The Michigan Grayling
The four Michigan grayling laying on a wicker creel in this iconic photograph were caught in Bear Creek, Manistee County, in the 1890s. Photographer unknown
Winter 2017
By Bill Taylor, Chairman of the Board
Dr. Patrick Rusz summarized a planned project to establish at least one population of grayling in Northern Michigan in our Summer 2016 Wildlife Volunteer. This project will be conducted by the Michigan DNR, the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, and Michigan Technological University, and is expected to take several years to complete. I am adding some information on Michigan's grayling history and the challenges that the project faces for readers who find this subject as interesting as we do.
The fish known as the Michigan grayling was originally abundant in the Au Sable, the Manistee and a several smaller rivers in the Northern Lower Peninsula and the Otter River in the Upper Peninsula. The fish was not found anywhere else in the world, and was extremely popular with our Indian and early white inhabitants for its eating quality and physical beauty. This beauty included a streamlined body, a huge dorsal fin, and numerous colorful dots and shadings on its body and fins.
The first white traders and timber cruisers who ventured into Michigan grayling country had never seen anything like this fish before, and referred to it by names like the “white trout” for its flaky white meat. A curious lumberman eventually sent some specimens to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, and the Academy's E.D. Cope formally identified them as grayling in 1865. Moreover, he identified them as a new species of grayling distinct from a well-known species in Northern Europe and a recently discovered one in Northern Canada and Alaska.
Professor Cope classified this new grayling as Thymallus tricolor, the Michigan grayling, and selected “tricolor” as its species name because of the fish's exceptional coloring. When this news finally reached remote Northern Michigan in 1875, the residents of the little Au Sable River community of Crawford were so excited that they held a meeting and changed the town's name to its current Grayling.
By Bill Taylor, Chairman of the Board
Dr. Patrick Rusz summarized a planned project to establish at least one population of grayling in Northern Michigan in our Summer 2016 Wildlife Volunteer. This project will be conducted by the Michigan DNR, the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, and Michigan Technological University, and is expected to take several years to complete. I am adding some information on Michigan's grayling history and the challenges that the project faces for readers who find this subject as interesting as we do.
The fish known as the Michigan grayling was originally abundant in the Au Sable, the Manistee and a several smaller rivers in the Northern Lower Peninsula and the Otter River in the Upper Peninsula. The fish was not found anywhere else in the world, and was extremely popular with our Indian and early white inhabitants for its eating quality and physical beauty. This beauty included a streamlined body, a huge dorsal fin, and numerous colorful dots and shadings on its body and fins.
The first white traders and timber cruisers who ventured into Michigan grayling country had never seen anything like this fish before, and referred to it by names like the “white trout” for its flaky white meat. A curious lumberman eventually sent some specimens to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, and the Academy's E.D. Cope formally identified them as grayling in 1865. Moreover, he identified them as a new species of grayling distinct from a well-known species in Northern Europe and a recently discovered one in Northern Canada and Alaska.
Professor Cope classified this new grayling as Thymallus tricolor, the Michigan grayling, and selected “tricolor” as its species name because of the fish's exceptional coloring. When this news finally reached remote Northern Michigan in 1875, the residents of the little Au Sable River community of Crawford were so excited that they held a meeting and changed the town's name to its current Grayling.
This mount of a Michigan grayling is on display in the Visitors Center at the DNR Wolf Lake Fish Hatchery near Mattawan, Michigan.
Our grayling rivers were still pristine and full of grayling when these events occurred. However, the situation quickly deteriorated as lumbermen began logging the nearby pine forests and floating the logs down to mill towns like Oscoda. The loss of shady canopies along the rivers probably affected this cold-water species, and the log slides down their banks definitely hurt them by depositing silt on their gravel spawning beds. In addition, the log drives physically scoured the river bottoms when the grayling were trying to spawn there.
The Jackson, Lansing, and Saginaw Railroad reached the Au Sable River at about the same time, and brought sportsmen from all over the United States and Europe to catch a beautiful fish that could be readily taken on artificial flies. The railroad also encouraged heavy commercial fishing by providing the means to ship carloads of iced or salted grayling to distant cities. Needless to say, the logging camps also caught large numbers of grayling to feed their crews.
Our grayling rivers had never contained trout, and the Michigan Fish Commission and some private individuals created more difficulties by stocking brook trout in them in the 1870s and rainbow trout in the 1880s (brown trout came later). In addition to directly competing with grayling for food, trout spawn in the fall instead of in the spring like grayling. As a result, many newly hatched grayling ended up in the stomachs of larger six-month old trout.
Early Michigan sportsman and conservationist William Mershon knew grayling very well, and believed that the introduction of trout hurt them more than either logging or overfishing. He recalled that grayling appeared to be recovering after the log drives ended, and then began declining again and eventually disappeared as brook and rainbow trout became plentiful in their traditional rivers.
The Jackson, Lansing, and Saginaw Railroad reached the Au Sable River at about the same time, and brought sportsmen from all over the United States and Europe to catch a beautiful fish that could be readily taken on artificial flies. The railroad also encouraged heavy commercial fishing by providing the means to ship carloads of iced or salted grayling to distant cities. Needless to say, the logging camps also caught large numbers of grayling to feed their crews.
Our grayling rivers had never contained trout, and the Michigan Fish Commission and some private individuals created more difficulties by stocking brook trout in them in the 1870s and rainbow trout in the 1880s (brown trout came later). In addition to directly competing with grayling for food, trout spawn in the fall instead of in the spring like grayling. As a result, many newly hatched grayling ended up in the stomachs of larger six-month old trout.
Early Michigan sportsman and conservationist William Mershon knew grayling very well, and believed that the introduction of trout hurt them more than either logging or overfishing. He recalled that grayling appeared to be recovering after the log drives ended, and then began declining again and eventually disappeared as brook and rainbow trout became plentiful in their traditional rivers.
The Montana grayling resembles the extinct Michigan grayling but is not quite as colorful. Photo by Ernest Keeley
Whatever the causes, grayling were in trouble throughout the State by 1885, and were basically extinct in the Lower Peninsula by 1905. They made their last stand in the Otter River in the Upper Peninsula with the help of heavy artificial stocking, but also disappeared there in the mid-1930s.
These fish have always interested me because my family owned a cabin in Luzerne when I was a small child, and some of the older residents remembered catching grayling in the nearby Au Sable River in their youth. Then I had some very similar experiences when I worked on the North Fork of Montana's Flathead River in the late 1950s.
These experiences began when large schools of grayling suddenly showed up in the river near our Forest Service station during my first July there. It turned out that these grayling migrated widely in the river, and spent several weeks in our stretch every summer. It also turned out that they belonged to a Montana species that had been scientifically recognized a short time after the Michigan one.
These Montana grayling closely resembled the mounted Michigan specimens that I had seen, and their behavior also resembled the old Michigan accounts. This behavior included moving around in large schools, preferring shady stretches of water, jumping vigorously when hooked, and being easy to catch on wet or dry flies. In addition, the many grayling that we caught (and usually released) averaged the same 12 to 15 inches in length as their extinct Michigan cousins.
These fish have always interested me because my family owned a cabin in Luzerne when I was a small child, and some of the older residents remembered catching grayling in the nearby Au Sable River in their youth. Then I had some very similar experiences when I worked on the North Fork of Montana's Flathead River in the late 1950s.
These experiences began when large schools of grayling suddenly showed up in the river near our Forest Service station during my first July there. It turned out that these grayling migrated widely in the river, and spent several weeks in our stretch every summer. It also turned out that they belonged to a Montana species that had been scientifically recognized a short time after the Michigan one.
These Montana grayling closely resembled the mounted Michigan specimens that I had seen, and their behavior also resembled the old Michigan accounts. This behavior included moving around in large schools, preferring shady stretches of water, jumping vigorously when hooked, and being easy to catch on wet or dry flies. In addition, the many grayling that we caught (and usually released) averaged the same 12 to 15 inches in length as their extinct Michigan cousins.
Artist J.L. Petrie used living Au Sable fish to help capture the subtle beauty of the Michigan grayling better than any mount can do.
I am mentioning these experiences to help explain grayling behavior and some important genetic considerations in restoring them. While the Montana and Michigan grayling looked very similar, the Canada-Alaska ones usually look quite different to me. This is understandable because they were separated from their Michigan and Montana cousins by massive ice sheets during our last long Ice Age, and then largely separated by geography after the ice melted.
The Michigan and Montana grayling looked more alike because they had never been separated this dramatically. However, they had acquired some differences living in different watersheds south of the great ice sheets for long periods of time. As a result, our North American grayling were classified into three separate species: the Michigan grayling (Thymallus tricolor), the Montana grayling (T. montanus), and the Arctic grayling (T. signifer).
While the classifiers consolidated these grayling into a single species in recent decades, modern genetic techniques demonstrate that the Canada-Alaska grayling is still significantly different from the Montana and Michigan ones. As a result, the scientists who are deciding which grayling to stock in Michigan appear to be focusing on Montana fish. They are reportedly also examining DNA to find the strains of Montana grayling that most closely resemble our extinct Michigan one.
In summary, the restoration project will probably introduce carefully selected strains of Montana grayling into one or two Northern Michigan streams that have cold water, gravel spawning area, and healthy numbers of insects and other grayling food. Ideally, these streams will also have plenty of water for the grayling to move around in and very few trout. However, unacceptably high trout numbers could always be reduced, and barriers could be constructed to prevent new trout from moving into the stream and grayling from leaving it.
Recent reports suggest that the planning and preparation phase of this project will continue through 2017, and that no actual stocking will occur until at least 2018. The media is providing good coverage when news occurs, and I hope that this review helps our readers understand why the project is drawing so much interest and is so challenging to perform.
The Michigan and Montana grayling looked more alike because they had never been separated this dramatically. However, they had acquired some differences living in different watersheds south of the great ice sheets for long periods of time. As a result, our North American grayling were classified into three separate species: the Michigan grayling (Thymallus tricolor), the Montana grayling (T. montanus), and the Arctic grayling (T. signifer).
While the classifiers consolidated these grayling into a single species in recent decades, modern genetic techniques demonstrate that the Canada-Alaska grayling is still significantly different from the Montana and Michigan ones. As a result, the scientists who are deciding which grayling to stock in Michigan appear to be focusing on Montana fish. They are reportedly also examining DNA to find the strains of Montana grayling that most closely resemble our extinct Michigan one.
In summary, the restoration project will probably introduce carefully selected strains of Montana grayling into one or two Northern Michigan streams that have cold water, gravel spawning area, and healthy numbers of insects and other grayling food. Ideally, these streams will also have plenty of water for the grayling to move around in and very few trout. However, unacceptably high trout numbers could always be reduced, and barriers could be constructed to prevent new trout from moving into the stream and grayling from leaving it.
Recent reports suggest that the planning and preparation phase of this project will continue through 2017, and that no actual stocking will occur until at least 2018. The media is providing good coverage when news occurs, and I hope that this review helps our readers understand why the project is drawing so much interest and is so challenging to perform.