It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region,

and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

Chicago sits right on Lake Michigan, but hardly any of the fish that sold here in restaurants, fish markets, and stores, actually comes out of the lake.

And that's gotten several curious city listeners wondering, why don't we have a bigger commercial fishing industry in Chicago?

I'm reporter Jessica Pupac, and it turns out commercial fishing was big in Chicago from the city's

earliest days. In 1943 alone, crews pushing off from the Calumet and Chicago rivers and the

North Shore hauled in a record 1.6 million pounds of fish from Lake Michigan. But since then,

the industry has dried up. So what happened?

You can still see some remnants of Chicago's fishing industry along the Chicago River, like here

at Lawrence's Fish and Shrimp Restaurant in Chinatown. It's right next to that old vertical

lift railroad bridge, the one with the tiny house on top.

Today, it's just a restaurant.

But 60 years ago, it was a busy fish stand where commercial fishermen docked their boats and sold their catch.

Kurt Schwag is a third-generation owner of Lawrence's fish and shrimp.

The original Lawrence was his grandpa.

Hey, Kurt.

Nice to meet you. Good to meet you.

I met Shwag on his family dock, right where the fishing boats used to come in from Lake Michigan.

What was caught here in Lake Michigan? Yeah, so the three fish that I know of were whitefish,

Lake trout, and Chubs. That's for the smoking side of things. Then they also caught Lake Perch for general consumption. They sold fresh and smoked fish, both to the public and to

local retailers. I know that they sold the Dominics and Jewel, most of the major hotels, smoked fish and fresh fish was a huge part of

Chicago culture. That came from no refrigeration back to the turn of the century, and this is how

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