THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FISHING HOLE? Otherwise known as Lake Michigan.

"Forty years ago, if you waved a wand over Lake Michigan and declared the alewives gone, you would have been a hero," says Jim Lubner, education coordinator for the University of Wisconsin's Sea Grant Institute.

(Yes, I remember the stink each June.) There was no magic wand, but Atlantic salmon had an appetite for alewife fry. (Not to be confused with Friday fish fry. OK, I'll be serious.) However, the Lotke-Volterra equation (work problem 19) is still useful for modelling predator-prey cycles.

This year the salmon were biting on just about anything, and commercial fisherman Dennis Hickey says he knows why: They are starving.

The 62-year-old Baileys Harbor resident makes his living netting whitefish. Wisconsin commercial fishermen are prohibited from taking any salmon or trout; those are strictly for the recreation industry. But his side business is carving out guts and slicing fillets for customers of the charter salmon fishing operation next
door.

Salmon stomachs are normally packed with alewives - another saltwater species not native to the lake. Not this year. This year, Hickey says, the lake's biggest fish are swimming on empty.

The Lake Michigan fishery, apparently, is an attempt to create a recreational theme park in a dangerous natural environment.

But the truth is, even if scientists could figure out how to eliminate the 180 or more exotic and invasive species that have colonized the Great Lakes, even if they could figure out how to bring back Lake Michigan's six species of chubs that have disappeared, or bring back its beleaguered lake herring, sturgeon and lake trout, many of the sportsmen and tourist-dependent businesses now hooked on recreational fishing probably would not want them to.

Also, apparently, the system is a bit too complex for technocrats to manage. (No, this is not ideological spouting. Put in three or four state variables representing fish that are predators, prey, or sometimes both predator and prey, and do the math.)

Nearly four decades later, salmon have woven themselves into our cultural and ecological fabric. It's a delicate balancing act by the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana to keep enough alewives around to feed the salmon, but not so many that they once again dominate the lake. The states also annually plant non-native brown trout and steelhead trout, and each year the federal government stocks about 2 million native lake trout - a species that evolved in the lake over thousands of years but disappeared in the 1950s.

Today, biologists must cultivate the cobbled-together ecosystem like a farmer tends crops. It isn't natural, but it keeps anglers happy and alewife numbers under control.

Not only that, but, as at Jurassic Park, life will find a way.

This year, a group of fishery experts responsible for making stocking recommendations on Lake Huron considered advocating a one-year halt to salmon stocking because of a crash in alewife numbers. Adding to that is fact that an unknown number of Lake Huron's salmon are starting to reproduce on their own in some of northern Michigan's most pristine streams.

The committee backed off on those recommendations after protests from the sport fishing community.

"I could see where Lake Huron could go without stocking almost immediately, if the politics would permit. But I don't think they will," says Chuck Krueger, science director for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, which helps coordinate fish management policies for the Great Lakes states and provinces.

Wisconsin DNR biologists also worry that - just as is happening in Lake Huron - some Lake Michigan salmon are starting to reproduce on their own. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but because the extent of natural salmon reproduction is a mystery, biologists could be losing their ability to manage overall salmon numbers.

"This is the central issue for us in managing Lake Michigan," Horns says. "Lake Michigan is a perturbed, constantly changing, high-maintenance system whose future is not clear."

And here comes the problem for the technocrats.

Politicians and conservationists tout the value of salmon as a reason to protect and restore the lake. But they ignore the fact that to truly restore the lake, salmon would be among the first species that would have to go.

To find a Great Lake where a real restoration effort has been undertaken, one must look north, to Lake Superior.

The biggest Great Lake, which never completely lost its lake trout in the lamprey invasion, is an example of a damaged system that has largely recovered its natural state over the past few decades.

It's now home to a reproducing lake trout population that feasts heavily on native lake herring, a once-struggling species that has recovered in the past several decades and one that many biologists believe provides a healthier diet for lake trout.

Lake Superior today has limited salmon stocking but, unlike Lake Michigan, it does not need it as a form of life support.

Lake Superior is a more natural, self-sustaining ecosystem than Lake Michigan. But it's not nearly as popular with anglers.

That Lake Superior will kill you if you're not careful has a lot to do with this difference. But the technocrats are undeterred on Lake Michigan.

Restore the herring through a hatchery program, the theory goes, and you could restore a breeding population of lake trout. Restore the lake trout, and you could once again achieve a self-sustaining ecosystem, one that doesn't require annual salmon plantings.

But some anglers argue that if any forage species should be planted, it shouldn't be native lake herring. It should be invasive alewives. Biologists chuckle at the notion. Privately. Most are reluctant to say something publicly that will rile the sport fishing groups that, to a large extent, pay their salaries through fishing license fees.

Nearly $19 million of the Wisconsin DNR's $24.7 million 2002-'03 fisheries budget was funded by fishing licenses and salmon and trout stamps, according to the department's Dennis Schenborn.

The sportsmen aren't shy about flexing that influence.

Ah, but like any good sea story, there has to be a "no s***" moment. That comes at the very end of the article.

There is, of course, a presumption built into this squabble: that humans are still in control of the lake.

That last should be the basis of a Reflection Statement by aspiring technocrats everywhere.