Greatest Great Lakes Destinations
THE SIZE AND diversity of the waters we call the Great Lakes boggles the mind. This system contains 21% of the world’s freshwater supply and has 160 native species of fish, supplemented by many imports arriving via stocking trucks and otherwise. Though they’re connected hydrologically, each basin is unique. A biologist recently told me the only thing that Lake Superior and Lake Michigan have in common is that they both contain water!
Their popularity as an angling destination has grown, estimated at over $1.2 billion in annual angler expenditures. While salmon, steelhead, walleye and perch have been headliners, readers know that the venues visited by the Bassmaster Elite Series pros are among the best locations in the world for smallmouth bass, and a few offer excellent largemouth fishing, as well. For this outlook, we start at Lake Superior on the western end and move more than 2,000 miles downstream toward the Atlantic Ocean. While some states and provinces
