Fishing for Fish on Lake Winnipeg

By Bruce Masterman

"Here's the escape hatch in case we go through the ice."

Ken Campbell's words get my attention as he steers the aqua-blue Bombardier B12 half-track over the snow blanketed ice on Lake Winnipeg.

I glance over to see if he's joking. He is not. He's pointing at a small square trap door in the cab's steel ceiling. It looks far too tiny for my parka-clad bulk. When I mention this, Campbell responds "Oh, I think you'd somehow find a way to get through there."
I wince.

It's cold out here.

It is February 22, and we are heading out to check the nets at Campbell's commercial fishing operation on Lake Winnipeg near Gimli, on the lake's west shore. Outside, it's minus 29C, and only a few degrees warmer in the cab. An awkward moment passes before I ask if vehicles ever break through the ice.

"Oh sure, but not very often," he replies.

Campbell tells me about the two commercial fishermen whose Bombardier didn't have an escape hatch. A few years ago, it crashed through thin ice and quickly sank 22 feet.

The men couldn't open the side doors because of the pressure of the icy water. They had to wait until they were on the bottom and the vehicle filled with water – equalizing the pressure inside – before they could escape.

One man swam to the surface, and was helped out by other fishermen. His older partner floated up, unconscious. He spent several weeks in hospital but survived.

Such are the occupational hazards facing Campbell and the 1,000 or so other commercial fishermen – 80 percent of whom are of Métis or First Nations heritage – who make their living on Lake Winnipeg.

It's a 129-year-old industry.

In 1882, two men with a sailboat started fishing the lake and selling their catch in Winnipeg. Five years later, a fleet of 65 sailboats and seven tugs and barges caught 2.5 million pounds of fish, worth $114,000. (Over $2,500,000 in today's money.)

Today, the Lake Winnipeg fishery supplies most of Manitoba's $30 million commercial fishing industry. Although several species are caught in the lake, walleye are most prized from a marketing standpoint. Known locally as pickerel, their tender white flesh has made them a popular delicacy throughout the world, especially in the US.

Campbell and fellow fishermen head out to set and check nets every day for about nine months a year, on boats until the lake freezes, then in Bombardiers and snowmobiles. "We have to take care of our fish," says Campbell, 64, adding that fish left too long in nets can spoil, especially in warm weather.

Sometimes it's a challenge just to get out on the lake.

They routinely brave choppy waters, rain, sleet, snow, wind, fog, blowing snow, extreme cold and unpredictable ice conditions. But they are legally and ethically obligated to regularly tend their nets.

Campbell's face is glum when he picks me up at my hotel just after sunrise. "My snow machine won't start," he says. "Too cold."

When we arrive at his house several blocks north of the hotel, things look iffy while Campbell and his fishing partner,Francisco "Pancho" Santos, 30, use a blowtorch on the frozen carburetor to coax the 1953 Bombardier to life.

Minutes later we are on the ice, with Santos following us on a snowmobile hauling a sled stacked with empty plastic tubs to carry the day's catch. Several hundred yards offshore, Campbell stops just shy of a ridge of ice that had formed overnight.

It is a pressure ridge, a potentially weak spot caused by shifting ice. Santos pokes it with a solid steel rod that comes out wet. A foot-wide band of open water runs along the ridge. But with the ice solid on both sides, he decides it is safe to drive across.

Still haunted by the vision of trying to squeeze myself through that little escape hatch, I opt to walk and get back into the Bombardier on the other side of the ridge.

The catch

At the start of the season in late November, Campbell and Santos set 60 nets, each 80 yards long. They try to check 10 nets a day.

Within minutes, we stop at a chunk of poplar tree stuck in the snow. They crank up a belt-driven steel ice auger attached to the Bombardier, and in less than a minute drill a 15-inch hole through the metre-thick ice. Santos attaches a rope to one end of the net, leaving plenty of slack that he'd need later.

Campbell drives to the other end of the net and drills another hole, hooking the net with a long-handled steel gaff. Santos joins him and they start pulling the plastic mesh net up through the hole.

A smorgasbord of fish appears: white bass, sauger, a northern pike and, of course, walleye. The men remove the fish one at a time, careful not to rip or tangle the net. They toss the fish into the plastic tubs, and place them in the Bombardier before they can freeze solid.

The numbers and size of the fish, especially the walleye, amaze me. Santos hefts a football-shaped walleye of almost eight pounds, larger than any I've caught in a half-century of angling.

Once a net is emptied, Santos resets it by using the snowmobile to pull the rope attached to the net under the ice between the two holes. The routine is repeated several times throughout the day as they handle hundreds of fish.

Campbell and Santos work quickly and quietly, each knowing his role. They are dressed for the weather, Campbell in insulated pumpkin-orange coveralls, Santos in a blue snowmobile suit. Both wear fleece-lined boots and hoods. Not once do they complain of the cold.

"Yesterday the wind blew the snow so hard we couldn't see 10 feet in front of us," Campbell observes.

No matter the temperature, they sometimes have to work bare-handed to untangle the net. Occasionally they stop to warm up over the wood stove inside the Bombardier.

Campbell and Santos are a bit of an odd couple on Lake Winnipeg, professionally speaking. Most fishermen on the Gimli side of the lake are Icelandic. Their ancestors started settling in Gimli in 1875.

They can't imagine doing anything else.

Campbell's background is Scottish and Santos's is Mexican. Campbell started commercial fishing in 2001 when he retired after 30 years as a provincial fisheries biologist and manager, responsible for the same waters he now fishes.

Santos has been at it for 15 years. He'd moved from Mexico to Gimli with his mother and sister when he was six. He was a teenager when a fisherman friend asked him one summer to help, and he's been at it ever since. He loves being outside and working hard.

"It was exactly what I wanted," Santos says.

For Campbell, becoming a commercial fisherman was long overdue. He'd always loved to fish and to be outdoors, and he prefers setting and tending nets to working in government bureaucracy.

"I'll do this until I drop," he says. "Once it gets in your blood it's hard to stop."

After hours on the ice, the tubs are full and the fishermen are ready for lunch before they have to clean their catch. It is Louis Riel Day in Manitoba and the local restaurant they exclusively supply is offering a special lunch in honour of the holiday.

We are soon sitting in Kris' Fish & Chips on 1st Avenue in downtown Gimli. It's a simple place, with Formica-topped tables and counters, and the menu printed on a chalkboard up front. It's everything pickerel: pickerel dinner, pickerel and chips, pickerel burger, even pickerel cheeks, a small but tender delicacy. Fishing memorabilia and historic photographs line the walls.
Lunch is heaping platefuls of fried pickerel fillets, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, fresh-baked bannock, and hot coffee and tea. As we all enthusiastically dig in, I ask if they ever tire of eating fish.

Santos just shakes his head while Campbell says he could eat pickerel every day, and often does.

The appetite many have for Lake Winnipeg pickerel is good news for Nick Badger, who manages Kris' Fish and Chips, which is owned by his parents. He has a solid local clientele and there are always visitors from Canada, the US, Europe and Asia.

"People from other parts of the world are used to eating ocean fish," says Badger, 25, "so it's a real treat for them to have a chance to eat freshwater fish."

After lunch, Santos and Campbell drive to the processing plant where they'll spend the next two hours cleaning and packaging fish. They've already had a long day. And no matter what tomorrow morning brings – rain or shine, blizzard or gale-force winds, frozen engines – they'll be back at it again.