BIRCHDALE, Minn. _ Looking downstream on the Rainy River, it's hard at first to see how spring is changing along the northern border.
Snowbanks still lined the American shore on a recent morning here, 45 miles west of International Falls, as fishing guide Justin Wiese raced to get his boat in the water under the morning sun.
Just a few miles up, the Little Fork and the Big Fork rivers had busted open overnight, sending a winter's worth of debris into the Rainy, along with thousands of ice chunks the size of sofas, rafts and rugby balls. It was the last of the ice-out, the final phase of one of the most active fishing seasons in Minnesota.
"Ready to dodge some icebergs?" Wiese shouted to a handful of other fishermen waiting to get after walleye.
But this year, the Rainy River anglers would not be keeping their fish. This year, for the first time, the Department of Natural Resources imposed catch-and-release rules on the border river. One major reason: Ice-out is happening earlier and earlier each spring, leaving more time for open-water fishing and, the agency fears, placing increased pressure on the river's famous walleyes.
Which means that on one of the nation's finest walleye rivers, during the best time of year to catch the prized game fish, nobody was allowed to take one home.
It's a telling symptom of climate change, and just one of countless ways that rising temperatures are altering the lives of Minnesotans and the landscape of their state.
Around the world, climate change is forcing people to revamp the way they fight wildfires, prepare for typhoons, nurture their crops through drought and manage coastal flooding. In Minnesota, the same forces are changing the state's response to spring floods, the way foresters choose trees for timber and which lakefronts can have summer cabins or resorts.
Ice is just one indicator. Across Minnesota, lakes are losing up to four days of ice every 10 years, according to the state climatology office. And it's not just Minnesota: Rivers and lakes across the continent are tending to freeze later and thaw earlier.
"You think of all the ways people interact with lake ice _ skating, fishing derbies, iceboats," said John Magnuson, an ecologist and limnologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "And already, in some of these lakes you have about a month less to do it."
As a Northern Minnesota fishing guide, Wiese has been as busy as ever this spring. The type of people who hire guides and brave frigid sunrises are not necessarily doing it for fish that they can eat, he said. They're typically in it to see the northern edge of the country, to get back on a boat for the first time in months, to chase trophy fish that they would photograph and release even in normal times.
But he nonetheless worries what a catch-and-release season will do to the local economy. Aside from the enthusiasts, he said, there's been a clear drop-off in the number of boats on the water. At some well-known hot spots on the Rainy River, hundreds of boats would normally line up during the ice-out season, so close together that a person could walk across the river without getting wet, he said.
Those days were few and far between this year.
"It makes you wonder if people are staying away," Wiese said.
