Includes bibliographical references (p. 395-412) and index.

1. Legacies from the wilderness -- pt. 1. The rise of commercial fishing, 1800-1893 -- 2. Lake Ontario salmon in an early agricultural-commercial economy -- 3. Patterns of growth through 1872 -- 4. The expansive heyday, 1875-1893 -- 5. A. Booth and Company bids for Great Lakes dominance -- 6. Fishers of the Great Lakes, 1850-1893 -- 7. The fishers and the fish -- pt. 2. Great Lakes waters in a developing drainage basin, 1815-1900 -- 8. Agriculture, lumbering, mining, and the changing fish habitat -- 9. Commerce, community growth, industrial-urban development, and the changing fish habitat -- 10. The fish react : changing species in changing waters -- pt. 3. Policy makers and the Great Lakes fisheries, 1801-1896 -- 11. The first regulators : the provinces and the states -- 12. Changing ideas : the United States and the Great Lakes Fishery -- 13. Canada's regulated fishery, 1868-1888 -- 14. Charles Hibbert Tupper and the new broom, 1888-1896 -- 15. To save the fish : the crisis of the 1890s and the Canadian-American Joint Commission of 1892 -- pt. 4. Toward Lamprey Eve : the Great Lakes fisheries, 1896-1933 -- 16. Commercial fishing : from prosperity to recession -- 17. Policy makers and the ever-widening stain -- 18. Public policy and the declining fish resource -- 19. The end of an era -- 20. Reflections.