Great Lakes sport trolling was pioneered off Northport in the early 1920s, when Traverse City native George Raff discovered that lake trout could be caught by trolling in Grand Traverse Bay’s protected waters. Before that, trout fishing was mainly a commercial enterprise in which large quantities were caught by net, and Traverse City restaurant owners eagerly bought Raff’s catches. Beginning with one small boat about sixteen feet long, Raff later started the area’s first sports charter service, charging each angler one dollar an hour and guaranteeing success. Methods that he and his wife, Nell, developed for catching trout and other gamefish spread throughout the Great Lakes. Sport trolling for lake trout nearly vanished in the 1940s because of overfishing by commercial netters and sea lamprey attacks on the trout. Chemicals eventually controlled the lampreys, and state laws outlawed gill nets. In the 1960s, the Michigan Fishery Commission planted Coho and Chinook salmon for a new sport fishery. Using the methods developed near Northport in the 1920s, along with other techniques such as piano wire, wooden and metal reels, and lures made from tin cans and bicycle spokes, trollers again began catching salmon, brown and lake trout, and steelheads throughout most of the Great Lakes. In 1981, sport fishing brought Michigan over three billion dollars in tourist revenues and attracted 700,000 licensed anglers in the Great Lakes.