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Article on Salmon-Trout in Lake Superior
Background.
Several years ago, a fishing acquaintance gave me a fax copy of a note with "The Mining Journal" and August 2, 1923 at the top and the following "The first volume of Forest And Stream in the year 1873 carried a story under the heading 'Migration of Fish', which will always be of interest to Marquette fishermen. It reads: 'The most extraordinary of these occurrences ever mentioned was witnessed on the south shore of Lake Superior about the tenth of June, 1870, just off the harbor of Marquette. A letter of that date, in our possession, says: 'The lake was filled by a large body of salmon-trout. They presented a front of 60 miles facing Marquette and extending out into the lake to Stannard rock, 40 miles distant from shore..." At the bottom of the fax was the apparent signature of Russ Robertson, now deceased, who I believe founded the DNR Marquette Fish Hatchery.
Well, that article caught my attention as I'd never heard such a story nor did I even know what kind of fish a "salmon-trout" was. I went to the Peter White Public Library and tried unsuccessfully to locate the Mining Journal article using their micro-fiche. I then contacted the local DNR marine biologist and asked him what species salmon-trout was referring to and he didn't know. He suggested forwarding the fax article to the Institute for Fisheries Research (IFR), a cooperative unit of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Fisheries Division located at the University of Michigan (UM). Much to my pleasant surprise about a month later I was contacted and given copies of the 1873 Forest And Stream containing the referenced article. I scanned in the article as a PDF document but also for my reader's convenience typed the article below. Anyone wishing to see JPG or PDF documents of the article and/or front page, should contact me. Here's the article:
The Mining Journal, August 2, 1923
The first volume of Forest And Stream in the year 1873 carried a story under the heading “Migration of Fish”, which will always be of interest to Marquette fishermen. It reads: “The most extraordinary of these occurrences ever mentioned was witnessed on the southern shore of Lake Superior about the tenth of June, 1870, just off the harbor of Marquette. A letter of that date, in our possession, says: “The lake was filled by a large body of salmon-trout. They presented a front of sixty miles facing Marquette and extending out into the lake to Stannard's Rock, forty miles distant from shore. A steamer was chartered and a party of men, women, and children started for the rock, the fished for four hours and took four hundred trout, weighting from six to forty pounds each. The next week another party started and in four hours took eight hundred trout, weighing from six to forty pounds each. It was discovered that there was no use in going such distances as the harbor was full of them.
I and my youngest son took a yawl and started to try our luck in the harbor. In less than three hours we loaded her down to the waters edge. We had small oars, and rowed with one hand and held the trolling line in the other. We used a spoon. One young man went out in a yawl to see how many he could take and caught 150 and then gave up. This is no fish story but can be authenticated in a hundred ways.
The fish filled an area of 40 miles by 60 in extent and were off the harbor for two weeks. The prevailing winds during the visit of the shoal came from the southwest, with occasional thundershowers. With regards to the feeding of the trout, it was observed that most of them threw from their stomachs on being hauled into the boat, from three to four small herring 6 to 8 inches long. The herring were fresh and seemed to have been taken a few minutes before the trout were caught. It is possible that this shoal of trout followed a school of herring, feeding on the on them as they traveled south as that appeared to be the direction in which they were moving. The trout averaged twelve pounds each in weight. There must have been millions of them in the school.”