Burbot: The Freshwater Cod That Spawns Under the Ice

The burbot is a cod that never sees the sea: the only member of the cod family that lives its whole life in fresh water. Most are 15 to 28 in (38–71 cm) and 1.5 to 5 lb (0.7–2.3 kg), mottled brown, slimy, with one whisker on the chin. Minnesota calls it eelpout, Wisconsin and Michigan call it lawyer, the West calls it ling and New England calls it cusk. It bites best on the coldest nights of the year, through the ice.

Burbot spawn in midwinter, at night, under the ice, in a writhing ball of 20 to 50 fish. In Lake Superior, females of 15 to 21 in carried about 800,000 eggs each on average.

What is a burbot? One chin whisker, two back fins

Three marks identify a burbot, and the first is enough on most days.

1. One barbel on the chin. A single soft whisker in the middle of the lower jaw. Catfish have several pairs around the mouth; a bowfin has none on the chin.
2. Two dorsal fins. The first is short, the second runs half the length of the body, and the anal fin underneath is nearly as long.
3. A rounded tail and skin that looks scaleless. The scales are there, but almost microscopic and buried in slime.

And yes, burbot have teeth: Alaska’s biologists describe a large mouth with several rows of small teeth, and New Hampshire’s cusk guide warns that they wear through light line.

Is a burbot a catfish? No. It is a cod relative. A catfish has several pairs of whiskers, no scales, and a stiff spine at the front of its dorsal fin and each pectoral fin. A burbot has one soft whisker, tiny scales and no fin spines at all.

Say the name BUR-but. It came into English from French barbote, from Latin barba, “beard”: Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant notes the fish is named for the single whisker-like barbel under its mouth.

The fish it gets confused with are warm-water fish with one long back fin. In the Midwest “dogfish” means bowfin, so burbot against dogfish is the same question as burbot against bowfin. The bowfin has its own profile on the hub.

The difference matters: snakeheads are invaders that agencies want photographed and reported, and burbot and bowfin are natives that get killed by mistake.

As for “lawyer”, no agency offers an origin. Wisconsin Sea Grant notes the burbot’s habit of wrapping its slimy tail around the arm of whoever is holding it, and leaves the rest to the reader.

Is an eelpout the same fish as a burbot?

In Minnesota, yes. Eelpout, or just pout, is the state’s everyday name for the burbot. Everywhere else the word belongs to other fish: the true eelpouts are a large family of marine fishes, the Zoarcidae, that live on the bottom in cold seas from the Arctic to the Antarctic. A freshwater angler will not meet one.

Lingcod is the same trap. Anglers in Alaska and Idaho call the burbot lingcod, but the lingcod of the Pacific coast is a saltwater fish. California Sea Grant puts it plainly: it “is not related to true cod, but is actually in the greenling family Hexagrammidae”. The burbot is the only one of the three that is a cod.

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Where do burbot live?

The burbot is one of only two freshwater fish found all the way around the top of the world. The other is the northern pike. In North America the burbot lives from Alaska to New Brunswick and south to about the 40th parallel.

In the United States, USGS gives the native range as Alaska and the northern states, south to Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, Wyoming and Oregon. In-Fisherman draws the band from Maine to eastern Washington. State by state, that means Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana (on Lake Michigan), Ohio (on Lake Erie), New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut; Utah’s burbot were introduced. Along its southern edge the fish is disappearing: New York’s assessment calls it extirpated or vulnerable to extirpation along large parts of the 40th parallel.

A few places matter most to anglers:

• Alaska, in most large clear and glacial rivers and many lakes, but not the Southeast. The biggest sport fisheries are on the Tanana River and in lakes of the upper Tanana, Copper and Susitna drainages.
• The Great Lakes. Lake Erie’s burbot collapsed in the 1950s and 1960s and came back in the 1990s, after cleaner water and sea lamprey control. Since the early 2000s they have been declining again. In Michigan, Michigan State University researcher Andrew Shapiro names Saginaw Bay, Lake Michigamme and inland lakes such as Burt and Mullett.
• Minnesota, in most northern lakes and rivers and in Lake Superior.
• The Kootenai River in Idaho, where the fish came back from about 50 survivors.
• The Green River in Wyoming and Utah, where it does not belong at all. Wyoming’s native burbot live east of the Continental Divide; the Green River fish were put there illegally.

Its habitat is cold water: deep lakes and big rivers. Burbot avoid water warmer than about 55 °F (13 °C), the lowest ceiling on our water temperature chart. In summer they sit below the thermocline of deep lakes, alongside the lake trout, and stay close to dormant until the water cools. In Bad Medicine Lake, Minnesota, tagged burbot sat in 30 to 40 ft (9–12 m) by day in winter and climbed into the shallows after dark.

What do burbot eat?

Mostly other fish, and mostly at night. Alaska’s biologists find young burbot eating insects and other invertebrates. By age five or six they eat almost nothing but fish: whitefish, sculpins, lampreys and other burbot, with the odd mouse or shrew.

The numbers from Lake Superior are stark. In large burbot in winter, fish made up 99.6% of the food by volume. In summer and fall the small crustaceans Mysis and Pontoporeia supplied more than 73%. Minnesota’s DNR lists small yellow perch and walleyes, fish eggs, clams, crayfish, mayfly larvae and other insects. Guide Matt Breuer goes further: the “main forage isn’t even fish fry, it’s bugs.”

In New Hampshire crayfish are an important food when they are available, which is why cusk anglers work rocky cobble at night. The mouth is big enough for large prey. In the Green River, Wyoming biologists have handled burbot over 30 in with 15 to 16 in kokanee in their stomachs.

Burbot are eaten too. Sea lamprey attack the adults, and alewife eat the drifting fry.

When do burbot bite?

From freeze-up to ice-out, and best in late winter, when they bunch up to spawn. Summer is the off season.

The late-winter peak is lake by lake. Idaho often finds the most adult burbot on the Kootenai from mid-February to mid-March. A northern Michigan charter captain puts the peak in mid-March, and Minnesota’s guides find spawning balls from mid-February through late March. In some years, In-Fisherman reports, burbot in deeper lakes keep feeding hard until early May, when the water reaches the mid-40s °F.

How do you catch burbot through the ice?

Late winter, after dark, on the bottom. Burbot fishing is mostly night fishing: in New Hampshire, “the usual method employed by anglers is night fishing,” says the state’s cusk guide. In-Fisherman’s Steve Hoffman describes rocky humps that top out at 15 to 20 ft (5–6 m) and drop onto a 30 to 40 ft (9–12 m) shelf beside the basin. In-Fisherman’s television producer Rich Eckholm, whose team once brought in more than a third of all the weight at the Leech Lake burbot contest, works one reef in three steps:

1. Early afternoon: the basin edge, as deep as 60 ft (18 m). A heavy jigging spoon tipped with a live minnow or a minnow head. Drop it to the bottom now and then to kick up sediment.
2. An hour or two before sunset: the base of the reef. Hop from hole to hole with a #7 Jigging Rapala or #3 Nils Master Jigger, the rear hook tipped with a minnow head.
3. Sunset to about midnight: the top of the reef. A 1/16 to 1/4 oz slip-bobber jig with a Kahle-style hook and a lively 3 to 5 in shiner, resting on the bottom.

Most anglers on that reef simply cut holes before dark and set tip-ups, rattle reels or floats with a baitfish a few inches above the rocks. Then they wait. Burbot move little, and when they do it is usually at sunset or at night: in a Wyoming study, radio-tagged fish were active only about 2% of the time.

• Where. New Hampshire’s agency points to cobble bottoms and sand bars in 30 ft (9 m) or less, near islands and brook mouths. Minnesota’s guides look for hard bottom of sand or pea gravel near deep water; burbot avoid mud and silt, which hold less food.
• What they bite on. Heavy and bright, because burbot see poorly. Minnesota’s guides use 1/4 to 1 oz glow jigs and jigging spoons loaded with two to five minnows. New Hampshire’s list adds Swedish Pimples in size 6 or 7 and 3/4 to 1 oz bucktail jigs. Lift the jig 6 to 10 in (15–25 cm) and let it fall back to the bottom.
• Why the bottom. A burbot hunts by feeling along it with that chin barbel, so stirring up the bottom helps.
• Bait. Fresh, never spoiled. Alaska lists herring, whitefish, smelt and lamprey for ice fishing, adds squid for set lines, and notes that burbot will not feed on rotten food.
• Line. 10 to 14 lb abrasion-resistant mono or braid; rows of small teeth wear through anything lighter.
• Sonar. Forward-facing sonar has made spawning balls easy to find. Outdoor Life’s guides say most fish on screen are in 40 to 50 ft (12–15 m) of water.

Can you catch burbot in open water?

Yes, mostly at night with bait on the bottom. On the Kootenai most burbot angling happens after dark, and Idaho’s advice is to start with bait on the bottom: cut bait, dead shrimp or worms. The native peamouth, in Idaho’s words, is “the best bait around”.

On Lake Michigan the boats are catching them in winter. “Unseasonably warm weather and light winds on Lake Michigan the last several winters have provided boaters with a longer open-water fishing season,” said Ben Dickinson, Indiana’s Lake Michigan research biologist. Indiana’s record burbot came to a perch angler on January 6, 2024.

In northern Michigan, charter captain Bob Hinds of Central Coast Angling has cut back his perch trips to run burbot trips. He fishes transition areas where rock blends into grass, and he limits the catch on his own boat. On some days, he says, “it’s a free-for-all. We’d catch up to 60 a trip.”

A summer burbot is a different story. The fish sits deep and stays nearly dormant. MSU Extension notes that anglers catch burbot while fishing for lake whitefish and lake trout.

How big do burbot get?

They get there slowly. In a Lake Superior study of 1,285 fish, a burbot was 16.1 in and 1.1 lb at age five and 23.4 in and 3.2 lb at age ten. Fish of 8 to 15 years are normal in the lower states, and Alaska reports that burbot older than 20 are not uncommon. Lake fish outgrow river fish.

Minnesota’s record came to a man fishing for walleye. He thought he had a monster; his friends filmed the fight and, according to the DNR, stopped filming when they saw it was “just a pout”.

The IGFA all-tackle record is 25 lb 2 oz (11.4 kg), caught by Sean Konrad in Lake Diefenbaker, Saskatchewan, on March 27, 2010, on herring. He was beating his own 19 lb 1 oz record from the same lake two years earlier.

The fish in the news in 2026 was not a world record. Mason Magee, 14, pulled a 23.04 lb (10.45 kg), 40 in burbot through 18 in of ice on Lake Nipigon, Ontario, on January 31. It is the Ontario record, about two pounds short of Konrad’s. “When I was fighting it,” he told a reporter, “I thought it might have been a lake trout.”

What does burbot taste like, and how do you clean one?

Like a firm, mild white fish, and good enough that Montana’s field guide says anglers rate it tops for the table. The famous preparation gives it the name poor man’s lobster: chunks of fillet boiled, then dipped in melted butter. Not everyone buys the nickname. “I would say it tastes like cod. You have to boil it,” says Hinds.

Cleaning one is easier than it looks. MSU Extension’s advice is to skin it first and then take the fillets: the tough, leathery skin pulls off like a catfish’s. Expect little meat for the size of the fish. When the Great Lakes commercial fishery explored markets for burbot, MSU Extension reports, the fillets yielded only about 35% of the fish.

Cook it fresh: a Minnesota DNR biologist calls it worthy table fare when cooked fresh, not frozen. Wisconsin advises up to one meal a week of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior burbot. Check your own state’s guide.

The liver is the strange part. In Baudette, Minnesota, pharmacist Ted Rowell saw the foxes on his father’s fur farm grow beautiful coats on a diet of burbot. By his own tests the liver oil was eight times as rich in vitamins A and D as cod liver oil, and his Burbot Liver Products Company of 1933 became Rowell Laboratories.

Can you keep burbot? The rules in five places

The same fish is a protected native in one state and an invader you must kill in the next. Check the current regulations before you keep one; these are the rules the agencies have announced.

• Minnesota treated the eelpout as a rough fish until a law of 2020 made it a game fish. Its first limit took effect in 2025. For forty winters the fish had its own party: the International Eelpout Festival on Leech Lake at Walker began in January 1980 with about 800 people and drew some 15,000 a year at its height. The 40th, in February 2019, was the last; the 2020 festival was canceled.
• Michigan had no limit at all until 2026. The Natural Resources Commission pointed to more anglers targeting spawning burbot and a rise in social media posts. Anglers and researchers told FOX 2 Detroit they believe the fish is declining as interest grows.
• Idaho closed the Kootenai River fishery in 1992, after Libby Dam in Montana, completed in 1975, changed the river. In 2004 biologists estimated about 50 fish were left. The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho built the Twin Rivers hatchery in 2014, and by 2022 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put the river’s burbot at more than 50,000. The season reopened on January 1, 2019.
• Utah and Wyoming have the opposite problem. Burbot were put illegally into the Green River system more than 20 years ago and were first documented in Flaming Gorge in 2006. A few years later most smallmouth bass under 12 in on the Wyoming side were gone, and the crayfish with them. Wyoming makes you kill every burbot at Flaming Gorge and the rest of its Area 4; Utah, everywhere. The Burbot Bash derby removed 49,984 burbot from Flaming Gorge from 2011 to 2025.

Alaska and New Hampshire also allow unattended set lines for burbot on listed waters. Alaska’s rules: single hooks with a gap over 3/4 in, resting on the bottom, the line labeled with your name and address, and checked at least once every 24 hours. New Hampshire allows up to six cusk devices on approved lakes, in addition to regular lines.

Which burbot should you keep, and which go back?

Keep the middle of the run. Minnesota angler Tyler Brick keeps fish under about 4 lb, most of them 24 to 25 in. “Anything over that, you’re not really gaining any extra meat, you’re just removing a bigger fish out of the population,” he told Outdoor Life.

A fish reeled up fast from deep water can suffer barotrauma and die after it swims away. Guide Matt Breuer’s answer, in Outdoor Life, is to fish shallower if you plan to release. Even in 20 to 30 ft (6–9 m), reel slowly with the drag eased so the fish can adjust on the way up. The catch and release guide covers the rest.

How do burbot spawn under the ice?

New York’s assessment puts the spawn anywhere from December to April, often under the ice, in water of 33 to 35 °F (0.5–1.7 °C). In most of the range that means January to March. Lake fish move onto sand and gravel shoals 5 to 33 ft (1.5–10 m) deep. Many river fish migrate and spawn under the ice of slow water.

They gather at night and form what Alaska’s biologists call a large writhing ball. The Bad Medicine Lake study counted 20 to 50 fish in each. Eggs and milt go into open water, with no nest and no guarding. Not every adult spawns every year: studies found that 1 to 30% of the adults sampled had skipped that year.

The egg counts are enormous for the size of the fish. Eight Lake Superior females between 14.7 and 21.3 in held 268,800 to 1,154,000 eggs each, about 812,300 on average. The fish also make noise: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes burbot drumming to each other in the dark under the ice, with muscles on the swim bladder.

They travel for it, too. In Michigan, Shapiro reports burbot that moved over 70 miles from where they spawn and then came back to the same spot. On Bad Medicine Lake one tagged fish made several five-mile (8 km) trips along the lake.

The burbot’s scientific name is Lota lota. FishBase files it under Lotidae, the hakes and burbots, rather than the true cods; under either scheme it is a cod relative. The other freshwater fish hub profiles the sturgeon, alligator gar, bowfin, drum and the rest of the fish outside the big families, and the fish species index has every species guide.

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