Eel catch on Lake Võrtsjärv drops sharply after last year's record
Fishermen on Estonia's Lake Võrtsjärv have caught only 18 tonnes of eel this season, a steep fall from last year's record of over 50 tonnes. The overall fish catch, however, remained stable at 133 tonnes.
This year's eel fishing season on Lake Võrtsjärv, Estonia's largest lake, has proven far less productive than the last. After a record catch of more than 50 tonnes of eel in 2025, fishermen have landed only 18 tonnes this season, a decline attributed to a drop in the stock of fish large enough for commercial fishing.
Priit Bernotas of the Chair of Hydrobiology and Fisheries at the Estonian University of Life Sciences told the newspaper Sakala that the cause lies in reduced restocking of the lake in 2017 and 2018 — the generations from those years are only now reaching harvestable size.
Human intervention shapes the population
Bernotas noted that the eel population in the lake depends heavily on human management, since dams and power plants on the Narva River have blocked the fish's natural migration route. At the same time, he stressed that continually increasing the release of young eels makes little sense, since part of that young stock migrates into the Emajõgi river system and Lake Peipus, where fishermen on Võrtsjärv can no longer catch them.
Total catch remains steady
Despite the decline in eel catches and difficulties with pike spawning this spring, caused by low water levels and reeds overtaking the shoreline, the overall fish catch on Lake Võrtsjärv reached 133 tonnes. Stable catches of pikeperch and bream kept the total steady, leading scientists and fishermen to regard the season as fairly ordinary overall.
