Pandemic, low prices blamed for 95% decline in Sask. commercial lake trout harvest

The amount of lake trout harvested by Saskatchewan's commercial fishers dropped 95 per cent in 2020-21 from the previous year, according to data from the province's Ministry of Environment — and the pandemic is in part to blame.

"A lot of trout goes into restaurant markets," said ministry spokesperson Mark Duffy. With restaurants hit hard by the pandemic, "the demand wasn't there. And so the fishers didn't fish."

The drop is also partly due to how concentrated the harvest for lake trout is, he said.

Duffy said 80 to 90 per cent of the province's commercially harvested lake trout are caught in one lake — Reindeer Lake in northeastern Saskatchewan, the province's second-largest lake.

"So any changes within that particular fishery are going to really impact the total harvest of lake trout for the province," he said.

Duffy, a fisheries management specialist and the team lead of Saskatchewan Environment's fisheries unit, said other species that are harvested are spread out in most of the province's 225 other lakes that are commercially fished, which is why they are not as susceptible to sudden spikes or declines.

The decline happened after the province's lake trout harvest more than doubled from 2018-19 to 2019-20, according to the data supplied to CBC News.

The three fish species that typically get the most attention from commercial fishers in the province also experienced harvest declines in 2020-21, but nowhere near the extent of the drop in the lake trout harvest.

Saskatchewan's commercial fishers caught 20 per cent less lake whitefish, six per cent less walleye (pickerel) and 15 per cent less northern pike (jackfish).

Meanwhile, there were larger mullet and cisco (tullibee) harvests in 2020-21. The amount of cisco caught was up 241 per cent over 2019-20 levels — although it still made up only three per cent of Saskatchewan's total commercial fish harvest.

Duffy said fishers on Reindeer Lake got off to a late start in 2018-19 because of changes to where they were going to market their fish. The province's commercial fishers hauled in 80,367 kilograms of lake trout that year.

The lake trout harvest jumped to 185,129 kilograms the following year — which Duffy called more of a normal year.

But in 2020-21, as the pandemic hit and restaurant demand dwindled, the bottom fell out, with only 9,411 kilograms of lake trout caught.

Duffy said the markets rebounded a little quicker for some of the other species, such as lake whitefish, walleye and northern pike.