Where I live, fishing has been an important part of our legacy.
From Michigan’s earliest days, catching fish has been important for both tourists
and locals. One fish in particular was important to northern Michigan: As early
as the 1870’s, well-to-do anglers who could afford the time and money for travel
came to northern Michigan searching for a trophy fish, a gray-blue beauty with
a large dorsal fin like a sail. This trout captured the attention of moneyed
fishermen from New York in part because of its scarcity – only a few remote
streams in the uninhabited north woods of Michigan furnished the right
combination of clear, cold water and gravel stream beds which allowed the rare fish
to thrive. Two of the streams were the Au Sable and the Manistee Rivers, those
that bisected northern Michigan just north of Roscommon County. It took a
special breed of fisherman to travel to this trackless wilderness, hire a guide
and outfitter for a strenuous upriver trip to reach the approximate center of
the state where large populations of the sought-after trout thrived.
The effort needed to reach the fishing grounds eased
somewhat after 1872 when an infant railroad line was laid out that came within
spitting distance of the two rivers where the fish lived. A tiny village
developed at the railroad station located between the two rivers and the
settlers there recognized the potential to earn a living from wealthy fishermen
who came to the outpost area. At the time, no one in the village knew the name
of the fish. The leading men of the tiny settlement known as Forest met to
discuss the matter. They decided the popular fish needed a name and a dead fish
was promptly produced then sent to Washington, D. C. for identification by an
expert at the Smithsonian Institute. The answer came back; the fish was an
Artic Grayling, unknown anywhere in the lower 48 states except for the northern
Michigan rivers and later, a few rivers in Montana. The settlers in Forest
decided to take quick action; they changed the name of their town from Forest
to Grayling and began to advertise their skills in guiding and outfitting
fishermen, the wealthier the better, you understand.
The happy convergence of wealth and need visited the village
for several years. Everyone was pleased, except for the fish, of course. As the
reputation of the village and the rivers grew, aided by stories published in
national outdoor magazines published in New York, pressure on the fish
populations increased year by year. Local fisherman didn’t help. In the manner
of the greedy, locals over-fished the waters; some reports tell of those who
filled their wagons with 300 pounds of fish, many breeding females full of
eggs. The overharvesting wasn’t the worst part; another insidious pressure was
slowly building from both Lake Michigan and Lake Huron coasts where the rivers
emptied their clean, cold water that was shaded by the millions of pine and
cedar trees that studded the banks of both rivers.
The growing threat from either coast was the slow progress
of lumbermen who were systematically denuding the forests along the rivers by
their harvest of the mighty white pine and any other trees that happened to be
in the way. The rivers provided the means of transport. The fisherman, even if
they had understood the impact of lumbering on the fish populations, had little
influence on the juggernaut of the lumbering business given its overwhelming
economic clout. The log drives scoured the river bottoms and wreaked havoc on
the fish habitat. The fisherman found fewer and fewer Grayling trout for their
creels. Even the mecca of Grayling, Michigan offered little chance for the
fisherman to catch the storied Grayling trout near the end of the lumbering
era. The fishing bonanza came to an end when fishermen began reporting of having
seen not a single fish, although more than one bragged that he had caught the
last Graying in Michigan.
By the 1930’s, Michigan had a fledgling State Fish and Game
Department that was concerned about the loss of the Grayling. In an attempt to
rescue the species, officials from the Department went to great lengths to
live-capture a few of the last fish and nurture them to success. They may have
killed the last of the native fish; their resuscitation of the species was
unsuccessful and no Grayling were ever found again in the native streams.
Since that failure, various efforts in re-introducing the
Grayling to Michigan waters have been undertaken. The last serious effort by
Michigan’s DNR was undertaken 30 years ago and although it also failed, they
reported having learned more about the fish and its need for clean water. Investigations
in Montana also provided clues about the Grayling and its habitat. Last week,
the Grayling Avalanche reported that
Michigan’s Dept. of Natural Resources announced their plan for a new attempt of
introducing a brood of Grayling trout to the Manistee River.
This latest attempt of
re-introduction of the Grayling may work; the effort will be a joint project by
the DNR in partnership with an Indian band, the Little River Band of Ottawa
Indians. I suspect the Indians will supply not only money for the project, but
also a reverence for the fish and their streams and a dedication to the project.
After all, these Indians were those who fished Michigan for a thousand years
without damaging the streams or using up the supply of the Grayling fish. Maybe
we can learn something from them.
