Patrick Durkin: Homely, but tasty, burbot gaining respect

Vern Hacker has been dead since March 1989, but I recall his smiling face and deep respect for rough fish whenever someone makes news for catching a huge gar, burbot, sheepshead or another piscatorial pariah.

That’s because Hacker was the Don Quixote of fisheries biologists during his career with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Hacker always encouraged people to eat rough fish instead of burying them to fertilize their gardens or flowers. He especially despised those who tossed rough fish aside to rot, or killed them before dropping them back into the water.

Sad to say, Hacker’s idealism probably had little impact on the fishing public’s culinary preferences. Wisconsin is flush with savory fish like trout, salmon, crappies, bluegills, walleyes, yellow perch, northern pike and white bass, to name a few. Most folks simply won’t go out of their way to catch and prepare rough fish when they have so many other tastier and prettier options.

Still, Hacker never stopped trying to put rough fish on everyone’s plate. In 1977, the DNR’s “fish control specialist” wrote a cookbook for the agency called A Fine Kettle of Fish, in which he detailed how to clean, cook and serve rough fish. (The book has been out of print for years, but email me if you’d like a PDF copy.)

Hacker’s book gives the particulars on catching and eating everything from gar to buffalo to suckers to quillbacks. In fact, about the only rough fish that defied Hacker’s catching and cooking expertise is the bowfin, known more commonly as dogfish. Hacker wrote that its soft, white meat is “generally not considered a good food fish.”

Hacker, an Oshkosh resident who died in March 1989 at age 66, most often touted the sheepshead, or freshwater drum, as table fare. Sheepshead are abundant in the Winnebago system. During the 1980s, Hacker often fried sheepshead fillets or boiled them for poor man’s shrimp cocktail during winter fundraisers for Oshkosh’s Otter Street Fishing Club.

However, Hacker’s favorite stepchild among Wisconsin’s myriad fish was likely the burbot, known more commonly as “lawyer” or “eelpout.” Still others call it a ling or cusk.

But even Hacker didn’t call this fish pretty. As a Minnesota DNR publication says, burbot look like a cross between an eel and a catfish.

It has a squiggly, serpent-like appearance, and sports a single barbel on its lower jaw that looks like a goatee. It’s also slimy and notorious for wrapping itself around your arm while you unhook it. Even so, Hacker always spoke up on the burbot’s behalf, noting that it’s the only freshwater member of the cod family.

Its pure-white flesh has no “Y” bones, and some people even eat its liver, which supposedly tastes better than calf liver.

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Burbot bite best in winter, especially at night, sometimes frustrating those who target walleyes. It’s one of the few fish species that spawns beneath the ice in midwinter. In Wisconsin, it’s found in lakes Superior and Michigan, as well as Green Bay, the Winnebago system’s five lakes, and other large lakes and rivers. Miniature versions of burbot also roam some state trout streams.

Burbot are widely distributed around the world above the 40th parallel. That makes them common across much of Alaska, Canada and the northern United States, especially in deep, cold waters up to 700 feet deep.

The world-record burbot weighed 25 pounds, 2 ounces, and was caught in March 2010 on Lake Diefenbaker in Saskatchewan, Canada. That’s 7 pounds heavier than Wisconsin’s record burbot, caught in February 2002 on Lake Superior, which measured 37.8 inches, and weighed 18 pounds, 2 ounces.

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Minnesota’s top burbot was caught Dec. 19, 2016, on Lake of the Woods near Baudette. It weighed 19 pounds, 10 ounces, and measured 33 inches. Michigan’s top burbot was slightly smaller, an 18.25-pound 40-incher caught in 1980 in the Upper Peninsula on Munuscong Bay in the St. Mary’s River in Chippewa County.

Hacker would be happy to know the burbot has enjoyed growing appreciation in recent years. MeatEater, for example, has featured the species on ice fishing episodes in Alaska, Montana and Minnesota’s Lake of the Woods, and – based on social-media posts – more anglers are targeting it each winter on lakes Superior and Michigan.

J.J. Malvitz, who guides ice-fishermen on Green Bay for whitefish and walleyes, said burbot occasionally hit clients’ baits when jigged off the bottom. He said ice anglers who target them after dark with large glow baits and dead minnows or nightcrawlers enjoy more success.

Burbot anglers have gotten past the fish’s ugly mug and eel-like body by focusing on its large fillets. Getting to that point isn’t easy for some folks. When pulling a burbot through a hole and onto the ice, many anglers recoil as this demon-dog fish wraps, wriggles and slimes.

In years past, some anglers booted or nudged the fish out the shanty’s door in hopes it unhooked itself. Still others cut the line and nudged it back into the hole. Vern Hacker scorned such cowardice, especially if they just tossed their burbot out the door to freeze atop the ice to feed seagulls and eagles.

But in the anglers’ defense, the state could show burbot more respect, too. Maybe Wisconsin’s anglers would hold burbot in higher esteem if the state didn’t list the species as a rough fish. If ever a fish deserved game fish status, it’s the burbot.

That’s why Paul Smith at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel submitted a citizen’s resolution at the April 2021 conservation hearings to remove burbot from Wisconsin’s rough-fish category. A year later, during the 2022 hearings, voters supported the move, 9,160 to 4,038, a 69-31 percentage.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen regularly in recent years on conservation matters, lawmakers have ignored that suggestion while the DNR and Conservation Congress sit silently.

Should that inaction change, you can bet that somewhere out there Vern Hacker will smile and applaud.

Contact Patrick Durkin at patrickdurkin56@gmail.com.