A Fall Salute to the Coaster Brook Trout

In honor of the Coaster Brook Trout and its spawning season on the Salmon Trout River we thought we’d share an excerpt from Eric Hansen’s award-winning essay It was a big trout. A good trout. A good, big trout .

“Hemingway had a high regard for the wily trout of the Upper Peninsula. The Salmon Trout
River shelters a spawning run of coaster brook trout–fish that enter the big lake and grow
to a size that dwarfs their creek-dwelling cousins before returning to their native stream to
spawn.

Their sheer mass and brilliant color (dazzling scarlet bellies) would take any angler’s
breath away.

A hundred years ago, these trout were so common that people on Superior’s south shore
caught them by the barrel. Today, the few hundred coaster brook trout of the Salmon
Trout River are quite special. They are the last known remnants of those native giant fish
on the United States side of the lake except for remote Isle Royale. One tiny spill, one little
belch of pollution from the proposed mine, and these fish, and their timeless migration,
are history.”

Click here to read or download the entire essay.

For more on efforts to save the Coaster Brook Trout, click the video link below:

MyNorth.com Video: Saving the Coaster Brook Trout