FROM LAKE TO PLATE
Catching whitefish for Door County’s traditional boils
Wisconsin’s 80-mile-long Door Peninsula, nicknamed the “Cape Cod of the Midwest,” has a deep-rooted maritime history shaped by over 300 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline. Long before the arrival of French explorers such as Jean Nicolet and Pierre-Esprit Radisson, and the subsequent settlers from Scandinavia, lake whitefish played a vital role in the economy of the peninsula’s Native Ottawa, Ojibwa and Potawatomi tribes.
“There is good reason why the Indians found the Door County peninsula such a congenial place of habitation,” wrote H.R. Holand in his 1925 history of the area, “Old Peninsula Days.” “Hunting was as good as elsewhere in the state, there was an abundance of maple trees for making sugar, and in addition to this, they had rich fishing in the surrounding waters.”
Lake whitefish, members of the trout and salmon family Salmonidae, live in the Great Lakes at depths between 100 and 300 feet. They often move in schools to shallower water to feed, making them an easy target for local fishers.
At 7 a.m. on a Friday in May, I hopped on the Roamer, a family-owned and operated commercial fishing boat helmed by Capt. Charlie Henriksen and his three-person crew, Chip Dickelman, John Meyer and Charlie’s son, Will.
Lake Michigan is as smooth as glass, the air crisp and the sky cloudless as we set off from the dock in Sturgeon Bay toward a dozen trap nets set in Green Bay, where the team will gather the catch of the day: over 700 pounds of lake whitefish that will make its way from lake to plate at restaurants around Door County by noon.
Once upon a time, the Roamer was a 1969 Chris Craft three-cabin yacht. Charlie Henriksen and his son yanked out the seats, welded it into a proper fishing boat, painted it shamrock green and proudly topped it with an American flag.
Though he looks like a character straight out of “Moby Dick” as he expertly steers the Roamer into the bay, with his weathered captain’s hat and oilcloth coat, Charlie Henriksen grew up a city boy on the Northwest Side of Chicago in Edgebrook, far away from the fishing industry.
Like so many other Chicagoans, he first came to Door County as a tourist with his family in the early 1970s. Charlie’s parents, Virginia and Elmer Henriksen, fell in love with the peaceful peninsula, so much so they moved there permanently. They bought a small hotel, the Hotel Disgardin, in 1972. Charlie, a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at the time, would come up on weekends and breaks to help renovate the family-operated hotel.
“The amazing water and the wonderful people made it easy to stay. A neighbor asked for some help fishing, and here we are,” he said. “I soon learned that fishing is a way of life that can be very satisfying. It is a part of Door County’s culture and history.”
Whitefish had virtually disappeared from Green Bay during the early to mid-1900s, when paper and lumber mills routinely dumped pollutants into its many tributaries, ruining spawning habitats.
The waterways began to rebound in the 1970s after strong environmental laws took effect, including the 1972 Clean Water Act, followed by the 17-year cleanup of the Lower Fox River, completed in 2022, the largest polychlorinated biphenyls cleanup project in history.
And the impact was clear: According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, from 2008 to 2018, the Green Bay whitefish population increased from about 6 million fish to about 16 million.
Henriksen Fisheries (12055 WI-42, Ellison Bay; 920-421-2911; henriksenfisheries.com) began as a small operation in 1987; by 1989, Charlie Henriksen had purchased his first boat and rented a dock at Sand Bay. His daughter, Elly, and son, Will, spent much of their childhood strapped into car seats aboard the boat before moving on to cleaning trap nets and folding fish boxes.
“It can be difficult at times, but a boat ride every morning and the anticipation of what you will catch is rewarding,” Charlie Henriksen said. “If the fish goddess is good, we can handle 3,000 to 4,000 pounds.”
The Henriksen Fish House, the family’s retail shop, managed by Will Henriksen’s wife, Kristie, features freshly caught boneless whitefish filets, housemade whitefish spread and whitefish cakes.
Today, Charlie Henriksen fishes up to a dozen nets set in Green Bay. “Whitefish have recolonized their historical spawning grounds, the lower bay,” said Henriksen, who chairs an advisory group to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “And we take great pride in continuing this tradition and giving so many people access to this fresh, local, healthy and sustainable resource.”
Henriksen and his crew fish year-round, as weather permits. “We try to leave the dock every day at 5:30, sometimes earlier if it’s hot out,” he said. “We spend about an hour before that preparing the boat, hauling and loading ice. Our trips last about three to five, sometimes up to six, hours.”
All hands are on deck as the nets are pulled out of the water via a hydraulically driven roller mounted on the side of the boat. In seconds, pounds of whitefish hit the deck of the Roamer. Will Henriksen wrangles an unwieldy 100-pound sturgeon accidentally caught in the net, and releases it back into the bay. After all the fish are brought on board, they’re packed into ice crates in mere minutes.
“Our average catch is 500 to 1,500 pounds — it always varies. We need at least 1,000 pounds to make it worthwhile,” Charlie Henriksen said. “We now supply 27 local businesses, from Gills Rock to Algoma. With the fish now recolonizing the lower bay, we have been able to meet local demand.”
By 11 a.m., the Roamer returns to its dock. The crew loads 10 crates packed with whitefish onto a waiting truck to be delivered to local restaurants, where it will be served that same evening.
Some will make its way to a huge kettle over an open fire for a traditional Door County whitefish boil, a culinary tradition that began over 100 years ago as a cheap, quick and easy means to feed local fishers and lumberjacks.
At the White Gull Inn, a circa 1896 inn located in Door County’s Fish Creek community, master fish boiler Neil Teskie brings a black iron cauldron to a slow boil before adding locally grown red potatoes and onions, and finally, the freshly caught whitefish.
Teskie is a third-generation commercial fisherman in Ellison Bay, where his family held fish boils with surrounding farm families to celebrate the harvest season.
Many credit Scandinavian immigrants for introducing the economical way to feed a crowd to Door County in the late 1800s, when Lake Michigan seemed to hold an endless supply of whitefish.
“In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was a lot of logging going on in Door County. With all the locally caught fish, they would often feed the crews by boiling up fish and potatoes in a pot over an open fire,” Teskie said. “A little later, my grandfather had a threshing machine he powered with an old steam engine. At harvest time, he would pull it from farm to farm and all the neighboring farmers worked together to thresh their oats. At the end of each threshing, they’d have a little party for all the farmers, and it would always be a fish boil.”
Later, the fish boil became an attraction at restaurants across the peninsula. The White Gull Inn (4225 Main St., Fish Creek; 920-868-3517; whitegullinn.com) has been hosting its traditional whitefish boil four nights per week during the summer and on Friday nights throughout the winter since 1960.
For his fish boil, Teskie adds a couple more logs to the fire beneath the kettle and a generous pour of salt. After about 10 minutes, it’s time for the pinnacle of the fish boil spectacle when Teskie shouts, “Boilover!” and pours kerosene into the fire. The flames blaze up into a fireball, causing the water to boil over.
“Pay attention to the wind and your surrounding structures and be prepared to step several feet away after the boilover, because the air gets hot well outside the flaming area,” Meredith Coulson-Kanter, innkeeper at the White Gull Inn, suggests to anyone hosting a Door County-style fish boil at home. “You can feel the heat of the boilover at the tables inside the dining room closest to the fire pit here.”
The fish oil that floated to the top of the pot pours out over the sides of the kettle, fanning the flames. Two chefs arrive to collect the fish, potatoes and onions, which will be plated and drizzled — or better, doused — with butter.