In my forthcoming fly-fishing novel, Rolling Back the River, set to be released in just a few weeks, the hero, Vincent Mapp—a writer and angler from Maine—is propelled into conflict and adventure after being assigned to fish for landlocked salmon in Argentina. My fictional protagonist's Maine connection is important not only because he had spent decades fly fishing for landlockeds in his home state, but also because—in real life—all the landlocked salmon in Argentina today are descended from fish that were taken from Maine's Sebago Lake at the dawn of the 20th Century.
Again, in real life, an American fish culturist from New Hampshire was one of the two people most responsible not only for the establishment of Maine landlocked salmon in Patagonia—but also for the entire effort through which Argentina became, and remains, one of the world's most revered and awe-inspiring destinations for trout and salmon fishing. Prior to his actions, there were no salmonids at all in Argentina's waters.
This true story of how Maine's landlocked salmon came to swim in South American waters is every bit as dramatic and fascinating a story as my fictional one. It's an epic, really, with roots that stretch back to colonial Australia and New Zealand in the 1840s. Read a sample from Rolling Back the River
Argentina and New Zealand, two mountainous nations deep in the Southern Hemisphere, have one other thing in common: the icy highlands of both are drained by vast networks of cold rivers and streams that any experienced angler immediately recognizes as an Eden for trout and salmon. So, it must have been a huge disappointment, repeated many times over, when the first Europeans to cast fishing lines on those lovely waters came up empty. Salmonids of all species are fish exclusively of the Northern Hemisphere, and the delicious-looking rivers of both New Zealand and Patagonia were devoid of them. There were other fish of course—native ones—but among them not a single gamefish species. Nothing that was any fun, or very good to eat. The descendants of those first Europeans, being the descendants of Europeans, eventually decided they would find a way to improve on nature, and fix all of that.
Of course, in the 1800s there were significant technical barriers to transporting fish thousands of miles across the equator and beyond, and having them come out alive at the other end. All overseas transportation was by ship, and although some ships were faster than others, all ships were relatively slow. Taking live fish on a long sea voyage was out of the question; taking fertilized fish eggs was the obvious way to go—and even that was a daunting challenge. The Brits began trying it first, in the 1840s, with a few failed attempts to carry the eggs of trout and Atlantic salmon to the promising-looking streams coursing through the Island of Tasmania, 150 miles off the southeastern coast of Australia. By the early 1860s, they finally hit upon a method that worked: Wooden boxes plentifully perforated with drain holes in their bottoms and on their sides, and filled with layers of wet moss between which rested layers of fertilized trout and salmon eggs. In the holds of the fastest sailing ships, these boxes were packed in or among huge piles of ice which, as it melted, sent a constant flow of cold water percolating through them and their alternating layers of moss and ova, keeping the eggs both wet and cold—and then trickling out again through the drain holes. By 1865, brown trout that had been spawned in England were swimming in Tasmanian waters.
It wasn't long before the British Empire's fishing fanatics decided they wanted to establish salmonid fisheries in their not-yet-completely conquered island colony of New Zealand as well. In 1867, brown trout eggs spawned in Tasmania were shipped to the South Island—again in perforated wooden boxes between layers of moss, but with a modification: rather than being set beneath or among mounds of ice, each crate of moss and eggs was placed within a second, larger box that served as a container for the ice. Still later fish culturists transporting salmonid eggs across oceans would set perforated trays of ice directly on top of the moss and eggs, conscientiously replacing the ice as it melted. By the 1880s, brown trout were established in New Zealand—and the eggs of rainbow trout from North America began arriving, packed in moss and ice.
In Argentina, meanwhile, in the mid 1880s, the Argentine military was wrapping up it's "Conquest of the South," campaign, in which Patagonia was wrestled away from the Native peoples who had previously occupied it. By the dawn of the 20th Century, the government in Buenos Aires had decided it would be a good idea to establish some fisheries in the new territory, and in 1903, the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture hired New Hampshire-born John W. Titcomb, then also employed as chief of the fish-culture division for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, do so some scouting.
Titcomb spent some weeks exploring the river systems surrounding the site of the future city of Bariloche, on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi, and not only did he find an abundance of extremely promising salmonid habitat, but on a small tributary of the lake, he identified a good site for Argentina's first trout hatchery. When Titcomb returned to New England, he began making arrangements for the collection of salmonid eggs—100,000 brook trout eggs, 53,000 lake trout eggs, 50,000 landlocked Atlantic salmon eggs, and, for some reason, a million whitefish eggs—to be shipped to Argentina. The fertilized landlocked salmon ova were acquired from a hatchery on the shore of Maine's Sebago Lake. It is likely that the brook trout and lake trout eggs also came from Maine. I have not investigated where Titcomb got the whitefish. In any case, all of the fish eggs where sent by rail to New York City, where they were loaded on a steamship.
Eugene Tulian, chief of the Fish Culture Section for the Argentine Agriculture Ministry—and apparently also an American—accompanied this precious cargo on its long journey from New York to the brand-new Nahuel Huapi fish hatchery, which had been constructed according to Titcomb's instructions. Upon docking in Buenos Aires, the boxes of fish eggs were taken by train to the growing City of Neuquen, in northern Patagonia—which was the end of the rail line at the time. From Neuquen, the living cargo traveled another 300 mountainous miles by animal-drawn wagons to the hatchery, Tulian and others accompanying the wagons on horseback, and all arriving at their destination in early March of 1904. Remarkably, Tulian was later able to report that only 10 percent of all the fish eggs perished during the long, complicated shipping process.
Tulian also later reported that, while none of the whitefish from the hatchery were ever seen again after being hatched and subsequently stocked in Lago Nahuel Huapi—probably a good thing—the salmon, brook trout, and Lake trout were soon thriving in the rivers and lakes of the Bariloche area—with each species colonizing the waters that it found most favorable. Among a couple of other lake-and-river systems, the Maine landlocked salmon seemed to favor—and both grow and reproduce well in—the 30-mile-long Lago (Lake) Traful, north of Bariloche, and the Traful River, which is both the lake's outlet and a tributary of the storied Limay River. Strangely, salmon don't seem to have ever taken well in the Limay itself.
Subsequent overseas shipments and stockings brought brown trout, rainbow trout, and a number of other salmonid species to Patagonia. Though currently, browns and rainbows are the predominant gamefish species in the region, the Maine landlocked salmon were at one time perhaps the main attraction for anglers from the U.S. and Europe: feeding on the plentiful—and smaller—native fishes, the landlockeds grew to sizes unheard of back in Maine or anywhere else. In fact, they grew as large as sea-run Atlantic salmon: In his book, Trout and Salmon of North America, the revered American salmonid expert, Dr. Robert J. Behnke, cited what he considered to be credible reports of Argentinian landlocked salmon reaching weights of 25 to 35 pounds.
Behnke also said, in his 2002 book, ". . . but after brown trout and rainbow trout were introduced and became the predominant species, Atlantic salmon declined." Another factor that likely contributed to the decline of Argentinian landlockeds: salmon are a voracious devourers of smaller fish—in their native lakes in Maine and Canada, adult landlocked salmon feed primarily on smelt. The more forage fish they get, the bigger they grow. However, after decades of living high on the hog in Argentina, the landlocked salmon population seems to have become a victim of its own success. Having eaten their native prey species into comparative scarcity, if not to the edge of outright oblivion, Argentine landlocks now find it much harder to make a living than during their earlier boom years. Though they still swim in some Patagonian waters, there seem to be fewer of them, and any Atlantic salmon that does arrive at an Argentinian angler's net is likely to be of size that you'd find dwelling in a Maine river or lake, rather than migrating in from the open Atlantic Ocean.