John, under his pen name Robert Traver also wrote Trout Magic, Anatomy of a Fisherman, Trout Madness and many more

    He was a District Supreme Court Judge for the State of Michigan. A few years ago the John D. Voelker Society commissioned me to paint his official portrait for the State Capitol Building in Lansing..... what an honor!... especially since my buddy Jimbo and I had been making annual pilgrimages to the upper Peninsula of Michigan hoping to meet John Voelker and do a little fishing. I think we had secret hopes he would invite us out to his beloved “Frenchmans Pond” to fish for brook trout, another of our mutual passions. He was a hero to us. His trout philosophy espoused in “Testament of a Fisherman”  had become our mantra. We would hang out in the “Rainbow Bar and Grill” for hours, just hoping he would show up. We heard he played cribbage there with his friends.

      We never did meet him, but we found out later we fished a bay on Deer lake his House overlooked... who knows, maybe he watched with amusement as we fly fished for Northern Pike out of our float tubes... and unusual site in the early 80’s.