Ling

All ling fishermen have stories.  Horror stories, that is.

Let’s start by explaining what a ling is.  According to an article I read in Montana Outdoors, ling are the only freshwater member of the cod family.  They are mostly known as burbot.  Burbot are found throughout the world in a circumpolar distribution—thriving in the cold waters of the northern latitudes.

Ling are voracious predators.  They tend to hunker along the bottoms of lakes and rivers; waiting to ambush anything smaller that happens by.  Ling are most active at night.  They spawn in early February, gathering into living, writhing globs under the ice.  Hundreds of ling might gather together in this uneasy, squirming ritual of reproduction.

   

Now, about the horror stories.

First, ling don’t look like your regular off-the-shelf variety of fish.  They look more like an eel and act like a snake.  When you try to remove the hook from a ling, they will likely wrap themselves around your arm.

Ling don’t die easy.  They are the zombies of Fishworld.

Any experienced wintertime ling fisherman will tell you stories of tossing ling onto the ice while fishing, then later hauling them home—seemingly frozen solid—only to have them come alive in the sink, or in a bucket, a dozen hours later.

Cleaning ling is not for the squeamish.  They never stop writhing.  Worse, beheading, removing vitals, and skinning ling does not always seem to fully dispatch them.  Their chunked and eviscerated forms may continue twisting like the white, headless ghosts of themselves for several minutes.

Fortunately, ling are pretty good eating.

This time of year, we catch ling here at the lake.   Posted is a photograph of a ling freshly pulled up through the ice on Friday last.  That girl, Kevin, and I were present at the time.  We released the ling back in the hole again.  None of us had the courage to process the fish.

--Mitchell Hegman