By Sharon Hill, Windsor Star Publishing date: April 1, 2019 ·  2 minute read The commercial fishery in Lake Erie around Wheatley harbour will be the hardest hit by lower perch quotas set last week. The allowable catch limit for yellow perch in Lake Erie has dropped by as much as 32 per cent for the part of the lake near Chatham-Kent, Tim Tiessen, president of the Ontario Commercial Fisheries’ Association, said Monday. The quota is dropping by about 20 per cent for commercial fishing boats operating south of Essex County. The part of the lake near Elgin County that includes the Port Stanley harbour will fare a bit better with a quota decrease of 10.5 per cent, he said. “That’s going to be hard for the fisherman,” Tiessen said from Wheatley. “That’s sort of a devastating cut for Essex and Kent counties and a substantial cut for Elgin County too.” On the plus side, the quota for walleye is going up about 20 per cent across Lake Erie. The binational Lake Erie Committee of fishery managers from Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario recently decided the total allowable catch limits for 2019 based on assessments of how the two fish populations are doing in Lake Erie. The walleye allowable catch limit across Lake Erie is rising from about 7.1 million fish to 8.5 million walleye in 2019. Ontario is allowed about 3.6 million fish but the commercial fishery won’t know exactly how much they can catch until that is [...]

Hi everyone, Jessica here! For those of you who don’t know me, I am the soon-to-be wife of Taylor (John and Donna’s youngest son, and the Captain of the Bessie Ann II). I’ve recently joined the Fish Co crew full time, and they’ve asked me to help with the social media pages and contribute to the blog (yikes!). While trying to get my creative juices flowing, I thought “man, I don’t really know a lot about fish”. Growing up, the extent of my fish exposure was tuna and salmon in a can. Although, I’m sure my Mom would have a different opinion – I was not sheltered from food in any way other than by choice (haha, sorry mom). In the last 8 years I’ve been introduced to different kinds of fish- some I like, some not so much.  I’ve even got experience catching my own now! But our go-to fish dish is definitely the deep fried yellow perch with a basket of fries. Recently we started up an Instagram page and one of our customers tagged us in a photo – a beautiful pickerel – letting their followers know they put in their first spring order. Within a couple of days, one of their customers also tagged us in a photo of an even more beautiful cooked pickerel dish. It looked so delicious and so fancy – something I personally never expected pickerel to be. This really peaked my interest and got me thinking, I wish I [...]