Fresh Fish: We Didn't Know Algoma was a Gourmet Paradise

Algoma's Fishing Fleet on the Ahnapee River: A Time that Was

Beautifully presented trout, perch and whitefish in glass display cases is mouth-watering. Fish like that brings distant but still fond memories of Toot, Cliff, Art, Joe, Shorty, Barry, Kelly and Frank,  the Bohmans, LaFonds, Pagels, Andersons and more. Buying fish from any one of Algoma’s commercial fishermen meant only the best and the freshest. It was gourmet before we knew what gourmet was.

Trout boil

Algoma kids grew up with the best, and those kids-turned-adults know what the best stores have to offer today generally isn’t good enough. There are lots of places passing themselves off as fish markets and apparently folks are happy with them, but those folks didn't grow up on Lake Michigan. If only the likes of Toot or George Bohman could come back to teach a thing or two about fresh fish. More than a few kids who grew up in Algoma tell about their store-bought, smelly fish going right to the garbage, although digging a hole next to the roses and rhubarb offers gardeners a far better choice.

Kids walking across the bridge to and from St. Mary’s School during the 1940s and ‘50s, and even later, knew what was happening at the shanties. Although the kids were usually too late to see the fish tugs going out, the tugs were coming in as the kids were walking home. There wasn't a kid who didn't know what a net drying rack was and they all knew the fish were cleaned immediately. They knew the seagulls plaguing them were looking for a delicious dinner of slimy fish guts. They also knew to watch it. As hundreds and hundreds of seagulls flew around the bridge, there was surely at least one that dropped “it” on one of the kids. Then there was always the 4^th grade boy who picked up a decaying fish from the bridge deck and started chasing the girls, particularly the one he said the really didn’t like.  Fourth graders boys didn't have it figured out in those days.

Nets drying on racks

Beginning on the few and far between shirtsleeve days of April and into October, the kids would see artists with their oils and canvas set up on the south side of the bridge. The south side offered a vantage point as most of the shanties lined the north side of the river. Kelly and Joe were tied up almost adjacent to the south side of the bridge and Shorty took his tug just beyond it. It was a scene the kids saw daily during their 8 years of school. Painting wasn’t part of the school art classes and surely anyone who would paint fish boats and tugs was from Chicago, somebody with money and nothing to do. The kids looked for fancy cars with Illinois plates. Chicago people didn’t know how to drive their big cars. They drove fast and passed on the right side of the road, so it wasn’t any wonder they’d be painting pictures of old sheds and tugs. But, because big shipments of fish were sent to Chicago markets, maybe some of those Chicago people wanted to prove they knew where the best fish were caught.

When the kids saw the pound (pond) nets off the Campsite, they knew it was mostly herring, and maybe a few perch, being caught. The gill netters went out far enough to net trout and chubs. In the late 1940s, a catch of 200# was big, prompting Goosey to tell stories of lifts of over 1,500# in his dad’s day.

Before World War ll there were over 20 men going out of Algoma, rain or shine, hot or cold. Sometimes it was a deep freeze or pea-soup fog that kept them in the harbor, but mostly the engines were chugging as early as first light to begin a day that was long. The tugs needed to get at least a few miles out before Lake Michigan was deep enough. Each boat had its own grounds and one did not encroach on another.

Then things began to change. World War ll meant a big need at the shipyards and some of the men left for the yards, leaving tugs short staffed. A few years later laws began changing and catches were limited. There were new smoking regulations that left the once deliciously moist smoked chubs dry. As lamprey eels began causing a steep decline in the numbers of big fish, commercial fishermen found few trout that didn’t show a mark from an eel attack. Eventually there were eel traps that began killing them. That prompted a new industry – fish fertilizer. As the DNR started encouraging more and more private fishing, it wasn’t just pan fishing in the state's rivers.  Swaty Creek was developed as a holding pond for the fingerling salmon that were eventually released into the lake. Almost overnight Algoma became a mecca for sports’ fishermen who easily got their limits. Charter fishing sprung up, attracting people from all over the mid-west. Commercial fishing waned and as the men retired, nobody took their places.

Net needles

It took the kids 40 or 50 years to know what they had and what it represented. They tell their kids and grandkids – who really don’t want to listen anyway – what it was like. Most of those 60, 70 and 80 year old kids don’t know what it was like in Ahnapee when the mackinaws were sailing or being rowed out in 1880, well before the coming of the Kahlenburg engine that made for the shape of the fish tugs today.  They forget about the boats stuck in the river ice, or the returning freezing fishermen with icicles dangling from their caps. But if they see a net needle, they’ll know what it is.

When Andy LaFond left the harbor in 2008, an entire industry went with him. Leelanau, Michigan has kept its tar paper sheds and its shanty village is a tourist attraction that speaks of a time that was. The fish tug exhibited at Rogers Street Fishing Village in Two Rivers offers visitors an opportunity to easily learn how such vessels did their job. Art Dettman’s shanty is on the historic register and remains on the north bank of the Ahnapee River. As for the rest, it exists in the memories of those of a certain age and in the paintings of those who didn’t know how to drive, but sure knew what they were looking at!

To learn about commercial fishing from Washington Island to Kewaunee,  find  Trygvie Jensen’s Through Waves and Gales Come Fishermen’s Tales, c. 2009, and Wooden Boats and Iron Men, c. 2007. To learn about Algoma's commercial fishing history, historian Wendell Wilkie has written The Real Shanty Days, a three volume series.