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OUTDOORS: Big trout need home in the UP
December 18, 2003
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
MARQUETTE -- About 140 years ago, Robert Barnwell Roosevelt passed through Detroit on his way to Sault Ste. Marie to begin a two-month fishing trip.
After reaching streams that empty into Lake Superior, Roosevelt caught numerous fish he described as red trout in his book "Superior Fishing," published in 1864. The trout actually were coasters, a migratory form of brook trout that averaged three to four pounds and could exceed 10. Roosevelt and his friends caught them by the hundreds.
Most of the fish were taken near the mouths of the Batchawana, Old Woman, Montreal and other rivers between the Soo and Wawa, Ontario. In those days coasters abounded all around the shoreline of the biggest Great Lake, including the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Don't expect to match Roosevelt's catches in Michigan today. Brook trout of five to seven pounds are still caught routinely on Lake Superior's largely undeveloped Canadian shore, but logging, pollution and overfishing wiped out the coaster runs along the south shore. Where giant, migratory brookies once spawned in dozens of streams on the Michigan coast, native coasters can be found in only one, the Salmon Trout River about 35 miles northwest of Marquette.
The Salmon Trout gets a run of a few hundred coasters each fall. But some anglers and scientists worry that a mining operation planned near the headwaters could lead to pollution that would eliminate the last remnants of migratory brook trout on Superior's south shore.
The Salmon Trout is inaccessible to most anglers because much of it flows through the private Huron Mountain Club. Dr. Casey Huckins, a fisheries scientist from Michigan Technological University, said the "lack of access to the Salmon Trout is probably the only reason that a population of coasters has survived."
Fish from the Salmon Trout run are targeted by anglers fishing in Lake Superior, Huckins said, and he would like to see no-kill rules put in place for brookies in the open lake.
"The coasters in Lake Superior need protection," Huckins said. "When you have a population of fish that is measured in the hundreds, it is very vulnerable."
Unlike salmon and steelhead, which often swim hundreds of miles up a river before spawning, migratory brook trout usually spawn in a river's lower reaches, sometimes only a few hundred yards from the lake. Salmon and steelhead spend weeks or months in a river before spawning, but coasters might spend only a few days, and their run coincides with high water levels in fall, which can make it difficult to see them.
Huckins and Dr. Jill Leonard of Northern Michigan University are working with the state Department of Natural Resources to try to re-establish coaster runs. Leonard monitors efforts in three streams at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore near Munising on Lake Superior; Huckins is working in two rivers on the Keewenaw Peninsula.
The streams in the Pictured Rocks area are the Mosquito and Hurricane rivers and Sevenmile Creek. Those in the Keewenaw are the Gratiot and Little Carp rivers.
Coasters from Isle Royale have been planted at Pictured Rocks in the past four years. Fish from the Nipigon River on the northern shore of Superior, which produced the 14 1/2-pound world-record brook trout in 1916, have been planted in the Keewenaw. Though there have been a few, tantalizing sightings of unusually large brook trout in both areas, there is no evidence that a migratory population has returned.
"That may be one reason why we haven't been able to substantiate a coaster population," Leonard said. "It may be that the fish come in, spawn and leave without us knowing they are there. Or maybe they come in at a time when we aren't looking for them."
But Leonard said the lack of success might illustrate the need to answer a more basic question: Is the coaster brook trout really different from stream-resident brookies?
"Maybe even stocking isn't the issue," she said. "Maybe the resident fish we already have in the streams are the right fish. But maybe they need to be allowed to get big enough to start migrating. I'm not convinced either way on whether they are different strains of fish."
Bill Weglarz of Houghton, a founder and former president of the Copper Country chapter of Trout Unlimited, said coasters were so common until about 1900 that fishermen could catch them off docks in numbers so great they could fill barrels with the fish.
Michigan anglers who now catch six- to nine-inch brook trout and view a 14-incher as a trophy would be stunned to see a coaster, Weglarz said.
"I was fishing with a friend when he caught a 24-inch brook trout on Lake Nipigon," Weglarz said of a lake that feeds into Lake Superior near Thunder Bay, Ontario. "Brookies in the 18- to 20-inch range are common up there. It isn't until you see something like that that you begin to realize just what we have lost."
Steve Scott, a DNR biologist from Newberry who works on the coasters project, said: "One problem is that coasters kind of disappeared before we learned much about their biology.
"We've been looking for a genetic marker that will let us say that a given fish is a coaster and another one isn't, but we haven't found that difference yet. In fact, a study in the Nipigon River in Canada found that one brook trout might head down to Lake Superior and become a coaster, while his brother never left the river."
But the failure to find a genetic difference doesn't mean it isn't there, Scott said.
"I've talked to quite a few old-timers, and I'm convinced there were also coaster populations on the north shorelines of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan," he said.
Scott also is concerned about Lake Superior's burgeoning lake trout population, another species brought back from critically low levels by years of state and federal spending.
"The lake trout population is very high," Scott said. "We're seeing growth slowing down, so it might be near carrying capacity. There's a lot of competition for the forage fish. We've found chinook salmon in lake trout stomachs, and we've also found waterfowl bones and terrestrial insects. This means that the lake trout are feeding in the entire water column.
"That could mean that it's a bad time to try to reintroduce coasters because of the predation by lake trout. But the flip side is that historically, lake trout and brook trout evolved together, and Superior once was full of both of them. Maybe that can happen again."
December 18, 2003
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
MARQUETTE -- About 140 years ago, Robert Barnwell Roosevelt passed through Detroit on his way to Sault Ste. Marie to begin a two-month fishing trip.
After reaching streams that empty into Lake Superior, Roosevelt caught numerous fish he described as red trout in his book "Superior Fishing," published in 1864. The trout actually were coasters, a migratory form of brook trout that averaged three to four pounds and could exceed 10. Roosevelt and his friends caught them by the hundreds.
Most of the fish were taken near the mouths of the Batchawana, Old Woman, Montreal and other rivers between the Soo and Wawa, Ontario. In those days coasters abounded all around the shoreline of the biggest Great Lake, including the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Don't expect to match Roosevelt's catches in Michigan today. Brook trout of five to seven pounds are still caught routinely on Lake Superior's largely undeveloped Canadian shore, but logging, pollution and overfishing wiped out the coaster runs along the south shore. Where giant, migratory brookies once spawned in dozens of streams on the Michigan coast, native coasters can be found in only one, the Salmon Trout River about 35 miles northwest of Marquette.
The Salmon Trout gets a run of a few hundred coasters each fall. But some anglers and scientists worry that a mining operation planned near the headwaters could lead to pollution that would eliminate the last remnants of migratory brook trout on Superior's south shore.
The Salmon Trout is inaccessible to most anglers because much of it flows through the private Huron Mountain Club. Dr. Casey Huckins, a fisheries scientist from Michigan Technological University, said the "lack of access to the Salmon Trout is probably the only reason that a population of coasters has survived."
Fish from the Salmon Trout run are targeted by anglers fishing in Lake Superior, Huckins said, and he would like to see no-kill rules put in place for brookies in the open lake.
"The coasters in Lake Superior need protection," Huckins said. "When you have a population of fish that is measured in the hundreds, it is very vulnerable."
Unlike salmon and steelhead, which often swim hundreds of miles up a river before spawning, migratory brook trout usually spawn in a river's lower reaches, sometimes only a few hundred yards from the lake. Salmon and steelhead spend weeks or months in a river before spawning, but coasters might spend only a few days, and their run coincides with high water levels in fall, which can make it difficult to see them.
Huckins and Dr. Jill Leonard of Northern Michigan University are working with the state Department of Natural Resources to try to re-establish coaster runs. Leonard monitors efforts in three streams at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore near Munising on Lake Superior; Huckins is working in two rivers on the Keewenaw Peninsula.
The streams in the Pictured Rocks area are the Mosquito and Hurricane rivers and Sevenmile Creek. Those in the Keewenaw are the Gratiot and Little Carp rivers.
Coasters from Isle Royale have been planted at Pictured Rocks in the past four years. Fish from the Nipigon River on the northern shore of Superior, which produced the 14 1/2-pound world-record brook trout in 1916, have been planted in the Keewenaw. Though there have been a few, tantalizing sightings of unusually large brook trout in both areas, there is no evidence that a migratory population has returned.
"That may be one reason why we haven't been able to substantiate a coaster population," Leonard said. "It may be that the fish come in, spawn and leave without us knowing they are there. Or maybe they come in at a time when we aren't looking for them."
But Leonard said the lack of success might illustrate the need to answer a more basic question: Is the coaster brook trout really different from stream-resident brookies?
"Maybe even stocking isn't the issue," she said. "Maybe the resident fish we already have in the streams are the right fish. But maybe they need to be allowed to get big enough to start migrating. I'm not convinced either way on whether they are different strains of fish."
Bill Weglarz of Houghton, a founder and former president of the Copper Country chapter of Trout Unlimited, said coasters were so common until about 1900 that fishermen could catch them off docks in numbers so great they could fill barrels with the fish.
Michigan anglers who now catch six- to nine-inch brook trout and view a 14-incher as a trophy would be stunned to see a coaster, Weglarz said.
"I was fishing with a friend when he caught a 24-inch brook trout on Lake Nipigon," Weglarz said of a lake that feeds into Lake Superior near Thunder Bay, Ontario. "Brookies in the 18- to 20-inch range are common up there. It isn't until you see something like that that you begin to realize just what we have lost."
Steve Scott, a DNR biologist from Newberry who works on the coasters project, said: "One problem is that coasters kind of disappeared before we learned much about their biology.
"We've been looking for a genetic marker that will let us say that a given fish is a coaster and another one isn't, but we haven't found that difference yet. In fact, a study in the Nipigon River in Canada found that one brook trout might head down to Lake Superior and become a coaster, while his brother never left the river."
But the failure to find a genetic difference doesn't mean it isn't there, Scott said.
"I've talked to quite a few old-timers, and I'm convinced there were also coaster populations on the north shorelines of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan," he said.
Scott also is concerned about Lake Superior's burgeoning lake trout population, another species brought back from critically low levels by years of state and federal spending.
"The lake trout population is very high," Scott said. "We're seeing growth slowing down, so it might be near carrying capacity. There's a lot of competition for the forage fish. We've found chinook salmon in lake trout stomachs, and we've also found waterfowl bones and terrestrial insects. This means that the lake trout are feeding in the entire water column.
"That could mean that it's a bad time to try to reintroduce coasters because of the predation by lake trout. But the flip side is that historically, lake trout and brook trout evolved together, and Superior once was full of both of them. Maybe that can happen again."
