The Wildest Fishing in the World

One hundred and fifty years ago, a visitor got off the steamship in Red Rock, later known as Nipigon, at the top of Lake Superior, and whiled away his time while waiting for a train to the western end of the lake by dipping a line in the water. He was amazed to catch a large brook trout. He told his friends, and he came back. In short order, fishermen were working Lake Superior's other tributary streams with similar suc cess. The popularity of trout fishing on Lake Superior peaked...
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One hundred and fifty years ago, a visitor got off the steamship in Red Rock, later known as Nipigon, at the top of Lake Superior, and whiled away his time while waiting for a train to the western end of the lake by dipping a line in the water. He was amazed to catch a large brook trout. He told his friends, and he came back. In short order, fishermen were working Lake Superior's other tributary streams with similar suc cess. The popularity of trout fishing on Lake Superior peaked around the turn of the 20th century, and by 1960, predation and industry had just about destroyed the native brook and coaster trout on the lake. Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, uncle of Theodore and a famous naturalist, had warned of the likelihood of damage to the trout population when he visited the area in the 1860s. It wasn't long before the Michigan and federal govern ments were planting fish to try to counteract the problem. Harry Marks, born into a family of fish propagators, brought California rainbows to the St. Marys River at Sault Ste. Marie in the 1890s, and soon monster rainbows were being caught in the river's rapids and being written about by distinguished writers and other prominent people. The Wildest Fishing in the World: Renowned Sports Writers Discover St. Marys River and Agawa Trout Fishing collects excerpts and articles from 1865 to 1924, with contemporary commentary on what is being done to restore the ideal conditions that charmed these visitors back to the area again and again. Perhaps this volume of "escape nonfic tion" will charm you vicariously, too.