Where Buffalo fish swim

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    Where buffalo fish swim, nets follow
By Tom Cherveny on Apr 22, 2016 at 11:54 p.m.
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BIG KANDIYOHI LAKE — Where the buffalo fish come, Mike’s Rough Fish follows.

The commercial fishing crew from Waterville arrived just about two weeks ago.

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Ever since, they’ve been pulling up nets teeming with common carp and bigmouth buffalo from Big Kandiyohi Lake.

The shallow, 2,682-acre lake just north of Lake Lillian goes by the name by which the Dakota knew this area and for which the county is named: Kandiyohi, or “where the buffalo fish come.’’

“It’s looking pretty good for us,’’ Jason George said.

His crew filled a truck with 20,000 pounds of buffalo fish by noon Thursday. Its driver expected to reach New York City by Friday night.

The fish will be sold live in Chinatown. It’s important that the fish are live, said Mike Sands, father of Jason George and company founder.

“If you get ’em live, they know they’re fresh,’’ Sands said.

The customers want clean fish that come from cold, clear water, he said.

The crew had already pulled and shipped over 40,000 pounds of common carp from the lake, and will be busy in the weeks ahead removing more.

The carp are shipped to Stoller Fisheries in Spirit Lake, Iowa. They are minced and the meat shipped to New Jersey, where it is canned and sold as Gefilte Fish.

It’s a traditional food for Ashkenazi Jews who serve it on Shabbat and other holidays, according to Thomas Opheim of Stoller Fisheries.

The company, which started in 1932, purchases carp, buffalo and other rough fish from commercial netters working the waters of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakotas.

The company also collects the eggs and milt from carp for sale as roe, a poor man’s caviar.

The carp’s pituitary glands are also sold to fish farms.

A lot of attention has been paid to the value of harvesting rough fish as a protein source, especially now that Asian carp are invading more waters.

That attention has not translated into a growing market, according to Opheim.

Minnesota’s harvest of rough fish has basically been going down, according to Neil Vanderbosch, commercial fishing program coordinator with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Commercial harvesters used to take as much as 6 million to 7 million pounds annually from inland waters in the state, but the take today is just a few million, he said.

Nonetheless, there are those eager to see the markets grow for under-utilized fish.

Bruce O’Malley assisted the crew on Big Kandi Lake. He loaded a tank in the back of his pickup truck with live buffalo fish.

He sells them to ethnic markets in the Twin Cities. O’Malley said he’s also known as the “bullhead’’ man.

He offers bullheads taken from Minnesota waters for spring fish feeds, most of them hosted by nonprofit organizations.

There’s money to be made netting rough fish, but George offers a word of caution for those looking to give it a try. Markets have only been “fair,’’ and this is a business with a high cost of entry. A single net can cost $20,000 or more.

His crew uses 30-foot boats with high-powered Evinrude outboards and modified propellers. Each can deliver a load of 4,000 pounds of fish from net to landing. There, a hydraulic lift in a pickup truck driven by Sands hoists the fish and he drives them to a waiting truck.

For George, the fishing season starts with the closing of the walleye season and ends with its opening in May. The fish he seeks are best to net in late winter and the open waters of early spring. They are in schools and the meat is best, he said.

Carp and buffalo are the primary targets, but the crew will also net sheepshead (freshwater drum). The nets they use are large enough that most of the game fish are not caught. They cannot keep game fish, and must sort and release those that are captured.

Yes, they have seen some nice walleyes and northern pike in Big Kandiyohi Lake. George said he has been most surprised by the large size of some of the sunnies his crew has removed from nets.

Commercial fishing remains hard work, one that requires toiling in cold water and weather.

George said he tried other work before coming back to the business. “I enjoy being outside, lot of freedom with the lakes,’’ he said.

The commercial fishing licenses for this area have recently been acquired by two new operators: Mike’s Rough Fish and Corey Dillon. Both lead active crews, and Kandiyohi County and the surrounding counties can expect to see more commercial fishing in the coming years, according to Vanderbosch.

George said that anyone who wants to take home a few carp from Big Kandiyohi Lake is welcome to drop by while the crew is working at the landing near the County Park. O’Malley also welcomes inquiries about bullheads for feeds at 507-461-3240.