Fishing on Lake Superior

Cold, vast and deep, Lake Superior’s virtually an inland ocean and it can be a bit foreboding.

But at the far western end of the lake, just north of Duluth, Minnesota, a productive harvest is going on virtually year-round: lake herring, a smokehouse favorite. It takes a special kind of character to brave Superior alone, in an open boat, to chase down this native fish.

"There isn’t that much sea or wind, so we’re kind of blessed this morning," said Steve Dahl.

Somewhere behind the lead-gray clouds, the October sun’s just rising on Lake Superior. Steve is pulling his living from its bitterly cold water.

"It’s only gonna be about 60, 70 pounds," he says. "But that’s OK. That’s the way it is too. You can’t do anything about it."

Steve’s harvest is the lake herring, a whitefish native to Superior’s icy depths. It’s a favorite of the many descendants of Scandinavian settlers in these parts. The fish is now in the midst of a comeback from pollution and parasites that nearly drove it extinct thirty years ago.

"I can go a couple of months without fish, or very little," admits Steve. "You just have to hope they move in and when they do, it’s a lot of fish. You never know."

Dahl’s herring nets are set semi-permanently a few miles outside the Knife River Harbor on the shore of this huge and temperamental lake. He works alone, and he plays the waiting game: his nets catch herring only at night, only when they’re feeding, only when they happen by this part of the lake.

"There is just no other way to fish here," Steve says. "That’s only 300 feet and I have a hard time making sure it stays there."

"The bulk of the year it’s local markets, restaurants, supermarkets, smoke houses."

An hour out of the water, Dahl’s catch is in the hands of Gordon Olson at Kendall’s Smokehouse, on the shore road near Duluth. Smokehouses, local markets, restaurants and supermarkets are his main clients.

"We sell his herring filleted, or scaled and headless, or smoked," says Gordon Olson, master fish smoker." It’s an ancient process of smoking that we do here. It’s nothing new, nothing very sophisticated about it. The fish are brined overnight in a salt solution, they’re placed in the ovens, and they’re smoked over open fires. And we use exclusively Maplewood. The electric ovens don’t add the natural flavor that the wood does on the old-time ovens here."

"Dealing with Steve and shoremen like that is absolutely fantastic, adds Harold Miller, an apprentice fish smoker. "Everybody gets along, from catching the fish to when you sell it. That’s what you gotta have. So Steve’s a good man."

A local delicacy will keep its place in Minnesotan kitchens and restaurants, thanks to a few fishermen like Steve Dahl. Because regardless of the odds, they like working alone. They like challenging the vastness of Lake Superior.

They like putting food on people’s tables.

Says Steve, "My job is to supply people who can’t access the resource, but have a right to it."

Additional information:
Lake Superior alone holds an astonishing 10-percent of the earth’s fresh water — nearly 3,000 cubic miles. That’s enough to flood the entire continents of North and South America with a foot of fresh water.