Commercial Fishing in North Idaho: A Photo Essay
Although wild fish had been exchanged for many years, it wasn't until 1909 that commercial fishing in North Idaho became codified in state law. As relations between sport anglers and working fishers deterioriated in the early twentieth century--a nationwide trend--commercial fishers petitioned the state house for a bill legalizing their trade. The resulting legislation kept commercial fishing open
The new law clarified rules for fishing gear: only hook and line would be permitted; seining, dynamiting, and set lines were prohibited in a compromise with sport fishers. The main prey was mountain whitefish (Prosopium williamsoni), a native fish closely related to lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis), a Great Lakes fish familiar to many immigrants. Harvest of bull trout--"a great destroyer of
The newly legalized fishery centered on shallow bays on the north end of Lake Pend Oreille. In this reach of the Upper Columbia River drainage, anadramous (sea-run) salmon did not range. Mountain whitefish had long been a staple of Kalispel, Kutenai, Spokan, and Coeur d'Alene people who called this region home. They had developed an intimate knowledge of the fish's habitat and spawning patterns.
In the 1910s, the commercial fishery boomed and conflict ensued. Sandpoint shop owners tried to keep prices as low as possible. Eventually, fishers united and named one of their own, Emil Kraege, as the sole buyer they would deal with.
By the mid-1910s, the lakes of North Idaho were producing a steady winter income for many working families and providing a cheap source of protein on local markets.
As the United States geared up for World War I in 1917, Idaho governor Moses Alexander opened all state waters to commercial seining in an effort to boost domestic food production. The only species exempted from this wartime fishery was cutthroat trout, the favorite of sport anglers. State fish hatcheries even became truck gardens so no space would be wasted.
After the war, sportsmen started raising concerns about diminished returns of whitefish. Their good connections with managers in Boise led to the closure of all commercial fishing in 1919. Bootleg fishing continued throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.
The Depression was hard on timber-dependent North Idaho. The area's mainstay businesses closed or contracted, and hard times settled in. In 1934, working fishers organized to advocate for a reopening of the commercial fishery. They argued that tough times and solid returns on lakes justified reopening. Facing a divided opposition in the genteel sporting community, their views prevailed at local me
Jigging for whitefish at the opening of the commercial fishery.
Most North Idaho fishers built their own boats--called "five-plank" boats made from western red cedar common in the area. Here, my grandfather Harold Miller cradles his first daughter Ila in their home on Jefferson and Poplar in Sandpoint. The winter of 1934-1935, he built his first boat in the one-room house.
The gear was simple: handline rigs with painted yarn-covered hooks, baited with fly maggots. Here are two reels Harold Miller carved and assembled in the 1930s that pulled thousands of fish out of Pend Oreille and Priest Lakes from 1935 until 1973--and to the present day.
Whitefish were sold fresh at local markets, but eventually smoked fish became the mainstay of North Idaho commercial fishing. Here, Claud (L) and his brother Wayne Evans (R) hang brined whitefish for the smoker behind them. The science of brining and smoking involved calculating the specific gravity of brine and careful regulation of temperature.
Evans Fisheries in Sandpoint became one of a few licensed fish buyers and shippers. Here, Frank Evans and his son Claud pack smoked whitefish for shipment all over the nation. Most of the market was regional, with Evans's sons trucking fish to retailers all over the Inland Northwest. Smoked fish were a favorite tavern food at the time.
North Idaho smoked whitefish traveled far--here to Hawai'i...
...and here to the White House kitchen.
Commercial fishing provided much-needed sustenance to many working families. Here, in 1937 my grandfather Harold Miller cleans whitefish at the family's houseboat on Bottle Bay, across the lake from Sandpoint. Many families squatted on the lakeshore or moored their floating homes to shore. My mom Jean is tethered by the wrist for safety's sake.
In 1937, fishers in North Idaho noticed a new species, which they called "blueback"--landlocked sockeye salmon, Onchorynchus nerka, aka kokanee. These little salmon had been introduced by accident to Lake Mary Ronan in Montana twenty years earlier, and made their own way downstream by the mid-1930s. Initially considered a threat to existing fisheries in Idaho, the state invited fishers to take blu
Bluebacks soon became the dominant species in North Idaho commercial fisheries. Whitefish experienced a still-unexplained die-off in the 1940s, and the new arrivals boomed--soon with the support of government fish hatcheries. Evans Fisheries lived its golden years as bluebacks boomed in the 1940s and 1950s.
The little salmon could be caught using the same gear as whitefish--a tidy transition for commercial fishers.
This family business capitalized on the arrival of bluebacks, advertising them in Sandpoint papers in the 1950s.
At this humble facility on Pine Street in Sandpoint, thousands of pounds of fish were processed and shipped every year from the mid-1930s until the late 1960s.
After World War II, the rapid spread of aluminum displaced the old culture of wooden boat building. This fourteen-foot 1950 Crestliner was a common model in the area's commercial fishing fleet. The same gear restrictions established in 1909 remained in effect, so it was still a hook-and-line affair. Note the anchor winch on the bow, handmade by my grandfather Harold Miller from a washing-machine e
My grandmother Martha Miller cleaning fish on her boat in the early 1960s. Although the daily limit was 200 fish, she was known to fudge--once bringing in nearly 1000 bluebacks in a day. All along, she maintained affable relations with game wardens.
In the early 1940s, Sandpoint sportsmen worked with Idaho and BC fishery managers to introduce a special strain of rainbow trout, Kamloops--a population that evolved in western Canadian lakes alongside kokanee/bluebacks. They reached incredible sizes--including a world record out of Lake Pend Oreille in the 1940s. Here, Nora and Frank Evans hoist a Kamloops probably headed for their famed smokehou
Boom years: The mid-1940s through the early 1960s were boom years for both commercial and sport fishing in North Idaho's biggest lake. Kokanee/blueback happened to thrive on the lake's zooplankton and spawning habitat, and Kamloops gorged on the kokanee irruption. The state helped by propagating both species in great numbers, but natural reproduction was substantial.
Critical introductions in Lake Pend Oreille: We have to understand that boom as the product of particular ecological changes, some directly driven by human decisions, others by unintended consequences of human deicsions, and at another level by "species ageny," a fancy term for critters acting on their own instinct and volition.
Here's where the waters get muddy: Clashing imperatives to improve nature. Manipulating the fishery was one; harnessing the waters of the Upper Columbia to a vast hydroelectric and flood-control regime was another. When these dams came online in the 1950s, they altered the lake's level (and its spawning habitat for keystone species like kokanee) and inhibited access upstream on the Clark Fork Rive
Facing a dip in returns, likely because of changes to lake levels and maybe--just maybe--a bit of overfishing--North Idaho sport anglers, some of them the architects of the Kamloops introduction, worked with the state to introduce mysis shrimp in the mid-1960s. The idea was to replicate the great success of such introductions in Canada, where these tiny critters fed kokanee, which in turn fed trop
Enter mysis: Due to Pend Oreille's particular currents, mysis never met in the water column with their intended predators, kokanee. They passed like ships in the night. What is more, mysis fed on smaller native plankton that were the staple of the kokanee diet.
Arise, lake trout! Introduced by the US Bureau of Fisheries in the 1920s, lake trout kind of hung out on the margins for decades, usually confused for native bull trout and all lumped together as "Dolly Varden," because all are closely related char. Lake trout found mysis, and their population grew--and then they tore into kokanee schools. The keystone species nearly collapsed by the early 2000s.