Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 8 February 2025
Herring is a fish that is generally treated very poorly. It is trawled for in massive scale just to be ground up as fish meal. The meal is then used for feeding fish farms, pig farms and chicken farms. A bit wasteful, especially when the herring is fished so hard that the herring is pushed back so hard that its number declines so much that it has a big impact on other parts of the ecosystem.
I will try to not dwell on the bad sides of the herring fishing and population. But it is hard to deny that the industrialised fishing industry has the biggest impact on the population. If the vikings could fish the herring so hard to have an impact on the population with their technology the herring doesn’t stand a chance with the technology used by today’s fishing boats. https://www.science.org/content/article/loss-viking-era-herring-may-be-warning-today-s-fishers
Even though the herring is considered on species different strains exist and can be identified by genetic variations. There are strains of herring spawning at different times of the year. Recently a new variation of the herring was found in the Baltic Sea. Or not new, and it has been known by some for a long time. But now it is known why it exists. A strain of herring, piscivorous herring, grows much bigger both because of its diet and its genetics. Hopefully this knowledge will help in protecting this strain of the herring because it will probably be very important to protect. Because of a decline in big herring we have seen an explosion of stickleback. And the stickleback feeds on other fishes roe, which causes a decline of predators which leads to even more sticklebacks. So protecting a fish that targets the sticklebacks is a big thing. More on that for the interested person here: https://www.uu.se/en/news/2025/2025-01-07-piscivorous-herring---a-unique-fish-in-the-baltic-sea-ecosystem
An other great news for the herring, in some parts of the Baltic Sea at least, is that for a trail period of two years the protected zone of trawling has been extended from four nautical miles to twelve nautical miles from the coast. Let’s hope that we see some good results from this trail and that the ocean can gain better protection.
Now to the fun stuff. Where I live it is almost a tradition to fish for herring with a rod. Every year shoals of herring arrives near the shore at periods during the winter and can be targeted without access to a boat. The typical method to target the herring then is a big heavy rod with a sabiki rig with a big sinker at the end. Not the most fun method for fishing since the sinker should be so heavy that the fish cannot tangle up the sabiki rig. A much more fun method and effective method is to target them on the fly rod. Well more effective some days at least. I have had days where I have been catching fish while the sabiki guys have blanked. So fly fishing must be the superior method.
It doesn’t require any fancy gear except for a sinking line. I use a Rio Mainstream full sink #4 and a 4-5wt rod for most of the time, still fun to catch on a bit heavier equipment. And the fly is a simple choice, a Hare’s Ear. Then it is just to find which depth the herring resides at for the day.
The herring is actually a good fighter when matched on fitting equipment. They even look like miniature tarpons. Good eating too. In Sweden we have some really good dishes with herring, and some less good dishes. The good ones are herring that has been breaded fried in butter and served with mashed potatoes, lingonberries and browned butter. Different variations of pickled herring are part of the good ones. And the bad one, I think you probably already heard of it. Fermented herring. I have tried it and it was a quite underwhelming experience. It doesn’t taste very much, slimy with a hint of strong cheese. But the smell. The smell is like when the water trap has dried out in a toilet and you can smell the sewage. And that is for a good can of fermented herring. The ones you might have seen on YouTube is a different story. The ones on YouTube have generally not been stored correctly and have continued the fermentation in the can. That must be a really unpleasant experience.
Cheers, Rickard the herring strangler