Commercial fishing replaced fur trading as Mackinac Island’s primary industry in the 1830s. The transition was smooth. The region’s waters teemed with a rich and seemingly endless bounty of whitefish, lake trout, pickerel, and cisco. So plentiful were the fish at Mackinac that the native people called these waters “the home of the fish.” Trade routes which once carried canoes filled with furs now served as shipping lanes for a growing fleet of schooners and steamboats that connected centrally-located Mackinac Island with its markets. The island’s wharfs, warehouses and workforce that so effectively served the fur trade were easily adapted to commercial fishing.

Most fishing was managed by small independent entrepreneurs including Michael Dousman, Biddle and Drew, William Scott, Toll and Rice, Bromilow and Bates, and James Bennett. Fishing changed the island landscape as merchants constructed or expanded at least a dozen docks in the island harbor during 1840s and 50s. The island served as the home port and from here merchants distributed nets, barrels and other supplies to small fishing villages stretching more than 100 miles from Mackinac Island and including Hammond Bay, Drummond Island, Cross Village, Little Traverse Bay and the north shores of lakes Huron and Michigan.

Fishermen using seine, pound and gill nets and working out of sturdy, double-prowed Mackinaw Boats, caught hundreds of pounds of fish every year. The fishing season began in the spring and continued until ice prevented fishermen from setting their nets. Fall was the busiest time of the year as fishermen strategically ambushed fish returning to their spawning grounds. Whitefish was the most popular export, usually comprising about three-quarters of the annual trade. Trout, pickerel and herring were also shipped as was “fish oil”, a product sent to tanneries for softening leather. In the early years most fish were salted for preservation and packed into “half-barrels” containing about 100 pounds of fish each.

As a fish processing and shipping center Mackinac Island never enjoyed the international reputation it had as a fur trade depot. Nonetheless, the island was one of the earliest fisheries in the upper lakes and at its peak, in the middle part of the nineteenth century, it was one of the most prosperous in the region. In 1835 Mackinac Island exported 1,700 barrels of fish and ten years later the number grew to nearly 20,000 barrels. By the 1870s, however, other ports were enjoying more and more of the region’s fish industry. Competition from shipping stations at Beaver Island, St. Helena Island, Cheboygan, Mackinaw City and St. Ignace cut into the Mackinac trade. In 1872 John Bates complained that annual fish exports had dropped from 25,000 to 5,000 barrels of fish. The business further shifted from the island in the 1880s when rail service extended into St. Ignace and Mackinaw City. Markets in Detroit and Chicago could now have fresh fish from the Straits of Mackinac delivered on trains in a matter of hours, not days. Over time this effectively shifted much of the business from boats to trains and from the islands to the mainland. By the 1920s only George Lasley and Frank King operated fishing boats from Mackinac Island and they took their catch to St. Ignace for processing and shipping.

…you have a unique chance to tell us what you’re most interested in seeing from MIFP. We’re all ears, so have an idea? Wondering about something on the Island? Planning your next trip?

Let us know what’s on your mind to help us continue creating high-value content that matters to our readers.