Angling for Entertainment
One of the leading recreational activities in Michigan, historically and currently, is angling. The history of Great Lakes fishing can be separated into three periods, beginning with Indigenous practices, followed by commercialization, and most recently recreational and modest commercial angling. Growing recreational associations—aided by the tourist industry—initiated the first conservation laws. In 2019, the Mackinaw Center for Public Policy estimated the annual net value of the recreational fishing industry on the Great Lakes to be $2.3 billion. From French missionaries to Ernest Hemingway, Charles Lanman to Kevin VanDam, fishing has enjoyed a place of pride in the Great Lakes State. Ernest Hemingway called the Sault Ste. Marie rapids “one of the great rainbow fishing spots in the world.”
The Anishinaabeg followed a seasonal fishing pattern. Fish were more abundant at certain times, including spring and autumn when the fish crowded shallower waters. During these periods, Native fishermen would settle around the Great Lakes shores. French missionary Gabriel Sagard wrote about both abundance and size of fish during his early 17th century travels: “For indeed in this Fresh-water Sea there are sturgeon, Assihendos (whitefish), trout, and pike of such monstrous size that nowhere else are they to be found bigger, and it is the same with many other species of this that are unknown to us here (in France).” Michigander Charles Lanman described Sault Ste. Marie’s fish as “among the finest varieties in the world.” Lanman further reminisced that he spent whole days enjoying the sport at the St. Mary’s Falls (Lanman, A Canoe Voyage, 159-161). Hunting and fishing associations, aided by the celebration of primitivism, introduced the first conservation laws. These groups of mostly white men led the way in legislating protections for wildlife and the landscapes they inhabited. By 1887, Michigan had legislated the creation of the state game warden, who could enforce a new wave of environmental protection for fish and fowl considered desirable to the sportsman. As conservation caught on (too late for the Grayling fish and Passenger Pigeon), large tracts of forest were restored largely through the efforts of young men and the Civilian Conservation Corps. Game laws were enacted to represent the desires of wealthy men seeking to ritualize acts of hunting and fishing (Burd, MHR, 46).
Charles Lanman (1819-1895) was an author with Michigan roots who also began his writing career prior to the Civil War. He was born in Monroe, Michigan, and early in life was the editor of The Monroe Gazette, the local newspaper. His strong affection for his home state is seen in the following quotation from one of his books, Essays for Summer Hours:
"O Michigan! Thou art my own, my native land, and I love thee tenderly. Thy skies are among the most gorgeous-thy soil the most luxuriant-thy birds and flowers the most beautiful ... and thy animals the most interesting in the world. And when I remember that thou art but a single volume in His library, and that these things are the hand writing of God, my affection of thee becomes still more strong. I believe thou art destined to be distinguished and honored by the nations of the earth. God be with thee and crown thee with blessings."
Lanman was a prolific author, publishing 32 works over the course of his career. Many of these books had significant sporting and angling content and were among the very first such volumes published in the United States. They include, Adventures of an Angler in Canada, Nova Scotia, and the United States (1848); Recollections of Curious Characters and Pleasant Places (1881); Essays for Summer Hours (1841); Letters from the Allegheny Mountains (1840); Letters from a Landscape Painter (1871); A Summer in the Wilderness (1847); Adventures in the Wilds of North America (1854); and A Tour of the River Saguenay in Lower Canada (1848). The Clarke Historical Library contains first editions of all of these volumes. The 1860s witnessed a great leap forward for American angling books. Not only were important classic books published, but also an interesting separation developed between some English traditions and American practices in angling, as well as writings on the subject. In particular, two authors stand out.
First, Sketches in Canada by Anna Jameson and her 1837 quotes on whitefish:
“I ought to be a judge, who have eaten them fresh out of the water four times a day, and I declare to you that I never tasted anything of the fish kind half so exquisite.”
“If the Roman Apicius had lived in these latter days, he would certainly have made a voyage up Lake Huron to breakfast on the white-fish of St. Mary’s river.”
“[Alexander] Henry declares that the flavor of the white-fish is ‘beyond and comparison whatever’ and I add my testimony thereto—probatum est!”
“I have eaten tunny in the gulf of Genoa, anchovies fresh out of the bay of Naples, and trout of the Salz-kammergut, and divers[e] other fish dainties rich and rare—but the exquisite, the refined white-fish exceeds them all.”
Perhaps the most important of these efforts to describe fishing beyond the East Coast was by the editor of Forest and Stream, Charles Hallock, in his The Fishing Tourist (1873). Hallock describes his travels across much of the United States in search of salmon and trout. Of particular importance to us is a chapter titled "The Michigan Peninsula." In this chapter, Hallock provides the first published description of the Michigan grayling, thymallus tricolor. This and succeeding books were so successful in extolling the virtues of this fish and attracting increased angling pressure that the species was essentially extinct in the Lower Peninsula by 1900. Today, it is difficult to imagine that in 1874, an angler could board a train in New York City, ride to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and then switch to the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad—"The Fishing Line"—with Reed City, Michigan, as his ultimate destination in order to angle for the Michigan grayling. But both The Fishing Tourist and the popular Forest and Stream inspired exactly that type of trip. The Clarke Historical Library also owns a very scarce copy of Charles Hallock, Vacation Rambles in Michigan (1878), which describes his own trip through the state via the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad in search of the Michigan grayling.
Hallock was not the only author to reveal the secret of the Michigan grayling to the sporting public. George Dawson, Angling Talks (1883), and A. Judd Northrup, Camps and Tramps in the Adirondacks and Grayling Fishing in Michigan (1880), provided significant books about the grayling. Some two years after the death of the esteemed Thaddeus Norris in 1879, an article attributed to him titled "The Michigan Grayling," which contained a number of errors, was published in Scribner's Monthly. It is not clear that "Uncle Thad" authorized the publication of this article before his death.
During the early 1870s Michigan lakes and streams were planted with many varieties of salmon. It has been claimed that the very first brook trout to be planted in Michigan's Lower Peninsula was deposited in the Tobacco River in Clare County in 1870 by the father of the famous turn-of-the-century lumber baron, author, and conservationist from Saginaw, William Mershon. Shortly after 1870, brook trout became widely distributed throughout the Lower Peninsula, while rainbow trout (1876) and brown trout (1884) were later planted in Michigan waters. The brown trout planted in the Pere Marquette River represented the first planting of this species in the United States.
Finally, one looks back at the wonderful writings of former Michigan Supreme Court Justice John Voelker. His writings, under the pseudonym "Robert Traver," properly capture the true mood and spirit of fishing that one should aspire to while immersed in the Reed Draper Collection of Angling Books. His writings in Trout Madness (1960), Trout Magic (1974), and Anatomy of a Fisherman (1964) all convey a sense of humor about the business of angling. He notes that fishing is older than even love and chess; he muses that fly-fishing is so much fun that it should be done in bed; he states that all fishermen are probably a little mad; he keeps big "gram paw" trout to eat; he assails the arrogance of trout swamis; and he assiduously avoids any notion of being pretentious. He writes:
"Trout Fisherman, like Gaul, may be divided into three parts; those who fish mainly to get fish; those who fish mainly to get away; and those who fish because they love the act of fishing and love to be where trout are found. This fisherman counts himself among the last breed, where I suspect most true trout fisherman belong. For trout, unlike men, will not—indeed cannot—live except where beauty swells, so that any man who would catch a trout finds himself inevitably surrounded by beauty; he can't help himself."
In his Testament of a Fisherman, he adds:
"I fish because I love to;
because I love the environs where trout are found ...
because in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion;
because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed with power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience;
because I suspect that men are going along this way for the last time, and I for one don't want to waste the trip;
because mercifully there are no telephones on trout waters;
because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness;
because bourbon out of an old tin cup always tastes better out there;
because maybe one day I will catch a mermaid;
and, finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant—and not nearly so much fun."
We have traveled a long way, only to return to the beginning of the Draper Collection: Robert Traver restating the very views of nature expressed by Izaak Walton more than 350 years ago in his streamside escape from lawyers and businessmen. In the spirit of Traver and Walton, we invite you to enjoy the wonders of the Reed Draper Collection of Angling Books in the Clarke Historical Library. We regret that a tin cup of bourbon is not allowed in the reading room, but we think you will find that a symbolic cast into the collection will be a great deal of fun and at least as important as anything else you might be inclined to do—except angling.
The rise of cabins, low-cost campgrounds, and state parks made vacationing in northern Michigan accessible and affordable. In doing so, a wider portion of society began to see these landscapes as a much-needed counterpart to the stressful realties of the modern world.The recreational fishing industry saved the region’s commercial fisheries. Biologist and Michigan native Howard Tanner was appointed chief of fisheries in Michigan in 1964. Tanner realized the recreational angling industry could alleviate the problems of the commercial industry. Recreational fishers kept mostly to piers and shorelines, going for Whitefish and Perch. Lake Trout might have been the dread of most native fish, but it was pretty feeble when it came to battling anglers and didn’t make for attractive game. Therefore, Tanner introduced Pacific Salmon to deal with both the alewives problem and bring anglers to the region. As soon as the Coho Salmon established a foothold in the lakes, they began to feast on the alewives and the ecosystem began to recover. Thanks to them, the Great Lakes have become a multi-million-dollar recreational fishery. In 2012, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the annual net value of the recreational fishing industry on the Great Lakes to be somewhere between $393 million and $1.47 billion.
Central Michigan University is fortunate to have the Reed Draper Collection of Angling Books in the Clarke Historical Library. In thinking about the importance of such a collection, it is significant that the most renowned angling collections in the country are found at some of America's foremost universities including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Significant collections are also to be found at universities such as Northwestern, New Hampshire, California at Fullerton, Montana, and in Canada at British Columbia. The size and scope of the Reed Draper collection places it among the most outstanding assemblies of such works available to scholars in the midwestern United States.
