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By CINDA CHAVICH

(Gimli, Manitoba) – The fishing season may be over in most of Canada but out on Lake Winnipeg, arguably one of the coldest spots in the country, serious pickerel fishing is just getting underway.

Fishermen like Chris Kristjanson are setting their gill nets – under several feet of ice – for some of the finest pickerel (a.k.a. walleye) in the world.

Canada’s commercial pickerel fishery feeds the growing market for this sweet, mild fish, shipped from Norway to New York. In fact, the fish that many prairie kids remember catching in northern lakes has become one of the most expensive fillets in the fish monger’s case.  It’s a simple supply and demand issue - there is no commercial fishery for pickerel in the U.S., so all of the firm white fillets that turn up in top restaurants like Everest in Chicago are from Canadian waters.

This pickerel, and  all of the other freshwater fish caught commercially in Canada, is funneled through the Freshwater Fish Marketing Board in Winnipeg, the central buyer and processor of pickerel caught in about 400 lakes throughout western Canada, two thirds of it from Manitoba.

The pickerel fishery has never been better in Lake Winnipeg, but it’s a mixed blessing. Fish numbers are growing now thanks to “nutrients” in the lake – the phosphate and fertilizer pollution being funneled into its watershed by urbanites, farmers and intensive livestock operations. That’s good for commercial fishermen now, but the lake is dying.

“We used to go out all day and get a box of fish (80-100 pounds) and now it’s 10 or 15 boxes,” says Eric Goodman. “There’s so much fish now.”

In midsummer, the northern reaches of this massive water body – the traditional pickerel fishing grounds – are covered in thick patches of blue green algae, a result of phosphates, manure and fertilizers from farms as far away as Alberta. While that makes for plenty of fish food in the short term – leading to record catches in recent years – in the long run, the algae dies, drops to the bottom of the lake and, as it decomposes, strips life-giving oxygen from the water. The algae bloom is a symptom of a very sick lake and many fishers here are now calling on government to act quickly to keep phosphorous out of the water system, to save the lake and a fishing tradition that has been ongoing for more than a century.

Fishing began here in 1882, and by 1887 2.5 million pounds (1.13 million kg) of fish were caught in the lake, most by the Icelandic immigrants who settled here. Gimli is still an Icelandic town and third and fourth generation fishers – the Kristjansons, Olsons and Goodmans – still make their livings from pickerel, pulling in about 3.2 million kg of this fish from Lake Winnipeg each year.

“Pickerel has given me my way of life,” says Paul Olson, 89, a retired fisherman who remembers going fishing with his father in February, on a sled with a team of dogs, and whole daughter Karen still runs the family’s Gimli Fish Market in Winnipeg.

“We started selling fish when we were kids – we’d grab the bus to Winnipeg Beach in the morning and we’d pedal fish to cottages along the lake shore,” he recalls. “That’s how we started building up the pickerel market.”

Today the Gimli fishers still head out on the ice in mid-winter – many in vintage 1940s and ‘50s Bombardier snow cats. They drop their gill nets through a hole in the ice, then use a “race horse jigger” that “walks” the net along under the frozen surface to a second hole, where the nets are hauled in several days later.

“We’re out by the end of November – as soon as the ice makes – until the end of March,” says Kristjanson.

Which makes mid-winter the best time to enjoy fresh pickerel.

At The Current in Winnipeg, chef Brian Roloff serves pan-fried fillets of Manitoba pickerel in a champagne beurre blanc sauce, topped with braised leeks, which is a tasty way to enjoy this delicate fish. And in Gimli, the heart of pickerel-ville you can indulge in the sweetest bits – the pickerel cheeks – ordered at the counter, with fries and sodas or Greek salad, at the Beach Boy restaurant, although most locals say they usually serve their favourite fish prairie style – “fried in butter with mashed potatoes, creamed corn and pickled beets.”

Despite the strong supply of this freshwater fish, demand is keeping prices high.

At Mariner Neptune, the Winnipeg fish wholesaler and retailer that ships fresh pickerel across Canada daily, the price in the shop is $9.99/pound, more expensive than sole or cod, and nearly as high as Arctic char.

“It’s one of the most expensive fish we sell,” he says, “but Costco now buys 5,000 to 7,000 pounds a week.”

Growing up on the prairies, where pickerel – or perhaps perch or pike – were once the only fresh fish on the plate, a feast of pan-fried pickerel didn’t seem particularly exotic. But these days the sweet, white fish is sold across the country in the wintery ice fishing season, a true western Canadian treat.

(This story appeared in the Globe and Mail newspaper)

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©Cinda Chavich 2008

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