Minnesota is almost an island state, and it’s riddled with watery holes.

Our borders are waterlogged: the BWCA and Rainy River to the north; Red River to the west; Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers to the southeast; and 150 miles of Lake Superior shoreline to the northeast. And you’ve heard about those 11,842 lakes—far more than the 10,000-figure lie splashed across license plates. 

Even with all that aquatic habitat, Minnesota isn’t a seafood state. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa helm a thriving walleye business out of Red Lake, and commercial activity is permitted, though not very utilized, in the Mississippi River. The most obvious-seeming fishery? The 31,700-square-mile lake that stretches from Duluth to Grand Portage and beyond. 

But commercial fishing along the Minnesota waters of Lake Superior barely maintains pulse. At its peak, the industry employed 400+ licensed operators. Today, the number of licenses is capped at 25. Of those, only five to 10 license holders fish the frigid waters with entrepreneurial zeal, estimates Don Schreiner, fisheries specialist with the U of M-based research org Minnesota Sea Grant. 

"Commercial fishing is hard, there's nothing easy about it,” says Cory Goldsworthy, Lake Superior fisheries supervisor with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “And we've seen a declining trend of younger generations who want to do it.” 

The dramatic collapse of Minnesotans fishing Lake Superior was fueled by voracious human appetites, monstrous invasive species, and deadly industrial pollutants. After six decades of painstaking management, however, the fisheries are thriving again.

Don’t expect harvests to approach the (retrospectively devastating) levels reached 100 years ago—Goldsworthy’s DNR won’t allow it. But everyone interviewed for this story, including the regulators, agrees that fresh, creative minds could spur a micro-boom for sustainable, Minnesota-produced fish. 

“We’ve got some of the best fish in the world right in our backyard,” says Thomas Hutchinson, a veteran fishmonger who just launched a food truck, Out of the Blue, devoted to Lake Superior species. “And nobody's selling it."

What’s Even Swimming in That Big Lake? 

You, a non-fisheries-biologist, might assume that Lake Superior is teeming with fish. You’d be wrong. 

“It's a large lake, but it's also one of the least productive lakes in the world because of its cold temperature and lack of nutrients,” explains Minnesota Sea Grant’s Don Schreiner, who previously worked at the DNR for almost 40 years. Fishing the Great Lakes is a $7 billion industry, with warm and shallow Lake Erie accounting for over 50% of total fish produced. Superior ranks dead last.  

And while 80+ species of fish have been discovered in Lake Superior, the three that matter most to commercial fishing operators are lake trout, cisco (aka lake herring), and whitefish. Lesser-fished varieties like chubs, alewife, rainbow smelt, and native rough fish matter, too, just not nearly as much.

Lake trout are your classic trophy fish. A Minnesota man set a new state record last month after catching and releasing the 45.5-inch lunker pictured below, and charter operators lure new customers with photos of grinning fisherfolk hoisting these big-bellied predators. When they’re not released, they’re prized for their mild taste and meaty, not-too-oily texture. 

The much smaller cisco often serves as lunch for lake trout, and despite being rebranded away from the word “herring” in 2004, they still inspire much confusion among human fish eaters. 

"People assume it's what you get pickled in jars. It's not even the same animal—it's a cisco,” says Jessy Goble, co-owner of the Angry Trout Cafe in Grand Marais. “People assume it's gonna be a fishy, strong, oily fish, and it isn't; it's slightly more flavorful than, say, the beloved whitefish that comes from the South Shore, but for me it's the perfect fish—beautiful, light, flaky. You can't find anything fresher in Grand Marais than herring."

Oh yes, the beloved whitefish. Outside of some sandy bays near Grand Portage, they’re not very prevalent along the North Shore, so this story will focus on lake trout and cisco. And there’s a lot to focus on, considering that, for the first part of the 20th century, those two species formed the backbone of a booming commercial fishing industry in Minnesota. 

A Big Boom, a Bigger Decline 

Humans likely began fishing Lake Superior’s North Shore around the time they first arrived at present-day Minnesota, about 11,500 years ago. Around the year 900, tribes of Ojibwe would form settlements along the rocky shore of the lake they called Gitchi Gummi—"big water." 

In 1679, French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut became the first European to discover the future port city that would (sorta) be named after him. His French fur-trading buddies brought back "amazing" stories of the abundance of Minnesota fish, according to the DNR. It wouldn't take long for white people to begin screwing over area Natives; the La Pointe Treaty of 1854 stripped away all of what would become Minnesota's Lake Superior shoreline from the Ojibwe. 

That landgrab inspired waves of Scandinavian immigrants, many of whom came armed with fishing know-how, to establish North Shore fishhouses. Fred Dudderar celebrates those enterprising, inland-seafairing Norwegians, Finns, and Swedes in his recent documentary, Lost but Not Forgotten: A History of Commercial Fishing on Minnesota’s North Shore and Isle Royale.

"You had guys out there in 18-foot skiffs, pushing out five to 10 miles,” Dudderar says. “They came to understand the lake in ways that very few people do in the modern age, and they did it in a very natural way. Really, really talented seamen and fishermen.” 

In 1909, Milwaukee businessman Ole Evinrude revolutionized fishing with the invention of the outboard motor; Lake Superior fishermen could now chase schools miles offshore with motorized ease. And, six years later, World War I would a lucrative market for American protein. 

“There was such demand, and we had an apparently inexecutable abundance,” says Michael Risku, author of the brand-new book, Following the Fish: A History of Commercial Fishing Along Minnesota’s North Shore. “They were getting 25 cents per pound for herring—that was unheard of!” 

Risku believes that the number of commercial fishermen during this era—around 400, per most accounts—is underestimated. The market collapsed following the Great Depression, he says, and the response to plummeting prices was catching more and more fish. During the ’30s, Risku says “well over 500” boats worked the North Shore; his own father managed to fish Superior for 20+ years without once being subjected to a license check—“and he lived next to the [DNR’s now-closed] French River Hatchery!” 

In 1938, as fish populations reeled from overfishing, literal vampires stormed Lake Superior. Eighteen-inches long with circular rows of dagger teeth, the invasive sea lamprey bite into the sides of lake trout, sucking fluids and, eventually, life out of their poor hosts. Fish that survive their parasitic attackers swim along in a scarred, skinny, beleaguered state. (For much more spooky and scientific lamprey talk, watch the 2024 doc The Fish Thief: A Great Lakes Mystery.)

Before the lamprey invasion, reports the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, 15 million pounds of lake trout were pulled from the upper Great Lakes each year. That number fell by 98% by the early ’60s. “The population was in such low abundance when the sea lamprey arrived, there was a question of whether they would survive at all,” the DNR’s Cory Goldsworthy says. Fish management agencies more or less banned commercial and sport fishing of lake trout, setting off decades of rehabilitation efforts to save the decimated species. 

Dudderar and Risku like to poke holes in the popular historical narrative of what killed commercial Lake Superior fishing in Minnesota. "The old-timer fishermen will tell you that claims of overfishing in the 1950s and 1960s are bullshit," Dudderar says, noting that Goldsworthy rejects that claim. An overlooked culprit, according to Dudderar? The invasive smelt, which prey on herring fry—aka baby cisco. 

“Herring are the backbone of the whole biomass of Lake Superior, where they go, all other fish follow,” Risku says, agreeing with the smelt take. He throws out another under-cited villain: logging and mining, arguing that sawdust and tailings polluted cisco spawning grounds at virtually every river mouth along the North Shore well before the lamprey scourge. “I always felt it was unfair to the commercial fishmen, that they had to bear the burden of being the primary culprit,” Risku says—while acknowledging that, yes, the lake was indeed overfished. 

No matter the blame, the DNR was tasked with the tall order of rehabilitating bottomed-out cisco and lake trout populations. 

“I tell ya, I wasn't a very popular person at times, because I always said, ‘My job is to work for the fish,’” Don Schreiner says, reflecting on his long DNR tenure. “And if we do a good job working the fisheries, then we'll have excess we can harvest.”

Making Sense of a Restored Fishery

The Minnesota DNR did a good job, it turns out. “We're actually in really good shape now,” Schreiner observes. 

In the fall of 2024, DNR officials declared victory: Lake trout rehabilitation was a complete success. "They’re doing fantastic, back to pre-1940s levels,” the DNR’s Cory Goldsworthy notes, adding that his agency hasn’t needed to stock Superior with trout since 2015. In fact, the fisheries team has started stocking other Minnesota lakes with fry sourced from hearty Superior lake trout. Sport-fishing charters have recorded two consecutive banner years for trout catches, Goldsworthy says. Currently, private anglers take around 20,000 Superior lake trout per year, while the total commercial cap is set at around 6,000 fish.

There’s good news for cisco, too. The population struggled to gain traction for decades, resulting in declining quotas for commercial fishing operators. But four years ago, the cisco population surged back in record numbers. 

"It’s the biggest year class we've ever seen of cisco, and we’ve not seen anything even similar since 1984,” Goldsworthy says. That matters because the silvery bellwether for the fishery can live for 20+ years—the reinforcements arrived in 2022. Goldsworthy hopes that lawmakers in St. Paul, who 20 years ago wrote commercial fishing quotas into law, will grant the DNR more autonomy to determine quotas in the future. 

North Superior Fishery, a commercially licensed outfit that formed outta Grand Marais in 2020, is poised to benefit from resurgent Lake Superior fisheries. Its three 30-something fishermen are generational outliers on the big lake, where the aforementioned old-timers have ruled fishing since the great decline. 

“I come from a family of fisherman—grandpa, great grandpa, going back to Sweden before the lamprey took over there,” says Eric Brisson, whose team works the shore with four boats and thousands of miles of gillnetting. “I like being in a boat, I like being on the water. That's my, kinda, whole scenario: I like fishing. It's kind of a heritage thing, ya know?”

Brisson and his partners—brothers Tyler and Zach Smith—have a lot of fans in the greater North Shore fishing universe. Their catches are available fresh from their own food trailer, and from restaurants up and down the shore, including Angry Trout Cafe.  

“They’re literally right next door to us,” ATC owner Jessy Goble says of NSF’s basement production facility. “Every day they walk over with bins full of freshly caught, freshly filleted herring, lake trout, and occasionally a surprise like menominee or burbot. It's cool to watch them dock and unload their boat—they walk the fish over, we hand them a check.” 

It takes longer for North Superior Fishery products to hit Brookies, but not by much. The Grand Marais company overnight ships fish cocooned in ice and gelpacks 270 miles to the St. Louis Park fish shop, where it’s snapped up in a matter of days by Twin Citians hungry for locally sourced treats from the deep. 

“I get a shipment from ‘em at least twice a week—lake trout, menominee, which is what they call whitefish up there, and blue-fin cisco; it's like, still in rigor when we get it, curled up like it's in the live well,” says Brookies owner Chris Nelson, a veteran of the local seafood business. “I'd like to see them sell more fish: These are very sustainable species.” 

DNR vets Goldsworthy and Schreiner would like to see ‘em moving more fish, too. 

"We say all the time that we're surprised none of our commercial operators run a truck from the North Shore to the Twin Cities,” Goldsworthy says. “I'm sure the value-add of fresh Lake Superior fish is much higher there than in local markets."

"I tried to work with the commercial guys and give 'em ideas, like, 'You guys need to develop your markets—you're catching fish but you're crappy at marketing these fish!'” Schreiner says of operators he worked with before retiring from the DNR. “You can't just catch fish..." 

Brisson hears the encouragement, and he appreciates it, but several factors complicate things. Expanding the enterprise would require significant capital investment and logistical overhead: a bigger processing facility, a driver to make runs to the Cities, and, making it all possible, way more fish. 

And where’s the time for any of that? "We all have to fish,” Brisson says of his three-man crew. 

The Future? Turbid. 

Nobody interviewed for this story believes there’ll be a second big boom for commercial fishing on Lake Superior. The DNR’s Cory Goldsworthy predicts that, once his agency’s current revisioning process is complete, quotas could inch upward, but the industry will remain niche.

For now, Brookies owner Chris Nelson believes his shop is the only game in town to score fresh Lake Superior fish. “Tyler and his crew [at North Superior Fishery] haven't even touched what they're capable of,” he says, noting that the bustling Twin Cities co-op scene seems like an obvious marketplace position. In his sales-rep days, Nelson sold 50 pounds of herring per week to swanky Minneapolis restaurant Spoon & Stable, an he believes Lake Superior fish deserve placement on menus across the metro. 

Like Nelson, Duluth-based Out of the Blue food truck owner Thomas Hutchinson learned the fish trade while working at Coastal Seafoods. He also finds the absence of fresh, local, freshwater options vexing. (He sources his fish from the South Shore, over in Bayfield, Wisconsin.)  

"There's not much out there, period, for fresh Lake Superior,” he says. “Even in Duluth, where we're right on the lake, there's nothing there and there's even less in Minneapolis.” 

At Minnesota Sea Grant, which works in collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Commerce, it’s Don Schreiner’s job to develop new avenues to sell Minnesota fish. He’s always eager to hear new ideas to support the industry, like the one he says Duluth's Northern Waters Smokehaus might explore: Capitalize on the tinned fish craze, but make it Minnesota-caught fish inside those spendy lil tins. 

"Those [North Superior Fishery] guys are the future,” Schreiner says. “A lot of those folks are kind of aging out of the business, but I'll tell ya, those old-timers are great to talk with."

No pressure, fellas. 

"I mean, you have to find people who actually want to do it,” Brisson says when asked about the future of commercial Lake Superior fishing in Minnesota. “I don’t know how many people wanna get up at 4 o'clock seven days a week, nine months out of the year."  

But you’ll find him out on the water. 

"Until I retire. Or die."