Yum.
The final Burntwood Curling Club pickerel fish fry of the season coincides with the start of the 45th Vale bonspiel Friday, March 20.
It is the seventh fish fry since mid-October to raise money toward the cost of the scheduled replacement of the club’s ice plant this spring, says Burntwood Curling Club president Jonathan Sawatsky. Vale matches sales from the fish frys. Earlier fish frys have been usually monthly on Mondays.
The most recent on Monday, March 2, was the club’s first sell-out of the season, Sawatsky says, with 152 people showing up for the $15-a-plate pickerel fare on the second floor of the curling club overlooking the sheet for dinner between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sawatsky said he got the idea for the fundraiser while curling at a bonspiel down south in Altona last winter where the host club served a fish fry lunch. He brought the idea back up north and presented to the Burntwood Curling Club.
Ice plants are an expensive proposition, Sawatsky says, and typically need to be replaced every 20 years or so. He estimates the club will wind up borrowing about $90,000 to replace their ice plant this spring – meaning a second season of fundraising pickerel fish frys resuming in the fall is a distinct possibility. “It does take a lot of volunteers. It is labour intensive,” Sawatsky says, and no final decision has been made yet on whether to resume the fish frys in the fall. But he adds it is a good fundraiser that has become increasingly popular with the public since its introduction last fall, and a pretty good public relations event as well, in some cases introducing people to curling and the Burntwood Curling Club who may not have previously thought much about the sport or the club.
The club had to commit last fall to buy 350 pounds of fresh pickerel from the commercial fish packing station in Wabowden to get their supply, he said. Hence, they’ve had 50 pounds of pickerel, also known as walleye, on sale for each dinner. Pickerel is the most valuable commercial fish catch in Manitoba, with an average value of about $20 million per year, which is about 70 per cent of the landed value of all species, and comprise more than 40 per cent of commercial fish production in the province by weight, according to the fisheries branch of Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship.
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