A burbot is landed by an ice fisherman. The species, also known as eelpout and lawyer, is a top predator fish and is native to Wisconsin waters and the Great Lakes. Photo: Paul A. Smith
With a flattened head and eel-like body, it doesn't win many beauty contests. And too often it gets no respect, as the comedian famously said of himself.
Further, consider this: One of the fish's nicknames is lawyer, a reference many believe is linked to its slimy skin and slippery nature.
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But if you get beyond looks and an unfounded reputation as a trash fish, the burbot takes on an entirely different – and truer – character.
I get to thinking about burbot this time of year because it's when I've encountered them most. The species spawns in winter (mostly) and is known to make runs out of lakes and up rivers to reproduce.
Every few years I make a trip in January to the St. Louis River west of Superior, Wisconsin, to ice fish for them.
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Not all fishermen see them the same way, however. It's common in some places for burbot to be caught and discarded on the ice.
Regulations in Wisconsin and several other states haven't done the species any favors. The Department of Natural Resources fishing pamphlet lists burbot as a rough fish, with no protections such as closed seasons, bag limits or restrictions on methods of take.
And while other Great Lakes fish have been assisted by expensive stocking programs and restoration efforts after they were thrashed by pollution, habitat loss and invasive species over the last two centuries, the burbot has made it all on its own.
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Yes, this fish – whether you call it burbot, lawyer, eelpout or lingcod – deserves to be best known for its many merits.
A burbot swims at night along the bottom of Lake Michigan. Photo: Photo courtesy of John Janssen, UWM School of Freshwater Sciences
They are wonderful fish, said Dave Jude, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and veteran of more than four decades of fisheries research on Lake Michigan. Little known, perhaps, but with a large ecological role in the history of the lake.
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Burbot have a large, wide mouth, with small teeth on both jaws, and mottled, smooth skin. The long, low dorsal fin runs to the tail, giving the fish the look of an eel.
The burbot also features a single barbel on its chin, giving it a hipster appearance. The anatomical feature helps the fish detect prey.
In Wisconsin, burbot are found widely, including Lake Michigan, Green Bay, Lake Superior and the Winnebago system as well as the St. Croix, Mississippi and Wisconsin river drainages, according to Fishes of Wisconsin by George C. Becker.
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In parts of their range, burbot are reported to weigh as much as 60 pounds. The Wisconsin record burbot was a 37.8-inch fish that weighed 18 pounds 2 ounces; it was caught in 2002 in Lake Superior.
They were found throughout the Great Lakes when Europeans first settled in the region, Jude said. Before any salmon were introduced, the burbot was one of two species that ruled the region. Very impressive fish.
Eric Geisthardt, then a graduate student at the UWM School of Freshwater Sciences, holds a burbot during an August, 2017 dive on Green Can Reef in Lake Michigan near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: UWM School of Freshwater Sciences
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One commercial fisherman who has tapped into the burbot resource is Ken Koyen in Door County. Koyen catches burbot year-round in the cold waters of Lake Michigan and serves them at his restaurant, KK Fiske, on Washington Island.
My favorite burbot recipe is to cut the meat into 1-inch cubes and drop the pieces into boiling 7-Up. After about a minute, remove the fish and serve with drawn butter.
Jake Vander Zanden, a fisheries professor at UW-Madison, used to catch an occasional burbot in his youth while fishing on Lake Winnebago.
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It's a top predator, for sure, and it eats a super wide range of other fish as well as crustaceans, Vander Zanden said.
During one project in Quebec, Vander Zanden learned to cook burbot by wrapping a whole (gutted) fish in foil, cooking it at 355 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes, and then, after slight cooling, peeling the skin off.
And it's one of only three Great Lakes fish to breed in winter, Jude said. The others are the bloater chub and deepwater sculpin.
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No one expected that, Janssen said. It showed that burbot not only use different areas to spawn, including the rivers people knew about but also offshore reefs, but also that they reproduce later in the year than we knew.
A burbot swims in a quagga mussel-lined crevice on the Lake Michigan bottom. Photo: Photo courtesy of John Janssen, UWM School of Freshwater Sciences
While lake trout were basically wiped out by sea lampreys in the 20th century, requiring extensive stocking to help restore the species, the burbot was buffeted but unbeaten.
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Diet studies in the last two decades have shown burbot feed heavily on the round goby, an invasive species that has inundated nearshore habitat in Lake Michigan and spends much of its time near the bottom.
A selection of fish caught on an ice fishing outing on Lake of the Woods, Minnesota included (top to bottom) tulibee, walleye, yellow perch, burbot and sauger. Photo: Paul A. Smith
This year's gala, which awards prizes for the biggest 'pout catches as well as team tonnage, is scheduled Feb. 21 to 24.
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7 Lunch at The Hub 12:00pm · The Hub 7 Adult Hockey League 6:30pm · Cook County Community Center 7 ONLINE: Ojibwe Language (Anishinaabemowin) Learning 4 Session Series - February 6:00pm · Virtual Event 7 The story of Nellie Francis: Fighting for Racial Justice and Women's Equality in Minnesota 11:30am · Virtual Event 7 Gunflint Mail Run Sled Dog Race 8:00am · Trail Center Lodge 8 Lunch at The Hub 12:00pm · The Hub 8 Northern Light Gallery Exhibition 10:00am · Johnson Heritage Post Art Gallery - Grand Marais, MNThe Great Lakes burbot is one of the oddest looking fish and anglers who catch the strange specimen raise many questions about its identity. This native fish to the Great Lakes is also known as lawyer, eelpout, ling, or freshwater cod and it is the only freshwater member of the cod family. The burbot lives on the bottom in clear cold waters of the Great Lakes and some deeper inland lakes. The burbot’s odd appearance can be attributed to its chin, with its single barbel, elongated second dorsal and anal fins, rounded caudal fin, and a very smooth small scaled skin that gives it a snake- or eel-like appearance.
The burbot is one of the few freshwater fish that spawn in the middle of the winter under the ice. They spawn over sand and gravel in the lakes but are also known to move into rivers to spawn where at times local fisheries have developed. Sport fishers catch burbot while fishing for lake whitefish and lake trout. In the past many were taken from rivers with hoop nets set through the ice.
Commercial fisheries also catch burbot but a low market value makes active fishing of the burbot unprofitable. Michigan Sea Grant and Michigan State University Extension have worked with the Great Lakes commercial fishing industry in the past to explore markets for burbot but their fillets only had yield of about 35 percent. Burbot is a lean and firmed fleshed fish and is often called “poor man’s lobster.”
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The burbot has a large liver rich in vitamins A and D. Many years ago burbot were harvested from the Great Lakes for extraction of the liver oil. Minnesota Sea Grant conducted a feasibility study to look at the profitability of extracting oil from the livers of burbot and concluded that extraction of burbot livers could not deliver the 50 to 70 percent yield commonly derived from cod and shark liver. Thus a fishery for burbot could not be maintained for oil alone.
Recreational fishers who catch a burbot should not be quick to throw it back because of its peculiar appearance as it could provide a tasty meal. The best way to clean a burbot is to skin it and then remove the fillets. The burbot has tough leather like skin and can be pulled off like that of a catfish.
This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu. To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters. To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts, or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).and eelpout. The species is closely related to the marine common ling and the cusk. It is the only member of the gus Lota. For some time of the year, the burbot lives under ice, and it requires frigid temperatures to breed.
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This section needs expansion with: description/data about which stages of life, this fish/variations are found scaled/leathered/combination. You can help by adding to it. (May 2016 )
With an appearance like a cross betwe a catfish and an eel, the burbot has a serpt-like body, but is easily distinguished by a single barbel on the chin.
The body is elongated and laterally
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