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Two days into two weeks on Washington Island I went out charter fishing with a crew of three other passengers, plus captain Mike Stults and his able teenage assistant, Zach. I hadn’t been fishing since I was maybe 13, and it must be that growing up on the west coast left me spoiled by an ample supply of fresh sockeye–I was surprised to discover we were going trolling for salmon. I’d never even heard of lake salmon until that morning. Turns out the Department of Natural Resources started stocking the Great Lakes with salmon (both chinook, or king, and coho) in the 60s, to chow down on the exploding alewife population, and they’re now the backbone of Lake Michigan’s sport fishing industry–at least up in the northern waters.
So, first the good news: according to the Wisconsin DNR, fish in the Great Lakes aren’t nearly as vulnerable to mercury contamination as fish from inland waters–Lake Michigan and its brethren lack the necessary amounts of anoxic bacteria to convert mercury into an easily absorbable form. (For more than you ever wanted to know about Wisconsin fishing, go here.) Now the bad: salmon and other deep-water Lake Michigan fish contain much higher levels of PCBs than inland fish. (PCBs are stored in fat, rather than muscle, and can be controlled for somewhat by cooking. But, still.) The DNR recommends no more than one meal a month of lake-caught salmon.
