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Tullibee

The tullibee (Coregonus artedii complex), also known as the cisco and lake herring, is a small relative of the whitefish, and like the whitefish is endowed with a delicate flesh of excellent flavour. Its first mentioned name (pronounced TOO-lebee) is credited to the early Canadian fur traders and is the one most commonly used in northern Ontario, the Prairie Provinces and the Northwest Territories.

Caught to a minor extent by anglers, it is primarily harvested by commercial fishermen and is of considerable economic importance as a food fish. Its main importance to anglers would seem to lie in its role as the food of larger game fish, in particular the lake trout.

While the tullibee bears a superficial resemblance to the sea herring, it is not related to it. Nor is it a single species of fish but rather a complex group of about 15 species that differ yet have much in common. In general, the group is similar to the whitefish in appearance, except that its members are slimmer and the mouth is at the front of the head rather than being overhung by the snout. Differences among the species relate to such features as the form of body, size, colour of the back, and gill raker counts.

As a group, the overall colouration of the body is silvery with the colour of the back varying from almost black to blue, green, gray, or light tan. While size varies with species, in the prairie lakes it commonly ranges from 0.2 to 1.4 kg, although larger individuals have been caught. In 1944, one weighing 2.5 kg and measuring 572 mm in length was taken from Great Slave Lake.

For the most part lake dwellers, these fish are widely distributed throughout the northern part of North America from the upper Mississippi system and the Great Lakes northeast into Labrador and northwest at least as far as the Mackenzie River system. They tend to swim in large schools at midwater depth. Commercial fishermen catch them with gillnets and sometimes with trapnets and seines.

Like many of the smaller fish species and the very young of all species, the diet of the tullibee consists mainly of plankton-that minute assemblage of plant and animal life that floats freely throughout the water in lakes and rivers. It also eats aquatic insects and minnows. Anglers, while they pursue it more for its delicious flesh than its gameness, take it on small spinners, minnows, and flies.

Tullibee is marketed in the form of headon, dressed whole fish, very often smoked. A minor quantity is minced and shipped in frozen block form to the United States for further processing.

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Last updated: 2006-06-06

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