Feeding a Taste for Luxury; Fish Eggs Are a Delicacy, but Getting Them to Market is Rough Work
By ANNYSA JOHNSON
De Soto – Jim and Denny Boardman bring their flat-bottomed boat to rest in the main channel of the Mississippi River and lift, with considerable effort, the mesh-and-metal hoops on which they hang their livelihood.
In the old days, these nets would have been filled with sheepshead and catfish, suckers and white carp. But the markets for those dried up years ago.
These days, they’ll snag a few catfish, which they’ll eat or sell to local customers.
But the real quarry here is shovelnose sturgeon, an ancient and dwindling species. The female produces black, pearl-like eggs, coveted worldwide as caviar.
The Boardman cousins, 55-year-old Denny and 71-year-old Jim, are third- and fourth-generation commercial fishermen, and among the last five or so in Wisconsin to make a living full time on the Mississippi River.
It’s been a good, if hard, way of life here in De Soto, population 366, south of La Crosse.
But the end, they say, is near.
"There ain’t no future in it," says Jim, whose grandfather came down the muddy waters on a houseboat from Lake Pepin in the early 1900s.
Between the declining markets and increasing regulation, Denny sees, maybe, a decade more of work ahead.
"There’s nothing there. It’s going to go the way of the dodo bird," Denny says.
The Boardmans fish year-round, but it is the shovelnose – the fish’s roe, actually – that has kept their business afloat in recent years.
Once a nuisance fish that got tangled in nets, they could be found discarded by the thousands and "stacked like cordwood along the banks," says Patrick Short, a state Department of Natural Resources senior fisheries biologist for the Mississippi River.
Today, they are one of the few remaining species of sturgeon that can still be commercially harvested for the caviar trade. Overfishing and poaching have caused sturgeon populations to plummet around the world. And recent bans on caviar from the Black and Caspian seas have pushed the price for the Boardmans’ roe to around $50 a pound.
That’s a bargain for a delicacy that retails in some places for upwards of $20 an ounce.
"We’ve been told ours are the best eggs they get," Denny says of the Russians who drive five hours from Chicago to buy whatever the cousins can harvest.
And so, for six weeks each spring, as the sturgeon swim upstream to spawn, the two set out on their near-daily ritual amid some of the most breathtaking scenery in Wisconsin.
It is back-breaking work to hoist the nets laden with fish and river debris through the fast-moving current.
"This wind makes it 10 times harder," Jim says on a chilly May morning as he and Denny pull the net from the water. They shake off the muck before emptying it, occasionally slicing their forearms on the spiked scales of this prehistoric creature. A fighter of a fish, the shovelnose has several names – hackleback, sand sturgeon – but few as apt as whiptail sturgeon.
Jim makes the nets himself, knitting the funnel-shaped insides that snag the fish. It is as much art as science, knowing where to anchor the nets, how to bait them and where to find them when they return two days later. In some places, they will mark the bank.
"But Jim’s memory is phenomenal," says Short, who is following in a DNR boat where he and colleague Todd Roensch will monitor the day’s catch, tagging and throwing back any sturgeon under 25 inches.
It is Denny who harvests the roe, on his knees in his now slime- covered overalls. He slits each female’s belly and scoops the eggs with his bare hand into a plastic pail as his yellow labs, Tug and Maggie, salivate nearby.
"They love to lap it up. They can eat $100 worth pretty fast," Denny says.
The roe is clearly what’s prized here. But there will be no waste. All of the fish flesh will be smoked for sale.
Restrictions on harvest
Short confirms the Boardmans’ concerns about their livelihood.
A new size rule that takes effect this year will cut the number of fish they can keep, and overfishing could eventually force the DNR to close this stretch of the river to commercial fishermen entirely.
Once out of the water, the Boardmans are still at work on this day’s catch, which Jim estimates at about 350 pounds of fish, and 7 or 8 pounds of roe from the 19 females they caught.
Denny loads the bins of fish flesh into the back of his pickup for the ride to Prairie du Chien. And Jim heads for the Bright Spot, the popular bar and grill he owns in De Soto, where he’ll wash, salt and package the roe.
The scene at the Bright Spot could not be more removed from the haute cuisine culture that fuels the caviar trade.
Jim sits outside the tavern on a pillow atop an overturned bucket. He gently massages the eggs through a mesh screen into an empty ice-cream pail, leaving the viscous fat behind.
"You can’t push too hard or you’ll smash ‘em," he says.
Jim pauses to pull a pail of finished roe from the freezer. Cleaned and devoid of the fat, it glistens with a kind of exotic beauty. He appears both proud of his work and mystified by the fascination with this expensive delicacy.
"I’ve ate it. It’s no big deal," he says, lifting his shoulders in a shrug.
"It’s kind of salty – tastes fishy."
ABOUT THIS SERIES
This story is part of "Vanishing Wisconsin," an occasional series that takes a closer look at traditions, occupations, cultures and icons that make up the fabric of Wisconsin life but are on the verge of disappearing. If you have an idea, please contact Mark Hoffman at mhoffman@journalsentinel.com.
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