Outdoors

This community is combating an invasive species by eating them

Rainbow smelt

This article was originally published in the Spring 2016 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

How do you solve a problem like invasives? You eat them. Well, first you catch them.

This was the logic behind last spring’s rainbow-smelt harvest on Golden Lake, Ont. Glenn Bingham, the lake steward for the Golden Lake Property Owners Association, pitched the idea. The lake’s invasive rainbow-smelt population had been decimating native fish species, including the once numerous walleye. “I wanted to change the status quo,” he says. So, for seven nights last April, a team of 12 hip-waders-wearing, flashlight-carrying volunteers caught bucket after bucket of rainbow smelts: 153,600 fish in total.

“It was a simple concept,” says Bingham. “If man can introduce a species, why can’t man remove it?”

And why can’t man—and woman—then eat it or use it to catch even more fish? (Some volunteers dined on the smelts; others used them as bait.) The harvest was an attention-grabber among area cottagers, and the association plans to expand the cull into a larger event and an official community fish fry this June.

“There’s such an interest now,” says Bingham. “I can’t even go into the gro- cery store without people asking questions about it!”