After a sunny Saturday morning of fishing on Lake Erie, John Jarquin and a group of other anglers cleaned their catch of walleye at the new fish-cleaning station at
Mazurik Lake Erie Access in Marblehead.
Jarquin, of Wauseon, cut the filets on the station’s food-grade cutting boards and disposed of the extra fish parts in the receptacles at the station.
“I love it,” says Jarquin, who heads to the lake almost every weekend to fish. “I don’t have to go home and do it now, and I can dispose of the guts here.”
Jarquin’s experience is exactly what the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ hopes to offer with the state-of-the-art fish-cleaning stations it opened in the spring at Mazurik and the
Huron and
Avon Lake boat launches.
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Anglers make use of the Mazurik Fish Cleaning Station. (Photo/Kristina Smith)ODNR wanted to accommodate the hoards of anglers who launch their boats at the three sites each year, says Mike Wilkerson, Fish Management Supervisor for the
Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife.
At Mazurik, the parking lot is regularly parked full in the spring and summer with trucks and boat trailers, and boaters line up to put in at the ramp.
“It’s the biggest public boat launch in the state, and it’s situated right in the middle of
walleye heaven,” Wilkerson says. “Tens of thousands of people and boats go through that facility.”
Each station cost an estimated $500,000.
Lake Erie – especially the Port Clinton area - is known as the Walleye Capital of the World, and anglers come from across the country to catch prized sport fish walleyes and yellow perch.
“There are lots of nearby marinas, hotels, motels, and places that attract people from out of state,” Wilkerson says. “They need places to clean the fish and dispose of the entrails they don’t need anymore.”
The stations, which are handicapped-accessible, can fit at least 12 anglers, six to a table, at a time. Anglers can rinse away other parts of the fish and put the carcasses in a grinder in the center of the tables.
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Anglers make use of the Mazurik Fish Cleaning Station. (Photo/Kristina Smith)At Mazurik, the waste goes into a storage tank and then is emptied and hauled to a digester in Cleveland. At Huron and Avon Lake, the waste is sent to the city sewers.
The stations and their disposal systems eliminate smelly and unwanted waste left in trash cans and Dumpsters in the area.
In addition to the fish-cleaning station, ODNR also added a new bathroom facility at Mazurik. Before it opened, the site used portable toilets. The bathrooms cost an estimated $500,000 to $600,000, Wilkerson says.
The fish-cleaning stations are the first for the Division of Wildlife and were placed at high-traffic sites. There are some stations in Cleveland that are operated by
Cleveland Metroparks and the
City of Cleveland, Wilkerson says.
The Huron launch, which ODNR and the city of Huron jointly operate, gets nearly as much traffic as Mazurik, especially later in the summer and the fall when anglers are looking for walleyes in the deeper, cooler waters of the lake’s Central Basin, Wilkerson says.
“People are eager to use them,” he says. “I think people will enjoy using them, and it’ll provide quite a big benefit for people.”
Mazurik State Access is located at 8957 N. Shore Blvd., Lakeside-Marblehead. The Huron River Boat Access is located at 41 Cleveland Road East in Huron.