Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/93354
Grayling Michigan in Kohrman's interests boost library angling holdings With the cadence and conviction of an established storyteller, Bob Kohrman turned an 1873 piece on the Michigan grayling – a long-since extinct fish – into poetic prose. "Its back is of dark-grey color, and its sides are covered with fine whitish silver scales running in well-defined lateral lines, and dotted with shining diminutive black spots a half-inch or so apart, especially about the shoulders, " Kohrman read from his original copy of Charles Hallock's quintessential angling book, "The Fishing Tourist." There are nearly four pages about the grayling in this book that hooked Kohrman, a CMU College of Science and Technology dean emeritus, into the fish's short-lived story. The grayling, for which the northern Michigan city is a namesake, was discovered in 1865 and died off in the Upper Peninsula by the mid-1930s. "I became interested in the grayling in the early 1980s, wondering where did it exist? How did it become extinct?" Kohrman says. Robert Kohrman looks through one of the bound periodicals he's collected while researching the now-extinct Michigan grayling. "Reading about the grayling in 'The Fishing Tourist' was enough to whet my appetite to learn more about it." Kohrman's quest led him to build a timeless personal angling collection of extremely rare periodicals, books and other printed publications that he plans on donating to Clarke Historical Library. He gathered sparse bits of information here and there gleaning from various library angling collections, such as Clarke Historical Library and libraries nationwide including the Library of Congress. Because there weren't many fishing-related books that contained information on the grayling printed in the immediate post-Civil War era, historic periodicals quickly became his primary information and research source. Kohrman's background is in chemistry, specializing in areas such as organic synthesis. He says while his research in the Michigan grayling is more in line with a biology project, the practices used in his profession are quite similar to his hobby. "Both interests involve solving a puzzle, and bit by bit you put the pieces together until you have the answers, " he says. Among nation's best collections Through his steadfast pursuit of understanding the Michigan grayling, Kohrman concluded it became extinct for several reasons, including that it was over- fished following the state's tourism focus on the sport. Moreover, in the late 19th century it had to compete with planted non-native trout species and the state's commercial logging business that disrupted the grayling's ecosystem. Kohrman's papers on a portion of his research are included in the current and forthcoming issues of The American Fly Fisher, the refereed journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing. Kohrman's personal angling collection will complement the already extensive materials at the Clarke, which include The Reed Draper Angling Collection. 8