Detroit's commercial fishing heyday

Whitefish, shown in a 1911 illustration, was the most bountiful and popular fish taken from the Detroit River in the 19th century. Decades of overfishing, spawning ground destruction and industrial pollution led to the elimination of whitefish in the river until 2006.

In this photo taken in the 1910s, a fisherman shows off a muskellunge. In 1687 French explorer Lom d'Arce, Baron de La Hontan, wrote that he encountered trout "as big as my thigh" in the Great Lakes.

Seine fishing, which employed a large net 30 feet wide and 216 feet long, was the oldest style of commercial fishing on the river. An engraving shows Herbert’s Fishery on the Detroit River, where a herring seine was hauled in and the catch funneled to an enclosure for keeping the fish alive. Two horses on platforms turn the capstans that haul in the ropes attached to the net.

Seine fishermen are depicted on Grassy Island in the Detroit River. Because it involved reeling in the net to shore, seine fishing had the disadvantage of requiring land ownership.

A fishing boat approaches a pound net.

In this illustration of a Detroit River pound net, the fish enter into the "lead" on the right, swim into the "pound" - the circular or heart-shaped netting in the center - and then funnel into the "pot," the square enclosure at left which traps the fish until they are hauled up.

Whitefish are taken out of a pound net.

A stake driver sets stakes for the leads of pound nets, circa 1930. At one time, so many pound nets were deployed in Lake Erie that they became a serious menace to ships trying to steam from Detroit east to Sandusky.

Lake trout and herring jump as the pound net is hauled aboard.

A fisherman lifts the pot of a pound net, sometimes called a trap net.

The catch is weighed and put into shipping boxes at the fish house at Bay Port in Michigan's thumb, circa 1930.

The nets are taken from the fishing boats and placed on the dock, where weeds and other refuse are washed out.

Nets were washed in a tar bath as a preservative, then hung on large racks to dry.

New nets are made out of cotton and linen twine.

This 1887 illustration was titled "Bailing out the pot" of a pound net in the Detroit River.

Men prepare concrete anchors to be used for holding the nets. The anchors are fastened to the bottom rope of the nets, while buoys hold up the top of the nets.

A fish peddler sells his wares on a Detroit street circa 1910.

In this 1910 scene, whitefish caught by commercial fishing in the Detroit River are held in crates and pounds until the eggs are ready to be taken. The crates have false bottoms, which can be raised for easier access to the fish.

This drawing from circa 1871 shows a gillnet on Lake Michigan, set at the bottom of the water and kept vertical by cedar floats.

A gillnet used in the Great Lakes dries on a reel in this 1887 illustration.

Tug boats dock in Leland, Mich. on Lake Michigan in 1932, while gillnets dry on reels.

A still life of a trout fisherman's kit.

Two men with dip nets lift fish from crates (male whitefish in one crate, females in another) into twin tubs. The eggs are stripped, placed in a pan and passed to the man at the extreme left, who washes them before they are put into the neighboring tubs for removal to the hatchery. This scene was taken on the Detroit River in 1910.

In the late 19th century, as the fish population began to decrease at an alarming rate, Michigan began to establish state hatcheries to replenish the fish. At right, workers strip eggs from female trout at the Northville hatchery ponds, circa 1895.

Fingerling trout are culled from the rearing ponds of the Grayling Fish Hatchery for transplanting into wild waters.