(Photo courtesy of Brian Migchelbrink from Bedford, Ohio) Hot on the trail of a secret lake Up until the late 1950s, diners all around Lake Erie could find blue pike on the menu at taverns and restaurants.
“Smaller fish, very good eating,” he said. They filled tubs with blue pike in a few hours. Tibbels said that using lanterns and fishing a bit offshore, they would haul in plenty that ran about 12 to 15 inches, the biggest being about 2.5 pounds. “We didn’t target them, but we caught a lot because they were available.”
“Years ago, we would go out in the evenings from about seven until midnight and catch blue pike,” he explained in a previous interview. In 2014, shortly before he died, the 76-year-old recalled fishing on Lake Erie in the Marblehead area decades earlier. One good example: Jack Tibbels operated Tibbels Marina in Marblehead, Ohio, for decades. “There was a point when there was only one person left who remembers seeing the very last passenger pigeon, you know? And when that person’s gone….” he said. Niskanen compared it to the memory of Martha, the last passenger pigeon, who died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo. The window of time for locating anglers who fished for and remember blue pike is quickly narrowing. They were deep water fish, and they were pretty good to eat. “It had to be the middle or late ‘50s when they started to go, might’ve been the ‘60s,” he said. Wozniak said blue pike were still being caught there when he left the business. Then they just disappeared like everything else does.” There was a lot of blue pike at one time. “We fished for Independence over there in Sandusky. “I was young when we fished for them,” he said. He worked as a commercial fisherman more than a half century ago. Port Clinton resident Al Wozniak, 90, remembers. But by 1959 the catch had plummeted to just 89,000 pounds.īy 1964, fish dealers sold just 200 pounds. Blue pike lunches and dinners at taverns and restaurants were as common then as Lake Erie yellow perch meals are now. Between 19 records show that up to 26 million pounds were taken in a single year. Commercial fishing records show more than 3.1 million pounds were netted in 1885. To say they were plentiful would be an understatement. Sander vitreus glaucum looked strikingly similar to walleye, though it grew to just about 3 pounds, had a noticeably blue-gray hue and distinctively larger eyes than a walleye. (Courtesy of Minnesota Conservation Volunteer) This walleye, with bluish features around mouth and gills, is a descendent of the fish stocked in a northern Minnesota lake in 1969. It came into existence when Niskanen got word that a tiny, remnant population may still exist in a remote northern Minnesota lake more than 800 miles from Lake Erie, the blue pike’s native home, though that didn’t turn out to be the case. In 2008, the article “ In Search of Blue Pike” appeared in Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, an MDNR publication. “I see it all over the Internet and you can see where it’s been reposted, cut and pasted and clips of it showing up in fishing forums.” Paul Pioneer Press reporter and former Minnesota Department of Natural Resources media relations representative. “I knew when I wrote the story it would capture peoples’ imagination for a long time and I get people that still reach out to me,” said Chris Niskanen, a former St.
Part of that is due to a feature story written about the bygone fish. Yet, nearly 40 years later, the population remains robust and healthy – in the hearts and minds of countless anglers. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the blue pike extinct. One of the last known (and most famous) blue pike was landed by hook and line in 1962.
Collection 4 – Lesson Plans from Our Monthly PBS Program.Collection 3 – Virtual Field Trips in the Great Lakes.Collection 2 – Threats to the Great Lakes.Collection 1 – An Exploration of the Great Lakes.Beneath the Surface: The Line 5 Pipeline in the Great Lakes.Politics, Policy, Environmental Justice.The Catch: News about the Lakes You Love.Ask the Great Lakes Now Team Your PFAS Question.Ask Your Question About the Great Lakes.
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