Anatomy of a Trout Fisherman

This post has nothing to do with Luddites. It has nothing to do with Lent, but in my last post on books, I promised I'd write this. And since the Angle is “eclectic ramblings from faith to fishing” I thought I was long overdue to write one on fishing, though this may be more about writing than about fishing. It's a close call.

In the previous post I mentioned that my brother regularly sends me his fishing magazines when he is done reading them, and occasionally he will send a fishing book along with the magazines. The last batch of magazines contained an old book he had found in his basement, one that he had had for years but just recently got around to reading. Entitled Trout Madness: Being a Dissertation on the Symptoms and Pathology of This Incurable Disease by One of Its Victims it's a collection of fishing essays written by a life long resident of the upper peninsula of Michigan who wrote under the name of Robert Traver. The book itself was a lovely old hard cover edition that had been published in 1960 and as I was relishing the feel and format of it, I skimmed through it from cover to cover before I began reading it. In the front pages of the book there was the list of other books the author had written. One of them was Anatomy of a Murder which sounded familiar. I tucked the title away in my brain and went on to read the fishing essays.

The author spent most of his life as a lawyer in northern Michigan, a profession that proved flexible enough to allow him the freedom to go fishing whenever the urge to do so arose. And fish he did, through most of the middle of the twentieth century on the streams and ponds of the upper peninsula that were still full of native trout. Trout fishing was his main focus, usually with a fly rod, but not always. One of his essays was about his early experiences fishing the then new invention of the spinning reel. It was a fun read from a historical perspective to hear someone talk of the “free-stripping, fixed-spool, anti-backlash reel,” now a staple of the recreational fishing industry and the go-to for most fisherpersons today. Traver gives an in-depth critique of the newfangled reel, its pros and cons, finally coming to the realization that he doesn't dislike the spinning rod and reel so much as he just likes fly fishing so much better. I can relate.

There are twenty one essays in this collection, most amusing, some poignant. One of the longer ones, entitled “The Intruder” I read three times, I was so moved by the story. Two strangers run into each other many years apart on a beautiful secluded trout stream with a world war and its devastating effects intervening between the two meetings. They don't recognize each other at first, one has been so altered by the war, but they finally recognize each other in their fishing. Another more amusing essay gives a glimpse of the author's quirky father who builds a canal in an attempt to connect the family lake to a nearby trout stream hoping the trout stream will feed its fish into the lake. After much work, the canal is completed, and the lake, much to everyone's chagrin, now flowed into the stream instead.

It was this last essay that caused me to go down a literary rabbit trail that proved to be as much fun as reading this book. The author is called Johnny in this essay and in several others. Why wasn't he called Robert or Bob? Also, why does Anatomy of a Murder sound so familiar? Thanks to Wikipedia, I found out that Robert Traver is the pen name of John D. Voelker, Robert being the name of John's sibling who died in World War I, Traver being his mother's maiden name. Since John Voelker did much of his writing while an elected county attorney, he thought using another name would be best. In the 1950s he wrote a novel based on one of his cases where he successfully used a rare form of the insanity defense. The novel, Anatomy of a Murder, became a bestseller in 1958. Even more popular was the 1959 movie of the same name, made by Otto Preminger, scored by Duke Ellington and starring Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick, eventually nominated for seven Academy Awards. No wonder the title sounded familiar. It was also the first movie to be entirely filmed on location, using Voelker's home office for some scenes, his home town of Ishpeming, Michigan, and the nearby towns of Marquette and Big Bay.

My next rabbit trail was more geographical. The essay where John's father tries to connect the family lake to a trout stream via a canal made me curious – could I find the lake on Google maps? Called Lake Traver in the essay, I took a wild guess that maybe it was called Voelker Lake in reality since John's father took such pride in having the family name formally appear on maps of the local lakes. Sure enough, there is no Traver Lake, but there is a Voelker Lake a few miles south of Ishpeming. The map also shows a nearby trout stream. I even convinced myself I could see the remnants of the ill-fated canal.

John Voelker lived most of his life in the upper peninsula of Michigan. He spent his time fishing, writing and, when necessary, being a lawyer. He was a county prosecuting attorney, a sometimes assistant to the Michigan Attorney General and served several years as a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court. After the success of Anatomy of a Murder, he retired from law and spent his time writing and, of course, fishing. In one of his essays, he talks lovingly about his “fish car”, a small sedan he kept permanently stocked with everything necessary for a day of fishing. And there were many. According to the Wikipedia entry, a close friend claimed John spent five or six days a week fishing for twenty years. It's a wonder he had time to write.