Fish of North America

The Great Lakes alone form the largest surface freshwater reserve on the planet. Their size makes them behave like inland seas — real depth, storms, stratified temperatures — and they hold populations fished from a boat much as you would fish offshore.

The Pacific Northwest is the historic home of migratory salmonids, whose runs shape entire ecosystems, forests included. At the other end, the Mississippi basin drains a continent and concentrates a diversity of freshwater species found nowhere else in the temperate world.

It is also the birthplace of modern lure fishing. Much of the tackle, vocabulary and technique used worldwide today started here, around a handful of species that became reference points.