Mid-winter commercial fish weights improve on Great SLave Lake
Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Feb 19/01) - Mid-winter Great Slave Lake commercial fishing numbers are well ahead of last year's, recent numbers show.
Through January, the total winter catch is up 26.1 per cent, according to the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corp.
The commercial catch totalled 157,065.7 kilograms through last month.
By species, commercial fishers on Great Slave Lake net more whitefish than any other species.
As of the end of January, whitefish weight is up 40.5 per cent to 122,643 kg from 87,307.5 kg.
Whitefish, pickerel, trout, northern pike, inconnu, mullet and goldeye are caught commercially from Great Slave Lake.
Wallace Brown, Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation zone manager in Hay River, says numbers are very much improved compared to the first half of last winter.
Prior to joining the corporation, Brown was with Pangnirtung Fisheries, the Baffin-based commercial fish company owned by the Nunavut Development Corp. and Cumberland Sound Fisheries.
The Freshwater Fish Marketing Corp., a federal crown corporation, buys, processes and markets freshwater fish from the NWT, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario.
For fiscal 1999-2000, the corporation's total sales from all jurisdictions was $54.9 million, up 8.3 per cent from $50.7 million in the prior fiscal year.
