In England, Atlantic salmon were once considered the fish of royalty.

They were guarded jealously by the landed nobility. Even today, most British Atlantic salmon spawning rivers, including their salmon, are privately owned. You can buy daily access to those streams, if you can afford it. In the eastern U.S., wild, sea-run Atlantic salmon are listed as endangered and are off-limits to angling.

Yet, here, on the shores of Lake Huron, we have perhaps the world’s largest population of land-locked Atlantic salmon and some of the finest angling for the species.

Does that mean we Lake Huron anglers rank among royalty?

While it’s true that you get a royal adrenalin rush when you hook onto one of those silver bullets, the truth involves a serendipitous combination of circumstances. The first is that we are lucky to live in a land where most lakes and streams, including their fish, are considered public. They are protected by the Public Trust Doctrine, a legal tenant that those waters are owned and shared by the public for the use and enjoyment of all for drinking, fishing, swimming, navigation, and recreation. You can learn more about public trust at FLOW (https://forloveofwater.org/programs/public-trust-education/). That means Atlantic salmon and other fish, as well as their waters, are there for all of us to enjoy and pursue.

Second, Lake Superior State University faculty and students have been stocking 20,000 to 35,000 Atlantic salmon in Lake Huron annually since the late 1980s and have researched hatchery methods for successfully rearing the temperamental species. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ Fisheries Division (many are LSSU grads), adopting most of the LSSU rearing methods, has been stocking an average of 130,000 Atlantic salmon per year in Lake Huron since 2012.

Finally, Lake Huron’s alewife population collapsed in 2004 to 2005. Alewives are an invasive shad-like species that trout and salmon dearly love to eat, but there is a downside to an alewife diet. Albert Leblanc, who has commercially fished Lake Huron all his life, said it best when he compared alewives to swimming birth control pills (Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan, interview of the Leblanc family, 2019). Trout and salmon that feed on enough alewives become thiamine deficient, leading to reproduction failure. Absent alewives, Atlantic salmon now have a healthy diet, produce healthy eggs for DNR and LSSU hatcheries, and can thrive in Lake Huron.

Unlike chinook salmon, Atlantics are opportunistic feeders and have taken advantage of one of our more recent invaders, the round goby, while also feeding heavily on everything from insects to rainbow smelt. Another difference between Atlantics and chinooks is that, while all chinook salmon die after spawning, Atlantics can spawn multiple times and, thus, live to a greater age.

To date, there is little evidence that Atlantic salmon are reproducing in Lake Huron tributaries, but there is no reason to assume they won’t.

The DNR is marking all its Atlantics by removing the adipose fin and implanting a tiny coded-wire tag in each fish’s head. The tag gives information about stocking date and location that help the DNR measure stocking success. LSSU uses other fin clips to mark their fish.

Unmarked Atlantic salmon could represent natural reproduction. Here is where the DNR needs your help: If you catch an Atlantic salmon and notice that the fin on its back near the tail has been removed, it probably has a coded-wire tag in its head. Save the head and turn it in to a local DNR office or to a creel census clerk. When bait and tackle shops open, most of those will take care of that head for you. For more information, google “Michigan DNR coded wire tags.”

With Atlantics, the quality of fish can be more important than number stocked.

Atlantic salmon are relatively hard to rear. They need to be raised for 18 months and any mishap along the way can mean losing a lot of fish. Worse, they don’t do well if stocked too soon. They, like other salmon, go through a process called smoltification, which physiologically prepares them for the sea. That process also triggers the urge to run downstream and, once they reach the “sea” (in this case, Lake Huron), to move offshore, where they can be relatively safe from predators.

Trouble is, when they start that smolting process, the fish become especially agitated and vulnerable to injury and disease.

If released before smoltification, they remain at the stocking site, where they are preyed upon by walleyes, lake trout, cormorants, and other predators. If reared into the smolting process, they survive much better in the lake, but some will almost certainly die from stress before being released.

With anguish, the hatchery biologists try to rear the fish until they are ready, knowing some, perhaps many, will die. But watching some die is better than knowing most will be eaten if stocked too early.

As hatchery technique and fish quality have improved, so has the Atlantic salmon fishery in Lake Huron.

Now, Atlantic salmon are second only to lake trout in our offshore (trout/salmon) fishery. As you read this, Atlantic salmon are being caught from the St. Clair River south of Port Huron to Sault Ste. Marie. The migratory fish are being stocked at Lexington, the AuSable River at Oscoda, the Thunder Bay River, and at Sault Ste. Marie (the latter by LSSU).

Thus, Atlantics are being caught just about everywhere along the Michigan coast. While it might take days or years to hook into a single Atlantic salmon in England, there are reports of Lake Huron anglers catching multiple Atlantic salmon daily. Lake Huron has truly become a world class Atlantic salmon destination.

Look for Atlantics to be near shore this time of year, sometimes forming schools that can be spotted feeding on the surface on calm days (this is Atlantic fishing at its best). They will gradually move offshore and deeper as the summer progresses, but they usually are found not that far from the surface, even later in summer.

By September, look for them in the AuSable and Thunder Bay rivers as they return to their stocking sites to spawn. They will remain in those rivers all winter and even into early spring.

“The Gods do not deduct from a man’s allotted span the hours spent fishing” (Babylonian Proverb) – provided he practices social distancing, that is. Let’s go fishing!

Jim Johnson is a retired fisheries biologist and leader of the Besser Museum Fishery Heritage Project.