end to be a bit more aqua-dynamic, and then fit the prongs in. Afterwards, I lashed codline tightly around the prongs. This technique is what I learned from an old Chippewa Ojibway from Saugeen First Nation (over on Lake Huron). The spear end looks like this;



Alright, so onto the fun part...

We get into my Kawartha canoe, whose nickname is aptly "Tippy". We have no proper lighting, so we use two flashlights. With only one spear, and obviously wanting to control the canoe, I had Josh sit in the bow, while I paddled us at a snail's crawl. Two tips for anyone wanting to try boat-based spearfishing; get good lighting and a real stable canoe. We'll be building an English-style punt this summer out of pine and cedar boards, both for duck season, and for the fall pickerel run. Josh was hoping for pickerel, but I knew we were unlikely to find any. We ended up scouting the water out for at least 45 minutes. After a while of checking along the cattail edge and finding nothing, we turned back and went westerly along the north shore of Rice Lake, heading for the rock and stumps of the shallows. 

This was where we found luck. After missing twenty or more Large-mouthed bass, Josh had one close by. WHACK! And that was when the struggle began. Believe me on this, if you think a fish can put up a fight on a hook and line, you have not seen a 5lb bass get hit by an Ojibway with a spear! He held her to the bottom until she stopped struggling for the most part. Every muscle in his upper body was straining -to keep the fish on the spear AND to keep his butt in the canoe! Finally he flipped her in. 

Next lesson; kill any fish you spear immediately. We decided to not "bother" with that, though something told us both that we should. That was when we saw an 8lb mother of all bass cruise right for the spear tip... and that was when the bass Josh caught decided to spasm and slam into the hull of the canoe repeatedly. The 8er was gone in a flash, and it took us another 30 minutes to see any fish. This is why we decapitated the one Josh caught. No more splashing attempts.. We were turning back to head home (it was well past 1am at this point, and we started around 11pm), when Josh saw one that was less than a pound. "Don't bother Cousin, I don't think you can get one that small with that spea-WHACK!" Annnd that was when Josh learned that even a tiny fish on a spear can put up a helluva fight. Once he flipped her into the boat, I severed the spine immediately, so that we'd have no repeats. Josh got close to another half a dozen, but they always eluded his shots. I tried a few times, but gave up, as its' difficult to aim from the back of the canoe! When it hit 2am, we knew it was time to pack it in. The night air was just above freezing tonight, even though the water was warm. I was soaked, and my butt was asleep. Josh's ankles were burning from crouching to balance the canoe with every shot he took.

So here are our results! 



Not too bad!

We'll be building a better boat, and setting up a proper lighting system on it. As well, we'll be making some Australian-style fishing spears, with paralyzer-style prongs. I'll also be setting up my bow with a reel in a few days, as the carp are everywhere! 

Anyways, I'm tired, and we've got at least one successful night of spearfishing in this spring. Glad to be back on the forums, hope y'all enjoy the read!

Guest Blogger: Arthur Haines - How Being Healthy Protects Drinking Water

Once again I have the honour of welcoming my good friend Arthur's words onto this blog. In the near future I will be interviewing Arthur on the Living the Thirteen Moons Podcast. If you wish to know more about him, check out the Delta Institute of Natural History, or his Youtube Channel.  The reason I wanted this on my blog is three-fold. The first and foremost reason is because I care about water quality, for both us and the environment itself. This reason is enough for me to want this sort of knowledge on here. However I also work at a wonderful program called TRACKS Youth Outreach, which focuses on teaching Native and non-Native youth about science, especially environmental science. You can find us on Facebook here. We have been teaching a lot about water health and what our people in Western culture can do to protect the water that is on this big, beautiful planet. This is another good reason to pass on this information regarding water health. Finally, with the recent proceedings here in Canada, we have lost a lot of fundamental protection for our lakes, rivers and streams. It is up to us now as citizens to do our part to take care of our waterways. This again is a fundamental reason as to why this article is vital for our continuing survival, not to mention our current environment's. So a big big miigwetch to Arthur Haines, and without further adieu...

How Being Healthy Protects Drinking Water

First, let’s build awareness of the issue: pharmaceutical drugs (among other chemicals) are routinely detected in public drinking water supplies here in the United States. One of the primary sources of these drugs is people--specifically, those who use pharmaceutical drugs. When you use a drug (prescription or over-the-counter) some of that drug passes un-metabolized through your body and is excreted into the septic system. Those drugs then enter the ground water or sewer systems (depending on where you live) and ultimately end up in the bodies of wild animals or in the bodies of people (especially if you live in an area with waste water treatment facilities that recycle water for drinking). So, to summarize this paragraph, many people in metropolitan areas (and some people in rural areas) are being exposed to low, constant doses of antibiotic, antifertility, pain-relieving, and mood-altering medications. Even aquifers have been found to be contaminated by synthetic medicines.

The amount of these drugs in the public water system is low (it would be described as trace). That has led many water suppliers to claim there is no harm caused by the presence of these compounds. However, no test has shown that exposure is safe (especially in the long run) and some recent research finds that harm is being caused. Remember that most medicine is to be taken for a short time and then discontinued. But when you get low doses in your drinking water, you are constantly exposed to a myriad of chemicals--in one review, 63 drugs were found during testing in watersheds around cities and 56 of those were in the public water supply. These low dose medicines in the water have been shown to slow growth of human embryonic kidney cells, speed cancer cell proliferation, and alter blood cell activity. Further, there is evidence that adding chlorine, a common component of urban drinking water, makes the pharmaceutical drugs more toxic. There is no doubt that some wildlife species are being affected. For example, male fish in some areas are being feminized.

So, what do you do about this? Well, you may decide to drink only spring water. That would protect you and your family (note: your home filtration system was likely not designed to remove trace amounts of pharmaceutical drugs). But what about those people who can’t afford bottled water? And what about the other-than-human-persons we share this world with? This is a case where we need to be unselfish. Drugs in the water supply are going to come back to harm us. What if your child lives or one day moves to a metropolitan area and becomes exposed to these compounds? The solution for this dilemma is that we need to be healthier. We need to ingest fewer drugs, wash and adorn ourselves with more eco-friendly products (because those end up in the water as well), and even consider what our toilet paper is doing to the world (recycled paper contains Bisphenol-A, an endocrine disruptor, which also ends up in the water supply).

Regardless of your diet and lifestyle, most people will become ill and be in need of medicine at some point in their life. This is where I encourage people to turn to natural products, even better, those medicines that they gather from the landscapes around their homes. These plants and fungi are ever present in the ecosystem. They are eaten by animals (who excrete them into the environment). They decay in the fall, releasing minerals and various natural compounds. They are all around us, in the leaf litter and in the ground water, and anyone who spends time in the outdoors is constantly exposed to them. Based on what we know, constant exposure to wild plant phytochemicals has a role in generating health (so long as toxins are avoided). Hypothetically, if I were to ingest staghorn sumac for an infection, I would ultimately be excreting chemicals that are already found in the watershed (where I gathered them in the first place). There is no introduction of new or synthetic compounds. No need to gain resistance to novel drugs. No need to worry about the secondary impacts.

Being healthy is the primary way we protect our water supplies from pharmaceutical drugs. Using natural medicine is the second line of defense. Of course, the over-arching principle here is that we need to be aware of what our actions do to the world (and the many ways that poor health hurts everyone, not just the person afflicted with the ailment). Remember: humans did not weave the web of life, they are merely a strand in it. Whatever humans do to the web, they do to themselves (adapted from Chief Seattle).