Salmon had been planted in the Great Lakes many times before but unsuccessfully. The fish planted in 1966 came back to the Platte and Manistee Rivers the next year and turned Lake Michigan into a sport fishing paradise that drew anglers by the thousands.
The man who led this effort was in Benzie County today to celebrate it.
“I could have been the biggest bum in the world if I screwed up the Great Lakes,” Howard Tanner told a crowd at the Platte River State Fish Hatchery. “Some people think I did.”
Tanner led the fish division beginning in 1964 when the salmon program began. A native of Bellaire, he had worked in Colorado, and his connections with hatchery managers in Washington and Oregon helped Michigan get those first Coho salmon eggs.
Tanner says the salmon fishery has helped the people of Michigan be better stewards of the Great Lakes.
“And those citizens get more education about the necessity of caring for those lakes by going fishing than in any other way,” he says.
