Five weeks after a church service held each year in Port Stanley to bless their nets for a safe and bountiful season, local fishers have yet to get them wet. It could be April before the ice clears to allow Lake Erie fishers out of their winter ports. Erie, which boasts the largest of any of Ontario’s Great Lakes commercial fisheries, is almost frozen over.
Mark Golem is among those who are biding their time.
“This time last year, we were pretty well started,” says the 53-year-old Port Stanley fisher who has been on the lake since high school.
“There’s so much ice out there, this season’s going to be a later start. It could be the 1st of April.”
However, Golem is far from idle, mending nets and maintaining machinery.
“We’re like farmers. There’s always something to do.”
And when the ice clears and the fishers get out, the late start of the season will be just another memory like the late start he recalls a dozen years ago. Golem doesn’t expect the harsh winter of 2013-2014 will be a detriment.
Dennis Cartier agrees. In fact, the secretary-treasurer of Blenheim-based Ontario Commercial Fisheries Association says that if anything, the ice covering Lake Erie could benefit future catches by reducing the population of gizzard shad, an introduced species which preys on fingerling native fish like perch and walleye, also known as pickerel.
The warm-water gizzard shad needs a higher level of oxygenation than the ice-covered lake allows.
Like many things, the Lake Erie fishery isn’t what it once was.
At the peak of the commercial fishery in the mid-’80s, there were almost 170 fish boats – called tugs – sailing out of ports on the lake’s north shore. Continue reading……
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