Even though our lakes are full of walleye, a meal of it remains largely a private, home-cooked affair, largely because this fish appears on the table only if you've been lucky on the lake.
For many people (my own family, for example) the treatment for walleye rarely deviates from this prescription: a healthy roll in cracker crumbs followed by a nice dip in a shallow fat bath. The fried breaded walleye fillet might as well mark its own small holiday; it is dependably delicious, sufficiently fattening to be celebratory, and, well, predictable.
I wonder, though, if unfettered access to walleye -- a way of purchasing Minnesota walleye that didn't depend on luck, for instance -- might not widen our walleye-cooking horizons.
Now we can find out, because Red Lake Fisheries in Redby, Minn. -- the nation's only hook-and-line commercial walleye fishery -- is gathering momentum. After taking a seven-year hiatus for walleye population recovery, the operation returned to fishing in 2006. This year it posted fully recovered numbers of our favorite lake fish, taking 625,000 pounds of walleye from Red Lake in 2009 -- about 75 percent of the available harvest.
With a simple phone call to the fisheries, you can order quick-frozen walleye (and some perch and northern pike, if available) to be delivered to your doorstep the very next day. You can also request fresh (unfrozen) fish, in which case well-iced fillets ship within a day of catching.
Or you can simply go there, as I did: Walk in the front door of the fisheries and walk out with an armful of fresh catch, stealing a glimpse of the great Red Lake that looms behind the building as you climb into your car.
Two large basins of water make up Red Lake -- Upper Red Lake and Lower Red Lake -- connected to each other by a small inlet. Together they are the sixth largest natural freshwater lake in the United States, falling in line right behind the Great Lakes.
Four-fifths of the lake falls within the borders of Red Lake Reservation, whose largest communities -- Red Lake and nearby Redby -- sit on the lower lake's south shore. The latter is home to both the Red Lake Fisheries and Red Lake Nation Foods, a mail-order business for local delicacies, such as wild rice.