HASLETT — Howard Tanner knew the idea of introducing salmon into Lake Michigan was risky — even more so converting a dying commercial fishery into a sport fishery. But in 1964, Tanner, the new state fisheries chief, had just been told to “do something spectacular.”
The directive had come from Ralph MacMullan, the new director of the Department of Conservation, the agency that would become the Department of Natural Resources.
It was an audacious moment at a crucial point in time. Lake Michigan’s fisheries were in trouble, according to historical records. The native lake trout were extinct in Lake Michigan and nearly so in Lake Huron, due to overfishing and sea lampreys. The whitefish were on the wane. Millions of alewives lay dead and stinking on the Lake Michigan beaches in summer. Shoreline tourism was in decline because of the stench.
Tanner faced a daunting situation, made worse by an entrenched, but shrinking, commercial fishing industry that had the support of the federal government’s commercial fishing bureaucracy. The federal government was more interested in restoring the lake trout.
“If we do this, I will either be a hero — it is going to work — or I will be the biggest bum to come down the street in a long time,” Tanner, now 87, recalls of the decision he made the night he got a call informing him of an available surplus of coho salmon eggs out West.
“I didn’t sleep all night,” he said. “I sat in the chair most of the night and it dawned on me in rough outline what I was talking about.”
What would come of that decision to stock 658,760 11/2-year-old coho salmon smolts on the Platte River and Bear Creek, both tributaries of Lake Michigan, would be hailed by many as transformative, a conservation success that created an economic boom. But it also was a decision others thought shouldn’t have been made.
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Some anglers feared the river-spawning salmon would ruin river trout fisheries. Shoreline communities later complained they had been unprepared for the onslaught of fishermen that converged on their communities in the first years of what would be an explosion of salmon. There were not enough boat launches, parking areas or public bathrooms.
“They ran out of Flatfish (lures), they ran out gasoline, and then they ran out of beer and they were really in trouble,” Tanner said with a chuckle. “But they also enjoyed that trouble. People would tell me that tourism ended Labor Day and this extended the season another 30 to 50 days.”
Tanner and his chief assistant, the late Wayne Tody — who would succeed Tanner and introduce chinook salmon — also were introducing a non-native species into the fresh waters of the Great Lakes. That decision, today, would require an environmental impact statement, according to Dave Dempsey, author of “Ruin & Recovery, Michigan’s Rise as a Conservation Leader.” There was no such thing as an environmental impact statement back then, although Tanner and Tody examined alternative species, including striped bass.”
“A lot of guys said: ‘This guy (Tanner) is nuts. You can’t put salmon in Lake Michigan. Those are saltwater fish,’” said captain Ken Neidlinger, owner of SilverKing Sport Charters in St. Joseph. “But, by golly, when those coho came back, they were in the 20-pound range.”
The coho, having an unlimited amount of food, grew fast. Tanner said the first coho caught, a 4-pounder, in August, 1966, had grown seven inches between April and July.
But it was 1967 when the fall fishery fully erupted in Platte Bay, drawing national media attention, including Sports Illustrated magazine. The coho returned as mature 3-year-old fish ready to spawn.
Thousands of boats were seen floating offshore. Some anglers lost their lives that September on a stormy day when the Coast Guard was called to rescue approximately 150 anglers whose boats had swamped in the high seas.
“Fishermen came from everywhere,” Tanner recalls. “They had no downriggers, no fish finders. They had small boats and no experience. People who never thought of catching salmon were able to go out and catch their limit. The fish were porposing and they fished with whatever they had.”
“They had salmon fever,” said Preston Kuks, a 76-year-old Grand Rapids angler and semi-retired charter boat captain. “There were so many boats on Platte Bay you could just about walk on them.”
Kuks began actively fishing Lake Michigan in 1969. He and his brother bought their first 16-foot boat. It proved inadequate. That led to a 24-foot boat and later a 30-foot boat, better gear and stout tackle to handle fishing salmon on the occasionally storm-tossed waters.
“We would do real good out there. We always got bigger fish. Thirty pounds was average in those days,” Kuks said.
Tanner said the decision felt right that trying evening after the phone call. He was sure the experiment would work.
During the course of four years as chief of fisheries research for the Colorado Department of Game, Fish and Parks prior to coming to Michigan, Tanner had become aware of other places where coho salmon thrived in fresh water.
Changing state policy to emphasize sport fishing over commercial fishing also seemed right, according to Tanner, who grew up, and learned to fish, in Bellaire. He espoused the philosophy of “doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people for the longest period of time.” More would benefit from the lake having a sport fishery.
Tanner is sanguine about the decision so many years later. It was an era of change. Gov. George Romney was the state CEO, he said. It was a time of growing prosperity and people had more leisure time. Economists and others saw outdoor recreation as a means to promote economic development.
Tanner bristles lightly at what he considers a mistaken public idea that the salmon were stocked to solve the alewife problem, a popular misconception.
“Tody and I said we are going to produce the world’s greatest freshwater fishery. That was our goal and we were sure it was going to work,” said Tanner, who later would go on to become the director of natural resources for Michigan State University for eight years, then director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources for eight years. Tanner was elected in 2008 to the National Fisheries Management Hall of Excellence by the American Fisheries Society.
“We were fishery people, not alewife control people,” Tanner said. “You don’t grow cows to keep the grass short. We wanted the alewife to be the foundation of the food supply and thought it would be nice to keep them off the beaches.”
Tanner, who lives with his wife, Helen, in Haslett and has three sons, said the decision to plant two species of salmon — coho and chinook — was to provide “redundancy” in the fishery. If something happened to one, the other might still prosper.
The choice to emphasize salmon rather than lake trout boiled down to each species’ appeal to anglers, according to Tanner. Coho had more angler appeal and greater potential to stimulate personal spending and the economy.
“We said we wanted coho, a fishery that was exciting enough that people would make the investment of time and money to participate,” Tanner said. “They can’t get that with lake trout. You have to have an exciting fishery that fits the food supply, which is why salmon was a perfect fit.”
Tanner said another common public misperception is that early salmon plants solved the dead alewife problem on Michigan beaches. The alewives, he said, followed the pattern of most invasive species; they explode in an empty ecological niche, then peak, level out and decline.
“In 1967 the alewives on the beaches were the worst ever.” Tanner said. “That fall the salmon fishery erupted. The next summer there were no dead alewives on the beach. Everyone said: ‘It is just like they said.’
“We didn’t have enough salmon then to put a dent in the alewives, but the peak had gone up and the crash had occurred at precisely the right time.”