Whitefish



First Ice on Poplar Lake -- Nov. 16th




Lin and I have returned from our annual family visit/trip and have started to settle into another period of  "off-season" retirement. We came home to find that the smaller lakes like Swamp were glazed over while the larger lakes like Poplar were still open.

Earlier this week I decided to help a neighbor who was netting Whitefish clean his catch . On the first day seven whitefish were picked from his net. Five of the seven fish were headless and the net was holed in several spots. The next day there were six fish in the net and all of them were headless.

The otter family that entertained cabin guests over the summer seem to have acquired a fondness for fish heads! A few of the finished fillets were definitely shorter than they should of been. We put the fish heads that remained after cleaning the fish out for the otters -- believing that nothing should be wasted and wanting to share the fish with the otters.  OK, maybe we hoped that the otters would get full and not hit the net for a while.

This morning we had 3/4s of an inch of ice on Poplar.  After breaking ice for about an hour we agreed to call an end to netting for this year. There were six fish in the net and they were all whole! The otters gave up fishing through the ice about a day before we did. Smart Otters.