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There are many Minnesota festivals and events that celebrate local traditions; some even celebrate oddities and peculiarities. One such event is the self-proclaimed International Eelpout Festival, held in February each year in Walker, Minnesota, on Leech Lake. Until some creative locals got the bright idea for this festival three decades ago, the eelpout was an "unmentionable" when it came to bragging about your day's catch, a fish that almost no one would admit to trying to catch on purpose.

Though the process is not entirely understood, the sport fishing clan has an established hierarchy of fishes, a pecking order that ranges from "cool" to "uncool." Muskies are definitely cool. In Minnesota, walleyes are certainly cool. Rock bass and suckers are uncool; and so it goes down the roster of species.

Eelpout, despite the lift in status that the Walker festival may have given them, in most minds probably still fall closest to the uncool end of the scale. Only in Walker, on one weekend each February, are there likely to be many people who would seriously attempt to fish specifically for eelpout.

There are exceptions that prove the rule. Just as there are some who believe that astronaut Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon was an elaborate government hoax, or that there are alien corpses in a deep-freeze in Area 51 of the U.S. military compound in Roswell, New Mexico, there are those who are staunch admirers of, and eager anglers for, the lowly eelpout.

Also known as burbot, the eelpout is a freshwater member of the cod family. Its ocean-going relatives have been a popular food source for as long as there has been commercial fishing on the high seas. Found primarily in cold, deep waters, cod are mild flavored, with a dense, flaky white flesh. If you were to order fish-and-chips in a British pub, there's a better than even chance that the fish you'd get with your chips would be Atlantic cod, the relative of our eelpout.

Beyond its food value, the livers of saltwater cod are processed to make cod liver oil, which is an important supplement containing vitamins A, D, E and omega-3 fatty acids. Cod liver oil has also been a cause for protest from youngsters of my parents' generation, who were forced to swallow a spoonful as a preventative or curative for childhood illnesses. Knowing what we now know about what it contains, perhaps our grandparents were onto something.

I am among those has never intentionally fished for eelpout, but I've had the good fortune to have tasted it, and found it very palatable. We were on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, fishing deep for lake trout, when my wife's rod tip dipped, and she began reeling her fish to the surface.

To our initial disappointment, her catch was a modest-sized eelpout. Because of the depth where it was hooked and its rapid ascent to the surface, the eelpout's swim bladder "blew up," protruding like a large pink bubble-gum bubble from the fish's mouth. In that condition the fish was doomed, so there was no hesitation in adding it to the other fish we had caught for dinner that evening. Without question, in the taste department that eelpout held its own right alongside the lake trout.



One can say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" all they want, but the eelpout is a fish that few other than its mother could love. It might be described as a smooth slimy tube with fins, or a cross between a catfish and an eel, justifying its common name. Though it has not happened to me, some say that when being unhooked an eelpout may wrap itself around the angler's arm. Had my wife's eelpout done that to her, I have no doubt that she would have bailed out of the canoe, and swam for the nearest shore.

Eelpout are caught most frequently in winter through the ice, rather than in summer, because they are the first of Minnesota's fish to spawn, an event that can begin in late January. Spawning brings the fish into shallower water where they're more accessible to anglers. The fish gather together in a snake-like, writhing mass of spawning mayhem, another characteristic not likely to endear them to humans! Eelpout are not particularly choosy about what anglers' offerings they will strike. Some have good winter angling success using jigging spoons tipped with chunks of minnow.

Walker has made a great success of promoting its International Eelpout Festival, as much a quirky social event in the grim depths of winter as it is an opportunity to catch fish. I say more power to Walker; and more power to the homely but tasty eelpout![[In-content Ad]]

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