How Fishtown Lost Its Fishing Fleet
Shops around the port now sell taffy, fudge, and trinkets instead of whitefish and lake trout
Leland — Fishtown is a beautiful and haunting reminder of Northern Michigan’s past. Located in downtown Leland, it’s a collection of old wooden buildings situated on a gorgeous canal. It’s the old docks, where fishermen used to spin nets and process fish.
Today, the fishing fleet is little more than a memory. Now Fishtown is your typical Northern Michigan beach town, the kind of place where the economy is built on selling ice cream and souvenirs to tourists from Chicago and Metro Detroit. But hidden in plain view is a tragic tale about the collapse of industry in Northern Michigan, and the tourism industry that rose from the ashes.
Vast stocks of natural resources originally drew settlers to Northern Michigan. Logging was the first and most important industry, but by the 1920s, the old growth forests were almost completely gone.
But with the logging industry gone, Michigan still had its fisheries. Into the 1950s, commercial fishing was an important industry that produced local food for Michiganders. Sadly, the proved to be the end of an era for commercial fishing.
Sea lampreys got into the lakes and decimated fish populations, especially lake trout. Alewives, another invasive species, exploded and outcompeted native fish. Later, zebra and quagga mussels were introduced to the lake. They so efficiently filter water that they deprive baby fish of food and clear the water, causing UV damage to fish. This decimated the whitefish population in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which had become the last bastion of the fishery.
Worse, pollution from cities, refineries, factories, and other heavy industries got into the water, leaving many people afraid to even eat Great Lakes fish for fear of PCBS, PFAS, lead, microplastics, and other contaminants.
Can Great Lakes commercial fishing be saved? Honestly, no. There are only 35 commercial licenses operating, and a portion of them aren’t even in use. It would take an astronomical amount of money to fix Michigan’s fisheries, not to mention a concerted multi-state effort.
And without the fish, what is Fishtown? You can still buy fresh whitefish at Carlson’s fishery, which they catch with their last remaining boat. But compared to the heyday when a fleet of boats headed out of Fishtown, and Leland fish was shipped across the state, the current status of the Leland fishery is almost nil.
To make ends meet, Fishtown did what every other Northern Michigan town did. Fish shanties now sell taffy and fudge. Old processing sheds sell clothes and gifts. What used to be a working waterfront now stages photo ops. Nobody blames Fishtown for this. It’s not their fault the fisheries collapsed. And we all love a good tourist town.
But the “fish” part has become little more than background scenery to differentiate it from all the other beach villages nearby.
