Annals of the Beaver River

Dennis Hartnett at Witchhopple Lake Fishing for native trout was one of the primary reasons sportsmen flocked to the Beaver River Country in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Published reports from these fishing trips show that success was measured by the total number of trout killed. W.W. Hill, on a visit to the Beaver River in the summer of 1873, reported taking 88 trout in a single day while his daughter caught 66 the same day. In thirteen days of fishing, Hill proudly reported that he caught a total of 592 trout. Hill was not an exception. Fishing for sheer numbers of trout was the rule. On a trip to Crooked Lake in 1896 the six founders of the Rap-Shaw Club caught 163 brook trout weighing a total of 165 pounds in five hours of non-stop fishing.  The number of brook trout seemed unlimited. Even after the state started regulating fishing late in the nineteenth century, sportsmen paid little attention to the rules and enforcement was essentially non-existen...