YUUUUUUUUP! You found it! Welcome to the all new Playin’ Hooky Blog! I’ll have to admit when there is such a vast array of fishing knowledge locked inside this big ol’ smart, fit, and handsome brain of mine, it’s pretty intimidating trying to figure out how we unpack all of this. To quote the great Albert Soady, “If ya don’t know where to start, go back to da beginnin’.”
WHERE DOES THE STORY ACTUALLY START?
Prior to European explorers and fur trappers (oh dang, you didn’t realize we were going back this far did you? There’s always time to back out now before you’re too enthralled with history and become addicted to checking if the blog is updated every day.) making their way to the Great Lakes region, Lake Michigan was home to a variety of native freshwater species. Although we now target salmon and trout, people often ask which other fish live in the lake. There are way too many to ever list in that situation, and usually I just say that Lake Michigan is home to any North American freshwater fish you can think of.
Sheboygan, Wisconsin was utilized by native tribes for a variety of fishing related purposes, perhaps most notably for catching lake whitefish during their annual spawning run into the Sheboygan River. When the white guys showed up, they too harvested whitefish, along with lake chubs (a variety of cisco), yellow perch, and lake trout commercially with nets. The commercial fishing industry boomed not only in Sheboygan, but many ports along the entire coast of Lake Michigan. Lake trout fishing was so fantastic, in fact, that commercial operations took their toll on native populations. To make matters much worse, man-made shipping channels, specifically the Welland Canal in 1919, connected the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean.
Of the many invasive species to enter the Great Lakes, the first major nuisance species was the sea lamprey, a jawless fish that parasitized what lake trout remained in the lake. Commercial fishing for lake trout in Lake Michigan was outlawed to protect the species. New species continued to enter freshwater. Many species, such as rainbow smelt and the common carp found balance within the new system, but one population that continued to skyrocket was the alewife.
Freakin’ alewife. Everywhere. Rotting. Stinking. Making life miserable for anyone trying to enjoy Wisconsin’s greatest natural resource. While the natural life cycle of the alewife includes swimming into freshwater tributaries to spawn, they were ill-adapted to spend their entire lives there. After making their spawning run in spring and returning to lake, the stress of a quick temperature change was enough to kill them by the millions. Wind would push them onto the beaches in such great numbers that in the 1950s and early 1960s front-end loaders and dump trucks were needed to move the dead fish from the sand to landfills.
A couple of wildlife biologists figured there needed to be a predator in the lake that would follow the moving alewife around. In 1964 the first coho salmon were planted from eggs taken from the state of Washington. Coho salmon only live three years, and it was generally assumed that they could not reproduce on their own. If the project was considered a failure, in three years the fish that were stocked would be dead anyway and the lake would be no worse off. However, the coho salmon were alewife eating machines and before long a great fishing industry exploded along Lake Michigan shores. Recreational fishermen drove up to several hours to experience salmon fishing in the midwest.
Not much long after, chinook salmon, rainbow trout, and brown trout were also stocked in Lake Michigan. Lake trout continue to be stocked by the National Fish and Wildlife Service (NWFS). An incredible charter fishing industry also grew in ports surrounding the lake. People from all over the midwest travel to Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana shores to experience these great fighting (and great tasting) fish!