The River That Started American Trout Fishing

The Pere Marquette River winds out of the Michigan woods and empties into Lake Michigan right here at Ludington, and among fly anglers it is close to sacred ground. It is the longest river system in the state's Lower Peninsula that runs entirely free, with no dams or impoundments to block it, which lets its cold, clear water run wild the whole way. That freedom made history.

In eighteen eighty four the Pere Marquette system, through its tributary the Baldwin River, became the site of the first introduction of European brown trout in the United States, fish that arrived as eggs from Germany and went on to populate rivers across the country. The river's story took another turn in the nineteen sixties. Coho and chinook salmon were introduced into Lake Michigan in nineteen sixty six, and the following year salmon were stocked in a tributary of the Pere Marquette.

Today the river holds a naturally reproducing salmon run alongside its wild trout and steelhead. Anglers travel from across the nation to drift its famous flies water, and the yearly runs of salmon and steelhead help make Ludington one of Michigan's great fishing destinations. Few rivers can claim to have launched an entire American pastime.