A Wisconsin smoked fish tour, along the shores of Lake Superior

Minnesota’s North Shore has rugged vistas, tall cliffs and jagged shoreline. The Wisconsin side of Lake Superior is tame by comparison, but, if you want to sample smoked fish, it’s a great place to be.

Along Wisconsin Hwy. 13 from Port Wing in the west to Bayfield in the east, commercial fishermen on Wisconsin’s coast have been smoking their catches and selling them direct to customers for decades.

My smoked fish tour starts in Port Wing, Wis., an hour east of Duluth, at the granddaddy of smoked fish establishments: Everett’s Fisheries. Everett’s has been catching, smoking and selling fish for generations. Granddaughter Jessica Johnson runs “The Store.” It’s the only store in town, with a gas station. The experience is like stepping back in time to a mercantile shop, with Jessica behind the counter smiling and asking what she can do you for.

Smoked fish, of course. There’s plenty to choose from. Smoked herring, smoked chub, smoked lake trout, smoked whitefish and walleye. There’s also imported-from-Alaska smoked salmon, as well as whole fish that had been swimming in the morning.

I choose smoked herring, grab some crackers and commence to touring Port Wing. For an unincorporated town of 134, there’s actually a lot to see. The Michele Wheeler Wetland Restoration area offers drive-up bird-watching. Twin Falls Park is full of sandstone ledges with waterfalls. The museum and library is on the north side of Hwy. 13. The old school site has artifacts like a horse-drawn school bus.

Turning left on Washington Avenue at the two retired churches reinvented as a coffee shop and a quilt shop, I head toward the lake. Along the way there is nothing but quaint. Quaint Lutheran church. Quaint old family home with a gorgeous stone foundation. Quaint old ivy-covered bank straight out of a western movie set.

A mile on, I turn left on Beach Road to the sand spit fronting Lake Superior. An old marina is plunked down in the marsh. At the Everett’s Fisheries, the fishing boats Julie Ann and Avis-J are moored.

I take the boardwalks to the shore, find a bench and open Jessica’s package of delicious smoked herring while watching the waves, gulls (lots and lots of gulls) and boats coming and going. Back on Beach Road, I take in the stunning boreal forest of tall white pines on the way back to Hwy. 13.

Downtown “Corny” — as the locals call it — is even more compact than Port Wing. Feeling like a gunslinger at high noon, I find the Siskowit Farmhouse, run by the Hipsher family, on the main drag. (A siskowit or siscowet is a trout known locally as a “fat trout,” caught at depths of 200 feet or more out on the Big Lake.) The Farmhouse offers locally sourced meats and fresh and smoked fish directly off the lake from Matt and Doug Hipsher’s fishing boat the Cindy Marie. There’s also a full lunch menu and sit-down dining.

Across the street, Fisherman’s Hideout is the Halvorsons’ retail outlet for their commercial fishing business. The place offers fresh and smoked fish as well as sit-down dining.

Down on the harbor, the Halvorson family has yet another outlet where you can get the true feel of what Wisconsin commercial fishing is all about. This “shed” smells like fish, feels like fish, and if the boat has just come in, looks like fish. Peeking past the counter into the fishy inner sanctum, oiler-clad fishermen in rubber boots scoot big boxes of gasping and flopping fish across the wet concrete floor to be processed.

It’s time to vary my diet: Out with the herring, in with smoked lake trout. The Cornucopia Beach area is pretty neat. There are old fishing boats in various stages of decay and disrepair. There’s a marvelous artesian well at the far end of the beach where I top off my water bottle.

I also check out St. Mary’s Orthodox Church with its unique onion dome is on the corner of Erie Avenue and Ash Street. The Siskiwit River Falls, which are sometimes called “nature’s waterslides,” has a convenient parking lot.

Just past the Legendary Waters Resort & Casino on the Red Cliff reservation, I roll into the Red Cliff Fish Co. The Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa started the store in 2020 to give tribal fishermen a market for their catches. Joe DePerry runs the place. He says that smoked fish and dips are their biggest sellers. I buy dip to go with Halvorson’s trout.

Just down the road in tourist-filled Bayfield, let me introduce you to Bodin Fisheries, on the waterfront on Wilson Avenue. The Bodin family came to Bayfield in the late 1800s. The fish market fronts the 100-year-old “shed” where the fish are processed and smoked. I learn here that there is such a thing as whitefish livers, a delicacy for some.

I opt instead for sugar-smoked chunked whitefish, which I then take down the street to Hoop’s Dockside Fish Market, which is closed when I visit. I’ve heard Hoops is a lively place for buying fish and sit-down dining when open.

A cedar-log swing is staged perfectly in the bright sun. This is a great place to sip my artesian water from Cornucopia, snack on sugar-smoked whitefish from Bodin and watch the Six Pack fishing boat chug into the dock across the slip.

Sitting on the dock, I ponder the relative merits of the south side of Lake Superior versus the north. Minnesota’s North Shore is cool for sure, but here in Wisconsin, the south shore has its share of truly smokin’ places.