Hay River (Jan 22/07) - Shawn Buckley says fishing is in his blood.

"I'll always be a fisherman," he said during a Jan. 16 interview. "I grew up with it and I can't get away from it."

However, Buckley has had to diversify and adjust to survive on Great Slave Lake.

Hay River's Shawn Buckley is a commercial fisherman who supplements his income by offering summer and winter tours on Great Slave Lake. In the winter, he takes customers onto the lake in a Bombardier snow machine. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

For nearly four years, he has offered summer and winter excursions through his Great Slave Tours.

In the summer, the 39-year-old takes sports fishermen and sightseers onto the lake, and also demonstrates commercial fishing. "A lot of people are curious about it."

For more than 10 years, he has also provided logistical support for scientists and researchers working on the lake.

Plus, he has also taken to fishing by himself.

"Within the last two or three years, I try to work alone," he said. "I'm forced to work alone because of the low fish prices."

Buckley, who is a member of the Great Slave Lake Advisory Committee, owns four boats.

His diversification is not because of a shortage of fish in the lake, he said. "There's lots of fish in the lake."

Buckley added he could probably survive just on fishing. "But I wouldn't have a life at home. I'd be constantly on the lake."

For his winter tourism operation, Buckley takes people on a four-to-six-hour trip about eight kilometres onto Great Slave Lake in one of his Bombardier snow machines.

Near a pressure ridge - where the ice juts upward in jagged little hills - he sets up a jigging camp, another camp with bunks and a heater for overnight stays, and a cook shack.

Buckley demonstrates how a fishing net is set and pulled under the ice, fillets fish and cooks up a meal fresh from the lake.

Tourism is gradually becoming a bigger part of his income, he said. "I'm slowly learning as I'm going."

The single parent of a teenage daughter hopes he can continue fishing while building his tourism business.

Buckley said he enjoys showing people the fishing and Metis lifestyle of the North. "That's where I get most of my satisfaction, in showing them my culture."

Most of his customers come from Hay River and elsewhere in the NWT, but some come from as far away as Japan.

Buckley, a third-generation fisherman, was born at Isle La Crosse, Sask.

In 1972 when he was four years old, his family moved to Hay River.

His father, the late James Buckley, was a good fisherman and worked hard, he said.

It would have been a shame to see his father's work fall by the wayside, said Buckley, whose mother, Elizabeth, is a retired teacher.

When Buckley was 15, his father started him on a career by giving him part of the fishing operation to run. The teen was responsible for checking nets and overseeing a worker.

But he was even younger when he first started going out on the lake with his father, during summer breaks from school.

Back then, Buckley recalled, "I could barely look over the gunnels."